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Horus Heresy

2021-07-12T10:24:37Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The Siege of Terra series */

[[File:zbrothers.jpg|500px|thumb|right|It was pretty much ''this''.]]
{{Topquote|1=[[Fulgrim|They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me.]]<br>[[Magnus the Red|Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them.]]<br>[[Angron|They will be of iron will and steely muscle.]]<br>[[Perturabo|In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed.]]<br>[[Mortarion|They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them.]]<br>[[Alpharius|They will have tactics, strategies and machines]] [[Omegon|so that no foe can best them in battle.]]<br>[[Konrad Curze|They are my bulwark against the Terror.]]<br>[[Lorgar|They are the Defenders of Humanity.]]<br>[[Horus|They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear.]]|2=The [[God-Emperor of Mankind]], [[Not as planned|getting exactly what he wanted.]]}}
{{Topquote|The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.|Karl Popper}}

The '''Horus Heresy''' also known as '''Horus Humbug''', '''Cosmic Scale Daddy Issues''', '''That time [[Erebus]] fucked everyone over forever''' and (in-universe) as '''The Great Heresy War''' is one of the single biggest clusterfuck of events in [[Warhammer 40,000]] fluff, alongside the [[Eldar]]'s creation of a new [[Slaanesh|Chaos God]] and the [[War in Heaven|rampage and fall of the]] [[C'Tan|star gods]]. Needless to say, this heresy derailed the Emperor's plan and himself, and gave the Chaos Gods their most prominent armies to carry out their will in realspace.

In the Horus Heresy, the Emperor's favorite son, [[Horus| Horus Lupercal]], formerly Warmaster of the Imperium, was corrupted by Chaos and rebelled against the Emperor, taking nine [[First Founding|Space Marine Legions]] (Including [[Luna Wolves|his own]]), their respective Primarchs, and about half 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 cut the head off the proverbial snake by killing the Emperor and winning the war.

Things went [[Not as Planned]] however, as he was eventually surrounded by loyalist forces at the height of the siege on Terra. As a final gambit, he dropped the shields of his flagship which allowed the Emperor to beam up and challenged him to a duel for the fate of humanity. Horus beat the Emperor within an inch of his life but was killed in turn after the Emperor put his foot down and obliterated Horus' soul from existence (as in it didn't go to the warp to be resurrected by daemons, it was literally erased from existence) when it finally became clear to him that Horus was beyond forgiveness. 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==
[[File:HHMap.jpg|600px|right|thumb|The Clusterfuck in motion. If this map reminds you of the Syrian Civil War, consider getting a gold star.]]
The Horus Heresy screwed with almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course) 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 [[Exterminatus|or your whole planet]] 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|Burning]] [[Magnus_the_Red#Horus_Heresy|of Prospero]]
*[[Drop Site Massacre]]
*[[Battle of Calth|Battle of Calth]]
*[[Shadow Crusade]]
*[[Thramas Crusade]]
*[[Signus Campaign]]
*[[Battle of Phall]]
*[[Battle of Tallarn]]
* The TitanDeath at [[Beta Garmon]]
*[[Siege of Terra]]

Following the Siege of Terra, Horus was permakilled, Konrad allowed himself to be assassinated, Sanguinius was KIA, Big E was interred onto the Golden Throne, the surviving primarchs freaked out trying to figure out what do now that daddy was in a coma, the surviving traitors fucked off into the Eye of Terror, and overall the galaxy slowly and collectively lost their minds now that their wise and all-powerful ruler was no longer around to tell them what to do.

==The Board Game==
First published in 1993 by [[Game Designer's Workshop]], it was the Emprah versus his [[Horus|evil bastard of a son]] in the scorched earth of Terra. Units include [[Titan#Warhammer_40k|titans]] and [[Chaos Spawn|Chaos Spaw-]] oh shiARHGRBLLYRBGRDEWUODHGRYEB.

Ahem. As he was saying, the more recent edition (2010) was published by [[Fantasy Flight Games]]. Also a two-player [[wargame|war]] [[board game|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 [[heresy|traitor's]] flagship ''Vengeful Spirit''. Combat is less [[dice|dice-y]] and more card-y.

(Not to be confused with the lame Horus Heresy card game, whose only saving grace was the awesome card art that would appear in the Horus Heresy artbooks anyway.)

==The Main Book Series==
{{Spoilers}}
For the last decade, [[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 [[Dan Abnett|the first trilogy]], The First Heretic, Know No Fear, Fear To Tread, [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|Betrayer]], [[White Scars|Scars]], and the short story [[Alpha Legion|The Serpent Beneath]].

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

===Books I - X===
*'''''Horus Rising:''''' A prologue story, introducing us to the series and Garviel Loken who will grow into a very significant and popular character, the 'Jim Raynor from Starcraft' of the heresy. Black Library needed a killer opener and they succeeded, Dan Abnett handling it pretty well. An Emperor (not [[Emperor|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?". Negotiations with them go sour when [[Erebus]] steals the '''MURDER SWORD''' from them. It is worth noting that if the Interex had some goddamn CCTV set up in their museum of awesome and valuable weapons then the whole heresy could possibly have been avoided.
*'''''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 and Horus being reviled and forgotten) he decides to make war on the Imperium to [[FAIL|prevent]] all this from happening. Actually a rather weak and rushed affair when it comes to detailing the Horus Heresy's origin story. Until this point, we've been exploring Horus' character in great detail for 1.5 books, but then he has a nasty fever dream, sees a few bad prophecies and boom, he wakes up as a traitorous Saturday morning cartoon villain, after which point his machinations to create the Isstvan III event and Dropsite Massacre or any other bits of the heresy go completely undetailed and left behind the scenes. The really cool shit in this book is the battle on Davin, as the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Army fights against a massive horde of chaos zombies in a foggy swamp and the wreck of a space ship.
*'''''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 is presumed dead after a duel with Abaddon. While it's good to have a whole book detailing a key event in the Heresy, there isn't actually any important or interesting dialogue to read that would make you glad you didn't just read a synopsis. There's also an embarrassingly written sequence towards the end, where a large number of loyalists survive an Exterminatus event by fleeing to some magical and super convenient bunkers. They see plague bombs entering the planet's atmosphere with the naked eye and somehow have enough time to run deep enough underground to survive one of the Empire's most effective super weapons.
*'''''Flight of the Eisenstein:''''' the other side of ''Galaxy in Flames'', Nathaniel Garro escapes and gets marooned in the warp fighting daemons, eventually gets saved (and mega-bitchslapped) by [[Rogal Dorn]], who does not take the news from Isstvan [[Rage|very well]]. The first bit of the novel is so far 'the Death Guard's novel'. There is also the very first canonical appearance of Plague Marines, Euphrati Keeler being all mystical and shit, and Malcador recruiting Garro as the first Knight-Errant.
*'''''Fulgrim:''''' A divisive entry that is either forgettable to some or pretty interesting depending on who you ask - depends how much you like the Emperor's Children. Tells 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 McNeill though, and it has an awesome quote from Fulgrim: "My Emperor's Children. What beautiful music they make." The second plot of this book is about some human, but it is so forgettable the writer has it dropped halfway through the book. The human plot also explains where [[Lucius]] get his self-scarring habit from: a painter woman told him it will make his face perfect (ugly) again, because he wouldn't shut up about how Loken ruined his perfect beauty with a suckerpunch.
*'''''Descent of Angels:''''' This is the Heresy book that isn't about the Heresy, instead focusing on [[Zahariel]]'s time on [[Caliban]]. It portrays [[Lion El'Jonson]] having to deal with some social awkwardness (he can not read people at all, so he comes off as 'do what I say or die!') and having Luther to handle the small talk. Hints that the Great Crusade <s>does more harm than good</s> {{BLAM|is bringing the lost colonies of mankind together into a united future!}} Luther gets sent home with Zahariel to hustle up more Dark Angels. Another divisive book, but could definitely have used some more time with the editor. Be aware that this book was published long before the GW has decided what to do with Lion's Loyalty and personality, so its descriptions on Lion are outdated and does not match to his current status.
*'''''Legion''''' introduces [[the Cabal]], the [[Perpetual]]s 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. I still would recommend reading it since when the novel introduces these ideas they are very fresh and interesting. Don't blame ''Legion'' when the rest of the novels were what ruined it. The [[Alpha Legion]], along with the Geno Chiliad, a regiment of genetically engineered supermen-yet-not-Astartes lead by anime lolis called ''uxors'' (High Gothic for "wives") is trying to bring some Chaos cultists in <s>space Afghanistan</s>[[Nurth]] into compliance. The cultists activate planetary self-destruct blood sacrifice; as this goes down, the Alpha Legion meets with the [[Cabal]], gets a glimpse of their vision of the future ("the Alpharius gambit"), agrees to work with them, then kills off all non-legion bystanders & ships with "FOR E-MONEY"!
*'''''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 thought it was cobbled together from [[Matt Ward|Wardian fluff]] stitched together by [[C. S. Goto]]. Reading this book, in fact, causes mind cancer, which is to say, that it does not create brain tumors, but hurts the ideas of reader. Everyone dies, so it does not affect much (as in anything). The only thing you need to remember is [[Lorgar]] built a fuckhueg space ship and filled it with Dreadnoughts, and it failed miserably. The book's adherence to canon is an atrocity, but it does contain some decent depictions of ship-to-ship combat as a mildly redeeming quality.
*'''''Mechanicum:''''' Easily one of the best novels in the series. Including exploring many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanimum. 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 [[Emperor|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 as he uses divine golden light to heal machines and instant access super wikipedia. Contains a lot of Titan awesomeness and [[Imperial Knight|Knights]] badassery. And for extra Grimdark, a tech priestess discovers that the Dark Age era humans stored a backup copy of Wikipedia in the warp and <s>with a giant psyker powered terminal accesses said Wikipedia and restores all the knowledge of mankind</s> floods her forge with lava to deny the traitors access. A psyker tech savant meets up with the gaoler of the Void Dragon and takes over his fuck long shift.
*'''''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. The assassin was a Custodes probing the palace defences. The traitor was a triple agent working for Dorn. The bodyguard of the triple agent turns out to be an Sons of Horus assassin who detonates a bomb that kills the triple agent and nearly accomplishes a suicide run to destroy a bunch of reactors controlled by the triple agent.
** '''''Wolf at the Door:''''' The Space Wolves kill some Dark Eldar and are the defenders of everyone who does not defy the Emperor. When the liberated planet chooses freedom over the Emperor, the Wolves invade it, of course.
** '''''Scions of the Storm:''''' The Word Bearers destroy a human civilization that has crystal cities, crystal robots, and lots of lightning. They worshiped the Emperor, but Lorgar no longer does. This is also later a chapter of ''The First Heretic'', but there narrated from a slightly different point of view .
** '''''The Voice:''''' A squad of Sisters of Silence investigate a Black Ship that became derelict in the Warp. Turns out [[Blank|the youngest of the squad]] in the future [[Wat|used sorcery]] to beam back her consciousness through time onto some psykers on the Black Ship. She <s>successfully warns the squad about Horus's Rebellion </s> is executed by a hard-core Sister for breaking her vow of [[Psyker|no funny stuff]].
** '''''Call of the Lion:''''' Half of the Dark Angels are dicks, the other half are not. Totally not foreshadowing.
** '''''[[The Last Church]]:''''' A story about the Emperor destroying one of the churches on Terra during the reunification era in his effort to wipe out religion. The Emperor and the priest of the church have an enlightening conversation about what the Emprah's trying to accomplish. The conversation ends up with the priest accusing the Emperor of being a hypocrite, with him decrying that he's no different from the old warlords who waged crusades and holy wars in the past to push their own agendas on other people. The Emperor reveals himself as the very god the priest was worshiping, and nearly convinces him to stand by his side while his soldiers destroy the church. Priest gets cold feet and walks back into the church while it collapses. An end-times alarm clock starts ringing in the ruins.
** '''''After Desh'ea:''''' The War Hounds meet their Primarch. Angron defeats 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 ''after the War Hounds chain of command calmed Angron down as fleshy squeeze balls''.

===Books XI - XX===
*'''''Fallen Angels:''''' this sequel to Descent of Angels is actually two stories rolled into one book that never converge. The Lion heads to a strategically important forge world only to find that the magos has turned traitor, then fights a war to reclaim some Ordinatus devices only to hand them to Perturabo to gain his trust, not realising that his brother has already turned. He's really spergily awkward with people throughout. Meanwhile, [[Zahariel]] and Luther encounter a daemon cult on Caliban and get into shennanigans with [[Cypher]], setting the stage for the rise of the [[Fallen]] as they reject the Lion and the Emperor due to misplaced patriotism for Caliban and butthurt over feeling abandoned by their primarch.
*'''''A 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 forcing himself through the palace psychic spam filter, breaking the Golden Throne in the process. Space Wolves come knocking shortly after. Tragedy ensues and the Thousand Sons become a thousand sons all over again. Ahriman starts writing his Rubric.
*'''''Nemesis:''''' [[Malcador the Sigillite]] invents the [[Officio Assassinorum]] Execution Task Force and sends six assassins to kill Horus. They fail because Horus sent a look-a-like, but in the process slay a 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 [[rage|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 and generally considered one of the better books in the series. While you may never sympathize with them, this book really lets you understand why The Word Bearers fell to chaos, rather then being the "CHAOTIC EVIL MONSTERS" they are portrayed in the rest of the series.. 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 [[Adeptus Custodes|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, [[/d/|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 of Khaine|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 [[A Game of Pretend|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.
*'''''Prospero Burns:''''' Part 2 of the Battle for Prospero. A civilian archeologist named Kasper Hawser (as typical for GW authors flexing obscuring knowledge, not very subtle given that the real Kaspar Hauser was a liar from 1820s Germany, who thrived on getting public attention and [[Derp|accidentally killed himself]] when public attention faded) 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 (they thought he worked for Magnus).
* '''''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 <s>which is a load of bull given that the Codex lets said commander win all the wars in the most efficient way possible while blindly following it and only failed in the last battle because he was in a war game against Girlyman</s>. (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. An Alpha Legion serf arrives on a agri-world and turns its allegiance to Horus by only hacking all their interplanetary communications.
** '''''Forgotten Sons:''''' A [[Salamanders|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 [[Exterminatus|wreck shit]] for the lulz and to send the message that neutrality will be punished. The [[Iron Warriors]] were doing weird shit on that world for years beforehand and were probably a bigger factor than the lulz.
** '''''The Last Remembrancer:''''' Horus sent 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, Iacton Qruze makes his first appearance since forever, but nobody gives a shit. Dorn says it's all lies and enemy propaganda before executing said remembrancer and torching all his ramblings.
** '''''Rebirth:''''' Magnus's absent fleet from the Burning of Prospero 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 <s>parade</s> 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 [[Blood Ravens|shift into kleptomania]].
** '''''The Face of Treachery:''''' The tie-in and conclusion of the audiodrama featuring the Raven Guard after Istvaan and the prequel to Deliverance Lost. After getting fed up with Corax [[troll]]ing 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 him roll a natural 20 on stealth checks no matter how ridiculous it would be, and that the Alpha Legion ''once again'' can out-troll everybody when they fuck things up for the World Eaters (they let the World Eater commander think he was in command then blew his brains out when he tried to actually command). 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 [[Abaddon|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 the PTSD he had 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 over an ocean of prometheum in a hellhole of a world (giant cavern system & acidic atmosphere), 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 (after a full year of siege thanks to the genius of a certain [[Barabas Dantioch]]), drop the fortress from the ceiling onto a titan, and get the hell out of there by hijacking one of the Iron Warriors warships via teleportation. An Ultramarine bigwig was there to bring the loyalists home, informing them that [[Skub|Guilliman was fortifying Terra]] and he needed good siege workers to stall the traitors then to fortify Terra. While loyalist Iron Warriors were pretty cool, the story itself was pretty forgettable and 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 with the Imperium Secundus; 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 yo shit!" and left a fortress with no space or warp conveyance and arguably little strategic value in itself in the middle of nowhere alone. It mentions a few times that it looks really bad for a rebellion trying to gain initiative when a mere captain of their Legions tells their Primarch "fuck off, imma keeping this fortress & resources for the Emperor!" The message behind it being if you can't even control your own men, maybe this rebellion thing needs a rethinking, because hearing Horus can't even take this shitty outpost middle of nowhere and he's going to Terra might be bad press.
** '''''Savage Weapons:''''' A good story written by [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|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 [[Rage|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 Jonson is a <s>badass among primarchs</s> cheating bitch (he initiated the fight, ending the parlay, by getting in a cheap shot when he plunged his sword into Curze's heart), until Curze, ignoring a terrible wound even by Primarch standards, whoops that ass and goes to his old fallback of strangling a fucker. Their respective honor guards go at it in the meantime, 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. [[derp|''Riggggghhhhtttt.'']] More importantly: shortly after the start of the Heresy an astropath has routine nervous breakdown and is returned to Terra to get [[Witch Hunters|some R&R]]. 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 ''"[[Anal Circumference|Ve haff vays of making you talk.]]"'' and hand him over to a pair of [[Inquisition|kind counselors]] who torture the poor man half to death. After a time, he gets busted out in the nick of time by some convict Space Marines from the Traitor Legions. Why they do this is explained by the Thousand Son sagely stating "Just because" to the others. They name themselves the eponymous Outcast Dead and try to get the hell off of Terra. Amusingly, none of the escapees is very happy at the prospect of the Heresy but they are all [[rage|slightly miffed]] at being treated like shit by the Custodes just because of the Legion they belong to. 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 <s>[[Rip and tear|an unarmed, unarmored World Eater ripping a Custodes' spine out through his chest]]</s> the portrayal of the Emperor playing chess in dreams, revealing that the message is about his upcoming bitchslap from Horus.
*'''''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) have 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'' with the potential to conscript literally anybody willing to become a Space Marine. 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 Corax ended up with. In one of the instances of retcon that was actually flavored with [[awesome]] and win, the mutant marines [[Grimdark|were still sapient]] but were left 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 just happened in here. 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 a retirement home: everybody got screwed (even ''Horus''), nobody got what they hoped for (except for [[Omegon|the really deviant bastard]]), and all-around the reproductive material was a waste. Corax shut down his hothousing method and starts fucking with the Traitors even at reduced numbers. The book ends with Alpharius-Omegon deciding that while their plan for saving the galaxy was still good, they decide working with Xenos isn't for them.
*'''''Know No Fear:''''' The book that made the Ultramarines (of all people) cool again. The Ultras are still ignorant about Istvaan and the civil war erupting around the galaxy, and are mustering at Calth with the Word Bearers [[troll|on orders from Horus]] to go kill some Orks together as a conciliatory gesture. They're in for a surprise: the Word Bearers, while happy as hell to get revenge, are really trying to [[Eldrad|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 shipyards that leave the Ultramarine forces blind, deaf, and crippled. They use the confusion to say that the Ultras are ''still'' fucking them over, and take the chance to open not only a can but entire cases of whoop-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 [[Sorcerer (Warhammer 40,000)|Chaos mindbullets]], in a moment of self-aggrandizement he holds back and tries to corrupt Guilliman with his own dagger-sized '''MURDER SWORD'''. Guilliman calmly tells him "The Codex Astartes <s>does</s> will not support this action" (it was really "You made an error" followed by an explanation of that error, and "but while I'm alive, I can do this") and [[Rip and Tear|rips out Kor Phaeron's main heart with an unpowered Power Fist]]. 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, transitioning into underground war. Special features of this novel include the Ultramarines finally being portrayed as awesome, Guilliman not being a cock, [[Ollanius Pius]] being the special guest star with his very own subplot, and the Word Bearers having athame blades as special issue, one of which will [[Uriel Ventris|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. While not exactly winning awards on the philosophical or psychological side, the book itself is a genuinely thrilling read that really knows how to keep its tension up.
*'''''The Primarchs:''''' A novella anthology. As the name suggests, it contains stories featuring Primarchs.
**'''''The Reflection Crack'd:''''' - <s>[[Lucius]] and friends anally rape [[Fulgrim]]. Yeah.</s> While questionable use of a ''pear of anguish'' is featured during a game of "Stab the Fulgrim," the real story is this: Lucius and his buddies are deep into the [[/d/|sickfuckery]] which will come to characterize their Legion 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 (though they find out that a Primarch can grow back a foot and just about any other wound). Among everything else: [[Fabius Bile|Fabulous Bill]] is still an arrogant dick; Lucius is still a maniacal and colossally narcissistic sick fuck; Julius Kaesoron is still an angry badass; Marius Vairosean is still a sycophantic cunt; and Eidolon was still a self-important, whiny douche, but Fulgrim throws a tantrum and cuts his head off, and there was much cheering from the readers, and that ''plus'' almost certain off-screen fapping among the Legionaries leads into ''Angel Exterminatus''.
**'''''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 bullshit. 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 [[Fulgrim|giant purple snake]] (which is [[/d/|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 [[/tg/ gets shit done|get shit done]] rather than bitch about their 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. [[Drop Site Massacre|I wonder if that's important]].
**'''''The Lion:''''' - Dark Angels fight daemons and reinstitute Librarians. The Lion teamkills Nemiel for reminding him about Nikaea, ruining all the buildup from the previous two <s>Dark</s> Fallen Angels Books because [[Gav Thorpe]] wanted to prove he's a big boy author who can kill his characters. Then they steal an intelligent super warp engine (instashifts the Dark Angel fleet into the warp without need for a jump point while teleporting itself and the Lion onto his flagship; Lion is capable of talking politely in front of so much power) 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 [[Cake|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.

===Books XXI - XXX===
*'''''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 [[/tg/|fa/tg/uy]]s 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 [[Slaanesh]]i 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. Sanguiniuns and Co end up reaching Imperium Secundus.
*'''''Shadows of Treachery:''''' Yet another anthology. Most of the stories are tie-togethers or "in betweens", and some are very short.
**'''''The Crimson Fist''''' - A story about two parallel story lines. The first is set during the [[Battle of Phall]], a space battle between the Iron Warriors' entire fleet, and what was left over after a third of the Imperial Fists' fleet was dispatched to reinforce the loyalists going to Istvaan, got caught in a warpstorm and were run "ashore" leaving them drifting and isolated in the backwater Phall system. The Iron Warriors, having the advantage of knowing what the hell is going on and having the powers of Chaos to guide them through the storm, show up at Phall and wreck shit for some good old fashioned revenge. Despite having the superior numbers, more and bigger guns, suicidal expenditure cohorts, and the power of a raging hateboner, the Iron Warriors were losing to the Imperial Fists's superior maneuverability and [[Alexis Polux|Captain Polux's]] protagonist power. Eventually, the Fists get the order and window to withdraw to Terra, though turning tail would put their fleet at a huge disadvantage. Given the choice between blind obedience to his father or carrying on with the battle they were winning, Polux chooses the former and takes his Fists back to Terra, but ends up in the Imperium Secundus instead. This was also one of the first solid depictions of Perturabo, and clearly the worse of the two as he's shown to be nothing more than an abusive, cold-hearted Saturday morning cartoon villain with rage issues and the depth and complexity of a kiddy pool. The second story line follows [[Sigismund]] as he follows Rogal around the Imperial Palace after deciding to stay home, even though he was ordered to command the same fleet trapped at Phall, but delegated it to Polux's predecessor. The twist is that he met Euphrati Keeler, had a spiritual experience when they spoke, and felt that he would be needed more at Terra instead of as a drifting corpse permanently lost in orbit around some backwater, and so handed off the job of commanding the fleet. When he eventually opened up to Rogal about this, it got him in trouble. See, Rogal was still one of the [[Imperial Truth|stupid atheists]] at this point, so he disowned Sigismund because he thought "serving a higher purpose" was arrogant and got in the way of doing his job. This left Sigismund feeling really sad and pissed off, thus was his start of <s>darkness</s> daddy issues. [[Black Templars|Really pissed off and bad ass daddy issues.]]
**'''''The Dark King''''' - A look into the head and story of Konrad Curze during the events leading up to the Dropsite Massacre. It shows that, even if you buy that Curze was a [[Lawful Evil|murderous paladin of justice and order]] rather than just a [[Chaotic Evil|deranged serial killer]], he's pretty fucked up in the head and lives with the knowledge of his demise haunting him (which isn't that great for what little sanity he has left). It also involves him beating up Rogal Dorn, killing some Imp Fists and Emp's Children terminators <s>with his more advanced suit and built-in vox jammers</s> [[Rip and tear|with his bare fucking hands]], then blowing up Nostramo.
**'''''The Lightning Tower''''' - Basically, 20 pages of Rogal Dorn. The first 10 is him being sad about ruining the Imperial Palace as a grand piece of art by fortifying it into a coldly functional fortress. The next 10 is Rogal having an existential monologue, then a conversation with Malcador all about why he doesn't know why Horus declared war on the Emperor and is afraid to find out why in case it makes sense. Malcador ends up knowing at least a little about Chaos and somehow got his hands on a tarot deck Curze used throughout his life even up to the close of ''The Dark King''. (Don't ask how he got them. Really.) Also that (*Name Drop*) the Lightning Tower is the important card that comes up, signifying [[Siege of Terra|a destruction of fortifications]] and/or [[Imperium of Man|a change of thinking brought about by sacrifice]].
**'''''The Kaban Project''''' - Right before Istvaan, techpriest Pallas Ravachol is working on a top secret "Kaban" robot project on Mars and realizes that the project has achieved sapience, and is in fact a form of full AI. Though he genuinely befriended the Kaban machine, Ravachol complains to boss Magos Chrom that working on an AI is both highly illegal and insanely dangerous. Chrom tells Ravachol not to be such a pussy since Horus himself gave the OK, and after some deliberation has a death squad waiting to escort Ravachol off site the next morning. Ravachol, thinking there were few ways this could end well, makes a break for it and flees for Magos Malevolus's forge, hoping to get somebody with some clout to reveal that his old boss and Horus were up to something bad. On the way, he spends time running away from a latex-clad sadist babe who persistently chases after him; since she's an AdMech equivalent of a Death Cultist assassin, this is a ''much'' better idea than it sounds. When he gets to Malevolus's forge, Malevolus distracts him with a legion of shiny Mk6 suits of Marine Power Armor long enough to drop the bomb to drop that they were for Horus. The latex-clad babe catches up to them both, and the techpriest flees again, only to be puzzled why Malevolus and the assassin are letting him run. As he gets out the door, he meets the Kaban machine, <s>who realizes friendship was most important thing, the Kaban decides to side with the good guys, and the day is saved.</s> Chrom told the Kaban Machine that it and Ravachol simply can't be friends for realsies because of the rules and stuff, and taking up with Horus was a great idea. The Kaban Machine, not understanding how humans work nor '''The Power of Friendship''' didn't know any better than to agree, and kills Ravachol right on the steps of Malevolus's forge. The end. An okay story, somewhat generic feeling prose. More of a who's who of the Dark Mechanicus during ''Mechanicum'' and telling where the hell that Kaban machine from the same book came from, and how they seduced an AI into Chaos worship.
**'''''Raven's Flight''''' - A bridge between Istvaan V and ''Deliverance Lost'', also a companion story to the Raven's Flight audio drama. The story tells how Commander Marcus Valerius of the Imperial Army is stationed on Deliverance and keeps having recurring nightmares which is causing him worry about Corax. Commander Branne of the Raven Guard's garrison on Deliverance, is getting tired of how the Legion's pet human won't stop bitching about it, and decides to take Valerius out on a trip in the battle barge to Istvaan just to show him that everything is just fine. Meanwhile, Corax and a relative handful of surviving Raven Guard are fighting a guerilla war against the traitors, trying to stay one step ahead of the Iron Warriors and then the World Eaters. In between skirmishes Corax spends a few thoughtful moments feeling bad about his Legion and the state of the Imperium now that things have gone to shit.
**'''''Death of a Silversmith''''' - The title says it all. A silversmith attached to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet is tasked with making four rings for the Mournival, after that he makes tokens (for the warrior-lodge, but he doesn't know that) and then gets his windpipe crushed to make sure word doesn't get out about the tokens. The story is seen from the perspective of the silversmith who describes his life up until the point where he's lying on his own floor slowly suffocating to death. Ultimately it is kind of irrelevant, but the lore nerds or people who have been paying attention might find it interesting. At barely 20 pages long, you might as well read it anyway.
**'''''Prince of Crows''''' - A novella featuring the Thramas Crusade as viewed by First Captain [[Sevatar]] of the Night Lords. With the Night Lords's forces all but shattered by the Dark Angels, Curze in a coma and nearly dead, and the Dark Angels's fleet in pursuit, Sevatar has to knock some heads for the Night Lords to get their shit together to reorganize and rethink strategy. It's essentially about showing the fractures in the Night Lords Legion. As most stories written by [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]], it's pretty good.
*'''''Angel Exterminatus:''''' [[Perturabo]] just finished [[skub|fucking up (or being fucked by)]] some Fists, and [[Fulgrim]] finds him to polish off a plot hook from ''The Reflection Crack'd'' and recruit Pert for an expedition into the Eye of Terror because a renegade Eldar said he knows where to get ''the good shit'' (the eponymous Angel Exterminatus). Fulgrim wanted to make a show out of delivering exposition, and he had Pert use his skills to build a stadium and went storyteller mode; then the moment was killed when a Shattered Legion detachment composed of Iron Hands and a Raven Guard commando sniped Fulgrim (he got better). Of course, Pert took the moment to remind himself that this is why he can't have and [[Rage|won't ever have]] nice things. Thinking that Fulgrim had the scent of a powerful artifact or a superweapon, and seeing that Fulgrim was becoming the Primarch equivalent of a crack addict member of the Jersey Shore and his legion wasn't looking much better, Pert decided to play it safe by tagging along and making sure Fulgrim wouldn't break anything. On the way, a different Eldar scholar came to the Shattered Legion, telling them that Fulgrim and Pert can't be allowed to get to the Angel Exterminatus, or [[Daemon|Bad Things (Warp-registered trademark)]] will happen. Well into the journey into the Eye, the Iron Hands's resident mad scientist accidentally gives away their location, and the Emp's Children and Iron Warriors decide to throw a boarding party. After a few pages of pulse-pounding action, Pert says "fuck this" and leaves as the Iron Hands' same mad scientist overloads the engines and does a [[Battlefleet Gothic|mother of a ramming maneuver]] which kills an Emp's Children ship. (Pert was getting sick of Fulgrim's shit at this point, so he decided not to let them know, leading to the loss of the ship and thousands of casualties for Fulgrim.) When they finally get there, they find a [[Crone World]] covered in ruins and occupied spirit stones being held in orbit around a black hole. Some wraithbone constructs pop up and Pert and Fulgrim have to fight to the heart of the planet to get at the Angel Exterminatus. On the way, Pert kills their renegade Eldar because he was a lyin' bitch. When they ''finally'' get there, surprise! Daemon Primarch Fulgrim is supposed to be the Angel Exterminatus, and he betrays Pert (a bauble Fulgrim gave to Pert at the start of the book was a vitality-leeching thing), and they start the ritual which would sacrifice Pert to turn Fulgrim into a Daemon Prince. Then the Shattered Legion crashes the ceremony and assists the Iron Warriors since it's clear they weren't working with the Emp's Children anymore. Pert kills Fulgrim but it doesn't count since Fulgrim's mortal essence works just as well as sacrifice. He goes full Daemon Prince despite a generous helping of Thunder Hammer to his [[gay|pretty face]], breaks every spirit stone on the planet, and disappears with every last one of his sick fucks. The Eldar scholar helping the Shattered Legion throws a bitch fit, revealing that both scholars were Dark Eldar who had cut a deal with Fulgrim (help him become a daemon and they get assloads of spirit stones to fuck with), and he had made sure that the Shattered Legions were there to put a wedge in that deal because... reasons. The Shattered Legion gets the hell out and the Iron Warriors try to GTFO as the planet starts to fall into the black hole. The book ends with Pert, [[pretend|being a wise man]], ordering them to reverse course and fly right into that fucker. (It works out for them in the end.) Subplots include a lot of buildup for McNeil's Iron Warriors stories, the Shattered Legions' feelings on trying to unfuck an irreversibly fucked situation, and a tense story of two Imperial Fists as they try to survive Fabius's turning them into mutants (which actually had a poor payoff). Despite being overall good, it's a bit of a skub novel because the depiction of Perturabo is so different from expected; rather than being the bitter [[RAGE|Rage]] machine from every other depiction, he's a quiet [[Neckbeard|nerd who plays with toys as a hobby]] but with muscles. The ghosts of Eldar's Aspect Warriors and Wraith-Constructs inside a planet left inside the Eye of Terror, the first death of Lucius at the hands of a Mary Sue despite previous claims that he was undefeated during the Heresy and his unexplained first resurrection, and an Iron Hands legionnaire somehow being immune to sonic weapons by being deaf is canon rape on par with C.S. Goto. And worst of all, a rotating Shadowsword turret.
*'''''Betrayer:''''' Lorgar and Angron rampage over the Ultramarines' 500 worlds. Lots of references to Angron's past and his Butcher's Nails 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 totally bro-tier until that bitch Erebus decides to intervene and becomes a team-killing asshole. Why Erebus isn't modeled with a long mustache fit for twirling is beyond us. Best known for containing Angron's dressing-down speech toward Gulliman having it easy since birth while Angron had a pretty shit life from day one.
*'''''Mark of Calth:''''' Another set of short stories, though all focused 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. Also shows how he returned to Davin to learn how to teleport with the '''MURDER SWORD''', then killing the priestess that helped him turn Horus. She somehow wins because she served Chaos before dying which pisses Erebus off.
**'''''Calth That Was''''' - The story focuses on an Ultramarine Captain and Co. and on a Word Bearers commander and his Dark Apostle. Keeps bringing up what Calth used to be like. Longer-than-the-rest-story short, Word Bearers try to Nurgle 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 he ended up killing his mentor with dark powers (turned him insta inside out). A kind of nice story that shows the <s>degradation</s> enlightenment of the Legion.
**'''''The Traveller''''' - A spacedock traffic controller survives the destruction of his star fort, and the fatal crash of his escape shuttle before ending up in a small underground arcology with other human survivors. Imperial cultists believe he is blessed, and when he starts hearing whispers and seeing unbelievers they start rounding everybody up for execution. Everybody gets slowly executed till he's the last one left. He learns he's been possessed and reveals to an Ultramarine that he was was infected by the vox from the ''Campanile''.
**'''''A Deeper Darkness''''' - An Ultramarine has a hard-on for a certain Word Bearer trolling him. Hunts down said Word Bearer into a cave system with a team of soldiers and Spess Merheens. Word Bearer trolls them by summoning a Gorgon. Ultramarine wins by tricking the Gorgon into looking at its reflection.
**'''''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... turns out Daemons give visions of the future to potential Gal Vorbak, and said Gal Vorbak was given a vision of him not abandoning his fallen brothers on Calth. The Daemon doesn't have time for that shit so it lets him die during his transformation, much to the distress of the still fairly bro tier [[Argel Tal]] who is soothed by the honeyed words of [[Lorgar|did nothing wrong]].
**'''''Athame''''' - A narrated story of the history of a knife, though not one from the '''MURDER SWORD'''. That's about it... totally... right? Wrong. The small sacrificial knife that Ollanius found was carved on Terra for a benign ritual, stolen by an evil Perpetual who was killed by ''the Emperor'' in medieval times, found in an archeological dig by Kasper Hawser, and went on other crazy murder-adventures, all while having rudimentary sentience.
**'''''Unmarked''''' - Ollanius Pius and friends are traveling through time and space using the athame from the previous story. We learn a lot more about Oll's past, going into detail about his offhand mentions that he was one of the Argonauts and that he served in the First World War and the First Gulf War. It's based as all fuck and written by [[Dan Abnett]], so don't miss it. Also features Ol' Oll's much, much earlier encounters with the [[Emperor|big daddy E]] in flashbacks and kinda proves O.P. Diddy right in his contention against Him that faith has power it not directed [[Lorgar|in the wrong]] [[Chaos|places]] and has in fact protected Terra for fuckawatts worth of millenia, and if He hadn't have been such an aspergated edgelord about atheism, more daemons might have been conquered due to the power of 19th century English hymnody with some of the words altered to refer apparently to the very same edgy athiest. Also features a traumatized but insightful qt3.14 psyker witch.
*'''''Vulkan Lives:''''' What happened to Vulkan after the Dropsite Massacre? He got made Konrad Curze's torture bitch. Plenty of fun with dining implements and an awesome ending involving a hammer to the face. Not one of the best HH Books though is a somewhat necessary read for continuing the plot arc. Remember the Shattered Legions crew from ''Angel Exterminatus''? Now you get a new group that is far more bland and less distinct. The major problem with the story is that, while it is fun reading Curze taunting Vulkan, not much happens in it and it barely affects the stakes or the overall plot to a great degree, except we now know that Vulkan is a perpetual.
*'''''The Unremembered Empire:''''' [[Perpetual|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?'' No one knows what it is really about, especially the book's description of itself (which describes its ''sequels''). Several things happen in the book and several unrelated subplots collide as several entities are drawn by the Pharos device to Macragge. There are implications that Guilliman's new backup Imperium is starving resources from Terra.
*'''''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, also gets into a fight with Mortarion on the way, also [[The Fallen|half his legion turns traitor]] but turns out it's no big deal.
** '''''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 and the Chaos Gods give it to him by sending him to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber from Dragon Ball Z (kinda). 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. (In all seriousness though, the Chaos Gods have been claiming this throughout the series. It could be the truth or one of their beautifully crafted lies.) Loken comes back. There's also the Knights of <s>Lannister</s> Molech, who fall to Slaanesh through copious amounts of Twincest. Also, if you have been ignoring the audio books, you will be a bit lost at the start of this one.
*'''''The Damnation of 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. Adds just about as much to the overall series as ''Furious Abyss'' did, but is actually pretty well written (unlike "Furious Abyss"). To cut a long story short, daemons take over a world in the Pandorax system, capture a starship, and use it to start ferrying cultists from place to place. The book also has some crossover with 40k and the Pandorax Campaign.

===Books XXXI - XL===
*'''''Legacies of Betrayal''''' Another anthology, though this time it's a bit of a cheat; they just consolidated several pre-existing stories and some of the the novellas but also included print versions of audio books.
**'''Brotherhood of the Storm''' - see above
**'''Serpent''' - A really short and out-of-place story about a Davinite Priest.
**'''Hunters Moon''' - Originally an audiobook involving peasant fishermen rescuing a crashed Space Wolf who is running from the Alpha Legion after killing Alpharius. It obviously doesn't end well.
**'''Veritas Ferrum''' - A prequel to "Damnation of Pythos", about an Iron Hands starship escaping (against their better nature) from Isstvan with some survivors.
**'''Riven''' - An Iron Hand from the Crusader Host is sent by Sigismund to look for some of his brothers, scattered after Istvaan V. He finds one suspicious-looking group and discovers that they use forbidden technologies to fight traitors even after death.
**'''Strike and Fade''' - More survivors of Isstvan, though this is about Salamanders just killing time (and Night Lords) whilst they wait to be rescued.
**'''Honour to the Dead''' - An Ultramarine squad fights its way through Calth with a innocent woman and child trying their hardest to follow them to safety, while loyalist and traitor Titans punch each other's faces in the background.
**'''Butcher's Nails''' - A good one to read: Angron & Lorgar go on the Shadow Crusade and come to an understanding whilst fighting Eldar. It is also a prequel to "Betrayer".
**'''Warmaster''' - Horus considers how much of a badass he is while chatting with Ferrus Manus's skull.
**'''Kryptos''' - Somewhere in the Galactic East (either Thramas Crusade or Imperium Secundus), Nykona Sharrowkyn and company go kidnap a warp code interpreter that will let them intercept garbled enemy communications. Prequel to "Angel Exterminatus".
**'''Wolf's Claw''' - Bjorn the Fell-Handed needs a replacement arm but the Iron Priests are too busy; he happens to find a nice fancy relic one just lying around.
**'''The Divine Word''' - Marcus Valerius (army commander from Raven Guard story arc) receives some prophetic dreams and subsequently prevents an Alpha Legion diversion. It serves as his final push to join the Imperial Cult.
**'''Thief of Revelations''' - After Prospero, the Thousand Sons need something to stop all their rampant mutation, so Ahriman goes to ask why Magnus has locked himself away. He's got bigger things to worry about and is looking across time and space for key events for future [[Just as Planned]] manipulations.
**'''Lucius the Eternal Warrior''' - After his first death ''(and unexplained resurrection)'' at the hands of Nykona Sharrowkyn, Lucius has somehow abandoned the Heresy and goes to the Planet of Sorcerers to fight a duel with the bestest Thousand Son swordsman (cause he cheats and reads your mind to see what you do next) and ends up meeting Ahriman. [[wat|Uh-huh...]]
**'''The Eightfold Path''' - Kharn and the World Eaters realise that too much rip and tear is leading them [[Khorne|down a damning path]], but they're already too far gone.
**'''Guardian of Order''' - [[Cypher]] and [[Zahariel]] discover that the Ouroboros (banished in Fallen Angels) is coming back.
**'''Heart of the Conqueror''' - Angron's Navigator gets a bit uppity about being made to turn traitor, despite having been picked for the job as the angry man's chauffeur by the Emperor himself. Blams herself during mid-warp transit with not-fun results for flagship.
**'''Censure''' - Aeonid Thiel is killing time and Word Bearers in the Underworld War on Calth, writing notes about it on his armour. Said notes will eventually get written into Guilliman's draft of the [[Codex Astartes|Codex]] on the subject of killing Word Bearers (because it's that damn important to kill Word Bearers). Goes on a buddy cop adventure with an army trooper. Thiel eventually gets bored and goes back to Macragge in the end.
**'''Lone Wolf''' - Bjorn has lost all of his squad, but is now such an awesome badass that he can solo Bloodthirsters.
*'''''Deathfire''''' - "vUlKaN lIvEs" What the Salamanders have been saying since Isstvan is true: Vulkan lives! Well now he does. Basically a bunch of Salamanders take his body from Macragge to Nocturne (with some side help from didn't-ask-for-this Magnus) and throw him into Nocturne's largest volcano, and lo and behold he comes back to life, making that entire plotline pointless. Still has the fucking Fulgurite in his chest, though. TL;DR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7nzml-zZ9M
*'''''War Without End''''': Anthologies Without End.
**'''The Devine Adoratrice''' - Prequel to "Vengeful Spirit" shows that House Devine was rotten to the core long before the coming of Fulgrim.
**'''Howl of the Heathworld''' - Space Wolves get sent to Terra to watch over Rogal Dorn so he doesn't start using psykers; it's a pointless task and everyone involved knows it. Also offers insight into the Wolves' naming conventions.
**'''Lord of the Red Sands''' - During Istvaan III, Angron indulges himself in some philosophizing about the nature of his rebellion and what is good cause while butchering his own sons. I swear, I'm telling the truth.
**'''Artefacts''' - On his way to Istvaan V, Vulkan decides that all of his artefacts should be destroyed to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. His forgemaster intervenes and persuades him to keep at least some so Vulkan grants him the right to choose seven items to preserve and give him the title of Forge Father, keeper of these artefacts.
**'''Hands of the Emperor''' - Depicts one typical day of the Adeptus Custodes through eyes of their newly appointed Master of the Watch, including colossal orbital plates invading Imperial Palace and Custodes and the Imperial Fists being stubborn assholes even when facing battle with each other at the heart of the Imperium, never-ceasing Blood Games and bureaucratic and diplomatic hell wrapping all that entanglement.
**'''The Phoenician''' - A dying Morlock witnesses the final duel between Ferrus Manus and Fulgrim.
**'''Sermon of Exodus''' - Another prequel to "Damnation of Pythos", explains the appearance of the huge cultists' fleet from Davin in orbit of Pythos. Provides rare insight on the life on Davin and origins of Chaos cults there. Also features really bizarre description of the first Davinite priest, who spent the last several thousand years in the warp.
**'''By the Lion's Command''' - Prologue to "Angels of Caliban". Corswain is tasked by the Lion to hunt Death Guard ships, but is experiencing a severe lack of manpower. After an uneven engagement with Typhon that nearly costs him his life and fleet, he decides to send Chapter Master Belath to Caliban for recruits.
**'''The Harrowing''' - Some random Alpha Legionnaires take over some random Mechanicus ship. Turns out that they are so god-mode that everyone important is their operative, so they meet no resistance at all. The end.
**'''All That Remains''' - A transport ship full of war orphans and Imperial Army soldiers with severe PTSD is lost in space during warp transit. Fear not though, because in fact they are being stolen by one of Malcador's agent for transfer to Titan and induction into the Grey Knights.
**'''Gunsight''' - The Vindicare Assassin from Nemesis is still alive and on Horus' flagship; it's about him spending years waiting for the opportune moment to get a shot, but he starts going mad while he waits. Gives ups when Horus plucks his killshot from the air and Horus gives him a chaos rifle for his change in loyalty.
**'''Allegiance''' - Revuel Arvida spends some time on the White Scars flagship trying to understand what to do after losing all his Legion. He reflects on his time on Prospero, attends the Khan's trial for the pro-Horus plotters from "Scars", and tries to escape, but in the end he chooses to spend some more time with the Scars.
**'''Daemonology''' - After his duel with Jaghatai, Mortarion tries to interrogate a Daemon, which goes as well as you'd expect. Also shows that Malcador and the Emperor planned Nikaea for almost seventy years before it took place.
**'''Black Oculus''' - A Navigator that serves the IV Legion loses his mind after Perturabo drives his ships into the black hole in the center of the Eye of Terror.
**'''Virtues of the Sons''' - Sanguinius forsees that he will not always be in charge of the Blood Angels, but worries about the Red Thirst causing havoc with his sons' futures, so gets Amit to duel Kharn and Azkaellon to duel Lucius in hopes they'll learn something. Azkaellon learns to let the rage out a bit and Amit learns a modicum of restraint.
**'''The Laurel of Defiance''' - Lucretius Corvo (later founder of the Novamarines) and his squad kill a Traitor Titan using only their wits and one meltagun.
**'''A Safe and Shadowed Place''' - [[Night Lords]] start stabbing each other in the back as soon as Curze goes missing while solo'ing Macragge. It's about a ship floating in the ruinstorm that has just discovered the [[Imperium Secundus|Pharos]] and foreshadows problems for Ultramar.
**'''Imperfect''' - Daemon-Fulgrim has been getting Fabius to clone Ferrus Manus, because the split personality thing makes him feel guilty about failing to turn his brother to Horus's side, but the clones are never quite right and go mental at each suggestion. Fabius also has his own stuff going on.
**'''Chirurgeon''' - Fabius is dying from the genetic flaw that's been killing Emperor's Children since before they found Fulgrim - or not, since he found a way to distill other Marines into drug that keeps the illness at bay.
**'''Twisted''' - Maloghurst solves some routine troubles on the ''Vengeful Spirit'' like persistent petitioners, lack of water, rogue daemons and the Davinite cult plotting to control Horus.
**'''Wolf Mother''' - Right after events of ''Vengeful Spirit'' Alivia Sureka goes searching for her daughter, who was stolen by a Slaaneshi cult that escaped from Molech, with a little help from Severian The Wolf. No, really, she is so badass that Severian doesn't even look like someone superior.
*'''''Pharos''''': Night Lords fucking up the Pharos Lighthouse on Sotha. Sanguinius eventually grows some balls and starts standing up to Guilliman instead of just being a pantomime Emperor, while the Lion is nowhere to be seen as usual. Warsmith Dantioch bites it while using the Pharos to burn the Night Lords out of his fortress, but inadvertently piques the interest of the [[Tyranids]], causing them to show up 10,000 years later. Skraivok become a prime example of DAEMON SWORDS: NOT EVEN ONCE.
*'''''Eye of Terra''''': Another anthology.
**'''The Wolf of Ash and Fire''' - takes place before Ullanor. Emperor and Horus destroy one really powerful WAAAGH!!!, lead by an exceptionally huge Big Mek. Story consists almost completely of foreshadowing.
**'''Aurelian''' - see "First Heretic"
**'''Massacre''' - A young Night Lords apothecary named [[Talos_(Warhammer_40,000)|Talos]] takes part in the Istvaan V Massacre.
**'''Brotherhood of the Moon''' - After the failed coup from ''Scars'', Torghun Khan is being interrogated and explains why he chose Team Horus.
**'''Inheritor''' - [[Eliphas_The_Inheritor|Eliphas]] The Inheritor (yes, that one from the DoW series) sacrifices the population of a city on a planet Kronos (yes, again from DoW) and a company of Ultramarines to have a nice little chat with Lorgar.
**'''Vorax''' - An unlucky Dark Mechanicum priest falls to a loyalist ambush and subsequently being killed by Vorax-class battle servitor. Really short and forgettable story.
**'''Ironfire''' - Turns out that Idriss Krendl (that arrogant warsmith who had a stronghold dropped on his head by Dantioch) is alive! Really tough bastard, though several months under debris has affected his sanity a little. He now spends his time testing new siege tactics on the Emperor's Children world in preparation for the siege of the Imperial Palace.
**'''Red-Marked''' - Aeonid Thiel starts his band of cliche badass marines and learns about the mysterious Nightfane, that threatens Macragge itself.
**'''Master of the First''' - Astelan takes part in a coup to remove Luther from command, but only to prevent it.
**'''Stratagem''' - Guilliman explains to Aeonid Thiel how important it is not to follow military books to the letter and concludes that he'll just have to write a book about it (guess [[Codex_Astartes|what book]] it is).
**'''The Long Night''' - Jago Sevatarion is chilling in Dark Angels captivity, slowly losing his mind due to his suppressed psyker powers, when some girl from the ship's astropath corps starts to talk to him from boredom. When her superiors find out, they flog her nearly to death because it was obviously forbidden. Sevatar doesn't take it lightly, flees captivity and kills the main astropath and calls it JUSTICE, because a man who skins young girls by the dozens on a daily basis simply to strike fear in a populace is definitely all about justice.
**'''Sins of the Father''' - During his emo-phase Sanguinius contemplates how his legion will fall after his death. He then decides that switching roles between Azkaellon and Amit during ritual combat will probably solve all problems.
**'''The Eagle's Talon''' - While the Battle of Tallarn rages, some Imperial Fists '''covert operatives''' try to take over a huge macro-transporter. They fail and are forced to crash the transporter onto raging battlefield below, blasting everything within 300km and causing nuclear fallout.
**'''Iron Corpses''' - One really tough and stubborn Iron Warriors Warsmith refuses to die despite the nuclear fallout from the previous story, waits for the storm to subside, finds and reanimates Warlord Titan and returns to action.
**'''The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen''' - The Imperial governor of some backwater world recollects memories of his long service to the Imperium, while preparing himself to spit in the face of Horus's representatives when they come to demand his surrender.
**'''Herald of Sanguinius''' - Azkaellon invents the Sanguinor to free his gene-father from the burden of being the figurehead of Imperium Secundus.
*'''''The Path Of Heaven''''': Sequel to Scars. The White Scars have been fighting traitor legions for a few years but are starting to show the strain. They finally decide to head back to Terra, but things don't go as planned. Notable for digging into the Webway storyline and the Navis Nobilite as well as featuring a resurrected and suddenly competent Eidolon. Navigators weren't going to sit around while E-money built their replacement, White Scars use a prototype webway portal to escape their last stand, and Moratarion starts using sorcery to locate Typhon.
*'''The Silent War:''' Guess What?! It's ''another'' anthology of stories that GW have already sold individually as audio-books. So value might be had for those who hadn't listened to them.
**'''The Purge''' - The story consists of two story lines. In the first of them, Sor Talgron purges one of the worlds in Ultramar during the Shadow Crusade, but gets tricked and takes a bombful of life-eater virus to the face (he survives nontheless, though). In second, he undertakes some covert actions on Terra before Istvaan V and leaves a nasty surprise for Dorn in the catacombs beneath the Imperial Palace.
**'''The Sigillite''' - see below, in section "Audio Books"
**'''Wolf Hunt''' - [[Awesome|Samurai witch hunter]] Yasu Nagasena hunts Severian the Wolf right after the events of Outcast Dead.
**'''Army of One''' - An Eversor assassin is sent out for the routine "kill everyone" mission, but finds out that his main target is not only a stereotypical Stupid Fat Decadent Planetary Governor who turned traitor, but also a jerk from his past. So he kills him.
**'''The Gates of Terra''' - Dorn and Malcador have an idea that it will be good for the defences of Terra if they use some psykers to run some chosen veterans through endless hypno-simulations of ill-fated space battles with the Vengeful Spirit within the boundaries of Sol.
**'''Ghosts Speak Not''' - Amendera Kendel, who had a crisis over her moral values after the events of The Voice and left the Silent Sisterhood, returns to Luna to recruit some of the Garro's Death Guard into the Knights Errant. They then are dispatched to a mission to uncover a traitor's plot at Proxima Centauri.
**'''Templar''' - Sigismund purges an asteroid temple of Word Bearers, this being the same temple that was mentioned in The Purge (those cross-references are awesome).
**'''Distant Echoes of Old Night''' - Some Death Guard are drowning Imperial Fists' defences with bodies on some shithole moon in the middle of nowhere, but it seems they are running out of time. They launch a final assault but fail to coordinate the phosphex bombardment with the assault and actually destroy themselves with little help from a primitive trap built by the Fists. Facepalm on the house to everyone.
**'''Grey Angel''' - Loken, fresh from Istvaan III and accompanied by Iacton Qruze, is sent to Caliban to check Luther's loyalty to Terra. The mission actually fails as Loken gets caught and is interrogated by Luther himself, but Loken is rescued by the Watcher in the Dark and Lord Cypher and subsequently flees the planet.
**'''Lost Sons''' - Tylos Rubio goes to Baal to disband the Blood Angels Legion and recruit their last battle company into Malcador's Knights Errant after Sanguinius and the rest of the legion go missing after Signus. The Angels understandably don't like this news and Rubio nearly gets killed, but is saved by a message from Raldoron announcing that Sanguinius and the IX Legion are alive.
**'''Child of Night''' - it turns out that one of the Night Lord Librarians had fled his Legion and went into hiding on Terra. One of the Knight Errant finds him and recruits him for the Grey Knights.
**'''Luna Mendax''' - After his fail on Caliban, Garviel Loken shuts himself away in a forgotten garden on Luna and spends his time growing flowers and feeling sorry for himself. This is so pathetic that the spirit of the long-dead and eaten by daemons Tarik Torgaddon escapes the warp to return Loken to his senses.
**'''Patience''' - Helig Gallor from Ghosts Speak Not, now acting on his own, is searching for Garro who is too busy killing giant daemons to report to Malcador's office on time.
**'''The Watcher''' - Ison from the Knights Errant finds and saves a horrifyingly mutilated and nearly dead survivor from the Space Wolves squad that was sent to watch over Konrad Curze.
*'''''Angels of Caliban:''''' Two Dark Angels stories in one book again, though this one actually moves the plot forward. In Ultramar, the Lion captures Konrad Curze but only after discreetly nuking a whole region despite Guilliman's ban on orbital weapon use, which results in his disgrace and we find that it is Guilliman who breaks the Lion Sword. Curze reveals that there were Chaos cults on Macragge too and that Guilliman would be a traitor if he had landed a little to the left. On Caliban, the Fallen openly declare their rebellion from the Imperium and ironically steal some starships that were meant to collect them and actually bring them into the war again. [[Zahariel]] kills [[Cypher]] and takes his place.
*'''''Praetorian of Dorn''''' Alpharius tries to invade <s>Terra</s> Pluto. Dorn kills him. Yes, Alpharius is now dead. And not a fake either, but the real Alpharius. Omegon can confirm. Alpha Legions fags blew a gasket. Oh shit believe we did.
*'''''Corax''''' A compilation of all the Corax Stories plus a new one, '''Weregeld''', which manages to undo all the hard work the previous stories have done and turn Corax into a douchebag. Kills all his mutated Raven Guard because he promised to kill warp stuff. Saves Russ though.

===Books XLI - L===
*'''''The Master of Mankind''''': The Emperor is a dick: the book. We all knew this but now it's set in stone. Highlights include the Emperor stating to Arkhan Land that the Primarchs are tools and he views them with a scientific but detached fascination. He refers to them as numbers but seems content to allow the fantasy of being their "father", an interpretation of the character that was fairly divisive to say the least. He actually seems to care more for his Custodians than he does any of his other creations, but they don't consider him their father and see him as just their warlord. Drach'nyen is also revealed to be the daemon created when Cain killed Abel. In the end the Emperor closes the door on the Webway and has to spend the rest of his time sitting in the chair keeping it shut. Despite this, it does show off why the Chaos Gods fear him, as he pretty much rapes an infinite army of Daemons; the greater daemons either flee or try and fail to fight him (being destroyed in a matter of moments) whilst the lesser ones die just by looking at him. Despite this, Drach'nyen nearly kills him, and claims that it will kill the Emperor (keep in mind that the future is malleable and Daemons lie). But how will it feast on the Emperor's tattered soul when Abaddon lacks arms to plunge it into his chest? (Abaddon never lost his arms due to the same retcon that let Eldrad live) Also known as Master of Skubkind. The Emperor reveals his grand plan of saving the human race from the Eldar fate by giving absolute control of every human to a Custodian before shanking him with Drach'nyen and making him run into the Webway. Also put all his chips into the ''Human Webway'' plan and screwed us all over without a backup. Can you tell that this is an ADB book? It also features one of the most depressing endings of the whole Heresy series as in the last scene of the book the Emperor somberly acknowledges to one of his Custodian that he has run out of cards to play and can't think of a way out of the whole situation, grimdark indeed.
*'''''Garro''''': Compilation of all the stories about Garro and his boy band, though they insist it isn't just an anthology since the audio book stories were expanded to be more written novel friendly.
*'''''Shattered Legions''''': It's an anthology containing an anthology. I shit thee not. It shoves together the limited edition anthology Meduson with a few other shorter stories, including some Alpha Legion stuff like the Seventh Serpent.
*'''''The Crimson King''''': Magnus was broken into shards when Russ felled him. Now the Thousand Sons with the help of Lucius the Eternal must put him back together. Kairos Fateweaver makes an appearance. Ties into the Ahriman Trilogy
*'''''Tallarn''''': Does it even need to be stated? It's another fucking anthology, this time putting all the tank porn of the Tallarn books into one binding. It is worth a read if you are a fan of Imperial Guard (Army), as most of the storylines are about around mortal tank crews doing what they do best (dying).
*'''''Ruinstorm:''''' The conclusion to the Imperium Secundus plotline, as well as the follow on to Damnation of Pythos. Shows the Lion, Sanguinius and Guilliman trying to cross the Ruinstorm to reach Terra. After a brief stopover at Pandorax, they decide to head out to Davin where the Heresy began and where destinies are remade; they pass systems along the way that show what the Galaxy would look like if Chaos wins, such as a Forge World surrounded by an immense fortress wall in outer space 4000 miles thick and a sector of space filled with solid ritualised geometric shapes that are perhaps light years across. Davin itself is surrounded by a cloud of bones and wreckage millions of kilometers thick, but the planet has long since been abandoned. There Sanguinius finds out that in order to live through the Heresy he must become a monster even worse than Horus, but dying will curse his sons with the Black Rage; blood is on his hands either way. Instead, Sanguinius tries to sacrifice himself to save the day, but the [[Sanguinor]] steps in and takes his place while the fleets rain down a shitstorm and destroy the planet. In the aftermath, the Ruinstorm abates enough for them to reach Terra, but Horus has so much force that it is impossible for all three legions to reach, so Guilliman and the Lion agree to distract the Traitors long enough to give Sanguinius a window to get back and face his destiny, explaining why they never made it to the Siege since they were engaging Traitor fleets and burning their worlds.
*'''''Old Earth:''''' Set immediately after ''Deathfire'', Vulkan and three Salamander legionaries (the rest of the Salamanders weren't informed of their Primarch's resurrection) travel through the Webway by a gate hidden in a cave on Nocturne. On their path to Terra, they came across the Shattered Legions who were preparing for their first major void engagement with the Sons of Horus. Just before the attack, some Medusan-born Iron Hands tried to stage a coup against Shadrak Meduson by revealing a hideous contraption of machines and the last remnants of Ferrus Manus - ''his iron hand'' (they were under the illusion that they could resurrect their Primarch through cybernetics; it is hinted that the Mechanicum had some <s>hand</s>{{BLAM}}{{blam|that pun was so bad heresy is automatic}} in this affair). Thankfully Vulkan shatters the hand and Meduson assumes command again, though he was killed by '''Tybalt Marr''' in a boarding action after the Iron Hand refused to send reinforcements to him. In the end, it is revealed that the Emperor had Vulkan forge a weapon that, in the event Terra fell to Horus, would amplify the power of the Golden Throne into a potentially fatal/crippling FUCK YOU nuke into the heart of the Chaos God's domains, sadly also wiping out the entire Throneworld (this is possibly also one of Vulkan's nine relics). Oh, and Eldrad rescues [[Knights-Errant|Barthusa Narek]] from Nocturne and makes him his assassin. They killed most of the Cabal, including a vaguely amphibian alien sitting on top of a jungle pyramid. Yes, Eldrad Ulthran might just be the only person alive to have killed an Old One. Finally they rescue John Grammaticus, who had his memory wiped after his failure to assassinate Vulkan. With his memory restored, Grammaticus is ordered by Eldrad to find Ollanius Pius and go to Terra.
*'''''The Burden of Loyalty:''''' In the grim darkness of the 3rd millenium, there are only anthologies.
**'''The Thirteenth Wolf:''' Old Guard Space Wolves get lost in a a series of Warp Portals during the battle of Prospero.
**'''Into Exile:''' Arkhan-the-Humble-Land basically has to have a Boltgun Shoved in his face to leave during the initial Mars Revolt.
**'''Cybernetica:''' Story full of [[awesome]] about how Carrion the Raven Guard Tech-aspriant awaiting graduation watches his fellows get slaughtered before hulking out Sith-Style. Meanwhile an Iron Warrior proves how badass they are when not under the thumb of their whiny emo excuse of a primarch by literally throwing Carrion off a tower so he's the sole target of an incoming Warlord Titan. Carrion then joins the Knights-Errants and actually makes Dorn backpedal and heads back to Mars to aid the Resistance in taking it back through use of Heretek.
*'''''Wolfsbane:''''' Leman Russ faces off against Horus, with the help of the Spear of Russ mentioned in the FUCKOLD Space Wolves novels. They're evenly matched but Russ seems to get the better of Horus when the Spear partially de-corrupts the Warmaster. Unfortunately for him, Russ tries to bring his brother back to his senses rather than strike a killing blow and is dragged away barely conscious by his men after Horus retaliates, setting the stage for the Battle of Yarant. Also a glimpse of [[Belisarius Cawl]] from back in his earlier, fleshier years.
*'''''Born of Flame:''''' ANTHOLOGIES!

===Books LI-LIV===
*'''''Slaves to Darkness''''' The traitor primarchs gather for the assault on Terra but things aren't going well. Guilliman and the Lion are giving them a helluva hard time and Horus himself is still quite literally drained from his duel with Russ. Basically how the gang gets back together for the push on Terra. The Sons of Horus start fracturing badly and Maloghurst takes it upon himself to cure Horus. In so doing, he forces a daemon to act as his guide through the Warp and finds out from this surprisingly forthcoming daemon (presumably from the Chaos God of Exposition) that even though Horus was superpowered from his Molech makeover, he'd left a part of his soul behind in the Chaos God's realms, which had come to the realization that Chaos had been using him from the beginning. The daemon also suggests that Horus was never meant to win in the first place and that for all his new power he is no match against The Emperor, but Maloghurst very loudly refuses to believe it. Maloghurst meets his end as he resurrects Horus due to infighting within the Sons of Horus, erasing the last uncorrupted part of Horus's soul in the process. Mortarion is named the vanguard of the Siege, Perturabo is sent to pick up Angron, and Lorgar manages to bind Fulgrim into joining the party. However, Lorgar makes the fucking massive mistake of trying to depose the Warmaster, which leads him to being utterly curbstomped by the revived Horus and told that he will be killed if Horus ever sees him again. Lorgar merely names Zardu Layak as the acting commander of the Word Bearers before he leaves, but warns Horus that his refusal to completely submit before the Chaos Gods will lead to the Traitor Legions' ultimate defeat at Terra. Magnus makes an appearance at the end, swearing himself to Horus's service. "Alpharius" makes a token appearance to hand over Terra's defence data before disappearing without a trace and no mention of his legion at all, although Alpharius does basically mime they are done fighting for the Warmaster's ends.
*'''''Heralds of the Siege''''' You know the drill by now. Anthology. But the end is in sight.
**'''Myriad:''' Loyalist Mechanicum forces hiding underground in Mars launch guerilla attacks on targets of opportunity from below. During one raid which blows the head off of a Warlord Titan, they retrieve a Castellan automata with the Abominable Intelligence from ''Cybernetica'' and a tech menial. Putting them into quarantine the Abominable Intelligence wakes up from probing and cleanses the menial of all scrap code & corruption to display it means no ill will to the loyalists. The Tech Inquisitor leader decides it's time to go Tech Radical "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Abominable Intelligence supplies them with a complete battleplan and strategy (4.7k item checklist) for wiping out all the Dark Mechanicum on Mars and starts off with seizing & cleansing a Warlord Titan searching for their headquarters.
**'''The Grey Raven:''' A ship sent back to Terra by Corax arrives in the solar system, with the Librarian Raven Guard who opened the Emp's gene-banks for Corax, seven custodians, and an Imperial Fist force. Presenting to a border post for inspection, the Custodian commander, upon discovering the identity of the Raven Guard, states a code word to the Custodians on ship and they all try to pull the librarian's head off. The Fist Captain saves him and his men try to hold off the Custodians while he and librarian try to get off the ship. The Custodian captain corners them and slays the Fist captain. The Librarian gets angry and is about to use his psychic powers on the Custodian when he remembers his vow to Corax and surrenders to execution. Revealed to be an elaborate test by Malcador, who subsequently recruits him into the Grey Knights after apologizing for the death of the Fist captain.
**'''Valerius:''' Marcus Valerius of the Therion cohort (unaugmented troops fighting with Raven Guard) is now a big believer in the Lectitio Divinatus. He sets his forces to defend cross over points on a river where a bigger enemy force is attempting to cross. Corax had sent the Therion cohort (23k soldiers) and Valerian to die fighting against traitor marines & titans for a planet near Beta-Garmon with no escorts for their transport ships. Gives a speech about how proud all his soldiers should be for facing a suicidal mission to die for the emperor. Therions manage to take out all titans before being overrun. As the remaining marines breach his command leviathan, Valerius gives the order to detonate their reactor and leads a prayer with the remaining command crew. Another regiment of the imperial army happens across the aftermath and think that the Therions were wiped out and some other regiment managed to hold the line against the traitors. Leviathan's death took out everybody on the battlefield. Valerius stumbles out of the wreckage of the Leviathan, and proclaims his survival a miracle.
**'''The Ember Wolves:''' A Warhound titan pack attached to the World Eaters takes down a warmonger titan on some planet. World Eater influence leads to a leadership challenge shortly after tipping over the warmonger. Despite the pack leader putting down the leadership challenge, the downed loyalist warmonger blows up its reactor and takes out all named characters.
**'''Blackshield:''' Khorak, a renegade member of Mortarion's [[Deathshroud]], is on the run from loyalist hunters. He and his squad escape down to the surface of a swamp planet where they are slaughtered till only he remains. He recognizes the leader of the loyalists as another Death Guard member who reveals himself to be Crysos Morturg, a survivor of Isstvan III. Khorak explains that he turned against Mortarion after Molech, when his entire squad was sacrificed by Mort for witchcraft. They both express their hatred of Mortarion, and Khorak briefly considers teaming up with Morturg but then one of his buddies proves to be not quite dead and tries to shoot Morturg, who deflects the shell with his psychic abilities. Khorak immediately tries to kill him and is gunned down. Morturg is revealed to be a mangled mess who survived Isstvan thanks solely to his psychic power and an extensive cybernetic rebuild by Calleb Decima, another Istvaan III survivor (who by the end of the battle was so mangled he resembled a spider more than a person). After Crysos ruminates on the pointlessness of Khorak's death, he decides it's time to go see the Emperor.
**'''Children of Sicarus:''' Kor Phaeron and the remainder of his party are on the run in Sicarus, a daemon planet, being constantly harassed by daemons that are whittling them down. They gain the attention of a warlord acoloyte of Tzeentch and at the same time a prophet appears to them and offers them sanctuary. The prophet leads them into a camouflaged valley where he reveals to them glyphs and Lorgar's athame that show how Kor Phaeron would arrive, slit his own throat to open a portal, and the remaining legionaries would lead the prophet's people through to join Lorgar at the Siege of Terra. Kor Phaeron kills the prophet, announcing that his fate is his own. The camouflage breaks down with the prophet's death and the warlord meets him. She offers him lordship of the planet after she ascends to daemonhood, and he accepts letting her have the prophet's people. As she is about to ascend on the spot, he sneaks up behind her and slits her throat with the athame. Shortly after Sicarus is now a worship planet with slaves laboring to create monuments of worship. Kor Phaeron states that it is now a refuge for the Word Bearers in the neverending war ahead of them.
**'''Exocytosis:''' Typhon is refitting his fleet at Zaramund by the grace of Luther. The Death Guard forces have set up an isolated camp away from any of the Fallen or natives of Zaramund. Luther decides to send a Fallen to spy on the Death Guard to see what's up with their shyness. Typhon is trying to get used to the gifts of the Grandfather when a group of civilians approach the camp. They reveal themselves to have been expecting his arrival, and all of them are revealed to be dead but kept alive by the grace of Nurgle. They call him Typhus and proclaim that with his arrival they are finally free to spread Papa Nurgle's gifts everywhere. The Dark Angel captain observing all of this sees a crowd of zombies and flies and Typhon conversing with them. Typhon sees regular people, though he can glimpse their true nature. The Death Guard sentries just see regular people. The captain springs out of his observation spot and starts attacking the tainted civilians like a true Dark Angel. Typhus kills him and in the process becomes one with his gifts. The Death Guard depart shortly afterwards with no contact with the Dark Angels. Luther is puzzled by this, ignoring a medicae request for apothecary aid for a sudden new disease in the civilian population, and wonders what other effects the Death Guard may have left on Zaramund. Typhon uses his blood to poison his commanding officers after announcing they will reunite with the Primarch.
**'''The Painted Count:''' Gendor Skraivok is having a hard time getting rid of his daemon blade. He tries burning it, tossing it into a plasma reactor, and out an airlock, but it keeps coming back. In a political battle for command of the legion, a rival tosses him into the impossible maze built by Perturabo to contain Vulkan. Failing to leave the maze normally, he seals his pact with the daemon blade and it leads him out of the maze. Killing the rival in a duel, he takes command of the Night Fall and leads the Night Lords to Terra to join the Warmaster.
**'''The Last Son of Prospero:''' Revuel Arvida is transformed into Ianius after teaming up with the soul shard of Magnus. Jaghatai Khan & Malcador happen to be in the room.
**'''The Soul, Severed:''' Eidolon puts down a leadership challenge from a leader who is loyal only to Fulgrim and wants the legion to sit around waiting for him to return. Being still reasonable, the challenger lures Eidolon's forces into a chemical treatment factory, blows up the chemical tanks, then counterattacks. The challenger deepstrikes with a bodyguard squad directly onto Eidolon, and then Eidolon and every single other noise marine giggle and laugh at the same time, obliterating the entire battlefield. Eidolon realises that he needs a planet with limitless numbers of potential slaves so he could spend lifetimes in debauchery, and so accepts that his fate and that of his forces is to eventually assault the Imperial Palace.
**'''Dark Compliance:''' Argonis, an emissary of Horus meets Decigus the Lord of a star system. Decigus is pretty intent on executing Argonis in person, and Argonis tells him to swear fealty to Horus or else... and starts to relate the tale of how he became an emissary, starting over a mechanicus world that also gave Horus the finger and roasted his emissary. Horus meets with Argonis and reveals the emissary was a distraction to the Mechanicum ruler, while another plan was put into place. Horus sends a distraction fleet, followed by another distraction fleet, followed by hidden fighters and vortex missiles he had dropped off point-blank on the moon when his emissary had been killed. Wiping out all orbital defenses the magos still believes he can extract a heavy toll on Horus over several months of fighting. Horus flies down, summons a demon w/ invasion on the side, then departs with his forces. The world gets covered in blood clouds and is infested by demons. Argonis then reapeats his question to Decigus, join us or die.
**'''Duty Waits:''' The Imperial Fists have beefed up security protocols around the Imperial Palace to ridiculous levels after the Alpha Legion shenanigans from ''Praetorian of Dorn''. All the civilians in the Palace are barely tolerated and given limited rations. There is a food riot & all the new Imperial Fists who were inducted during Heresy and have never killed anybody get their first taste by shooting rioters, which they're not thrilled about.
**'''Magisterium:''' Valdor is busy handling the Custodes post-Webway war. Not enough resources, custodian serfs are working to their deaths, and Custodians dealing with the fact that they can no longer effectively protect the emperor. Flashback to Valdor being talked to dismissively by Leman Russ during the Burning of Prospero.
**'''Now Peals Midnight:''' Rogal Dorn is told that long-range sensors & astropathic choirs have detected something big approaching through the Warp, and he realizes that Horus's arrival in the solar system is imminent. He passes along the message to his brothers on Terra. A strategium general is amazed at how she was bred, augmented, and trained to process insane amounts of info and what takes her 15 minutes to re-appraise herself of the solar system tactical info takes Dorn a brief glance at the screens. Archamus and Andromeda-17 from ''Praetorian of Dorn'' have a quiet chat concerning the imminent siege and the fact that humanity will be forever psychologically scarred by what is about to happen. Dorn, Sanguinius, and the Khan gather on a wall of the Palace and stare up at the sky. At midnight a new star blossoms, signalling the exit of Horus's fleet from warp space.
**'''Dreams of Unity:''' A terminally ill Thunder Warrior helps some Custodes kill an Alpha Legion infiltrator while continuously having flashbacks to the Unification Wars and the Emperor's grand dream of Unity. Once the Alpha is dead, he surrenders himself for execution to the Custodes.
**'''The Board is Set:''' Malcador contacts the Emperor for advice just before the Siege and plays a game of strategy that they have been playing for a ''long'' time, detailing the movements and eventual fates of the Primarchs. Shows that the Emperor was certainly manipulating them but was mostly on the back foot for much of his conflict with the the Chaos Gods so the outcome could have been much worse. Emps reveals a final gambit that will screw over Malcador in order to deny Chaos their victory.
*'''''Titandeath''''' Titan-centric book taking place during the battle for Beta-Garmon, the Loyalists' final effort to prevent the Traitors from reaching Terra. How one book could be made of a battle taking place across an entire solar system that had, according to Slaves to Darkness, more casualties than the last five years of the Great Crusade remains to be seen. As it happens... fairly feasibly. Beta Garmon represented the tipping point for both the loyalists and the traitors; if the traitors didn't move past it, Guilliman would crush them from behind. If the loyalists didn't engage, then Horus would take his overwhelming numbers unopposed. The point is that Horus would win Beta Garmon either way. Rogal Dorn makes the only proactive move that he can make in the whole war, and sends a sizeable contingent of Terra's defenses to Beta Garmon to delay the Warmaster for as long as possible. And because Titan's aren't really well suited to defending Terra, they are let out in force on Beta Garmon. Which makes perfect target practice for the massive orbital platform that Horus proceeds to use. Unfortunately the story is let down by its ham-fisted portrayal of an all-female Titan Legion (mostly out of wasted potential) and a rushed storyline. Also a mopey Sanguinius who makes 'I do not die here today' into the new 'Vulkan Lives!'.
*'''''The Buried Dagger''''' This is the final book in the "main" Horus Heresy series, and tells the story of how Mortarion and the Death Guard fell to Nurgle's service. It happens essentially as has already been seen in other fluff sources: Typhon murders all the Navigators and claims he can guide the Death Guard fleet to Terra himself, only to deliberately strand them in the Warp so that Nurgle can turn them to his service. Mortarion becomes increasingly horrified and outraged as he realizes what's happening to his legion and finally kills Typhon in retaliation, but the Destroyer Host reanimates his corpse, turning him into Typhus. After some more internal angst and butthurt, Mortarion finally accepts his destiny and becomes Nurgle's champion. The B-plot of the book concerns the founding of the [[Grey Knights]], as well as an assassination attempt on Malcador by Erebus, who planted a psychic suggestion in Tylos Rubio's head all the way back on Calth. Rubio, Sevarian, Revuel Arvida/Ianius, and several other Knights-Errant are named as the first eight Grey Knights and are shipped off to Titan to prepare for what will come after the Heresy. Garviel Loken is supposed to be the ninth Knight, but he turns it down because he still wants a shot at Horus. Nathaniel Garro gets cut loose from the Knights-Errant and sets off to find his own destiny.

==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 eight 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, only it turns out "Keeler" was Samus manipulating her 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 bit 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 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 Guardsmen, 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. Meanwhile, 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 punts 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 shown to be getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. Turns out the 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 if Horus falls.
*'''''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 beginning to recognize that Horus is just 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 and 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 doesn't stop the Warmaster's fleet bombing their city to shit from orbit (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, 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. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand (also takes his sword) and kills Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that pretty much all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead. Abaddon goes on a killing spree, 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]]. 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 just straight-up punts Eidolon off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on traitor's side who still gives a shit about winning the siege, the rest of 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, Shiban Khan from ''Scars'' and ''Path of Heaven'', who has a shuttle crash, 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 - 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 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 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 but with all of its stories having a common beginning, and converging in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus finally decided to take up the command, but his first order was to let Perturabo send everything they had, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objected to such terrible strategy, but he immediately realized that Horus was about to pull up some serious warp fuckery and that pissed him off even more then already, so Perturabo ordered a full on retreat of all Iron Warriors' assets on Terra and fucked off, abandoning the siege completely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the titan battle in front of Mercury Wall; traitors use warp power to reanimate countless titan wreckages they gathered during the war and use them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalists defenses, then attack with the full might of entire Legio Mortis, the largest titan legion in the entire imperium, to break through the loyalist titan legions' defense.
** Meanwhile, in some corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist mortal soldiers were still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them was Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of gun from previous books, who fought from out wall all the way into the central palace and still fighting. They were initially led by a Blood Angel, but he died during the battle, so Katsuhiro took up the command 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 the shuttle crash he had in Saturnine because he got some really good Biomechanical augmentation or something like that. He woke up in middle of nowhere and the started hearing voices of his dead brothers; 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 wanted to return to the fight, so he started to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encountered a man with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and they started to walk together. The man, who was an army lieutenant, 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 was severely injured by an actual daemon but Shiban refused to leave him behind and carried him and the baby to continue his walk home. Eventually, they came across the line Katsuhiro was defending; though the lieutenant didn't make it, the baby survived which amazed the crumbling troopers to no end. Shiban had some word exchange with Katsuhiro and then kept walking towards the inner palace. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** Corswain came to reinforce the loyalists; he was expecting to find his primarch Lion and the main force of Dark Angels here, but instead he was the only reinforcement that shown up. 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 were given to him by Luther, which means they were most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitor took the Astronomican fortress and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitor's offence long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican fortress was not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? But the plot must give Corswain and his Dark Angels something to do I guess. Nevertheless, 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' fleet, Corswain successfully made a full force planetfall on Terra and retakes the Astronomican fortress by killing some daemons. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain can not allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the librarian, Vassago, thought it was a bad idea to keep on the traitor path after the daemon horrors he just witnessed. When he told this to his fallen brothers, what Vassago saw was their warp corrupted faces, and so realized he himself and many like him, were been deceived all along.
** The siege story lines were tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist titan legions began to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's line face off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago was attacked by his fallen brothers; and Legio Mortis finally reached 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 can 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 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 will. 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, and Alpharius turns up again briefly with Olly and John Grammaticus, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it just got nothing to do with the on going siege. This, and John's plot from last book, feel like they should be put together and have their own book instead of been cut to pieces and stitch into a siege book. But again, its not as bad and irrelevant as the black girl's plot from The First Wall. At least it revealed Olly was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close you ask? He use to be the Emperor's Warmaster. And yes, he betrayed and backstab him too.
* '''''Warhawk''''': Khan vs. Morty, round two. As the situation grows increasingly desperate for the loyalist forces, Jaghatai rallies the White Scars to retake the Lion's Gate spaceport and comes face-to-face with Mortarion and the Death Guard once more.
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The crew of the Sisypheum returns to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna. Its crew is nearly wiped out by traitor forces, but they are able to recover the Magna Mater- a powerful relic used to create the first generation of Space Marines. Said relic is also the same Sangprimus Portum that Archmagos Cawl would later use to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which will focus on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed deep inside the Palace.

==The Primarchs Series==
Because Black Library don't seem satisfied confusing us with all their anthologies, audio-books, and short stories, they have begun releasing a spin-off series of Horus Heresy novels centered on the Primarchs. The series don't really take place in a specific time, but generally focuses on expanding on the titular Primarch's backstory and motivations during events before the Horus Heresy (though some of them also have events occurring after it). Why Black Library lists it as part of the Horus Heresy series when that isn't always the case is beyond our comprehension. Hopefully the Horus book finally shows us his conquest of Ullanor.

===Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar===
Centers on Papa Smurf himself and his trying to deal with how the Emperor used him like a rusty hammer to smack Lorgar in the head at Monarchia. Uses a conflict against Orks squatting on human ruins as a vehicle for him and the smurfs to express their angst over the event. He eventually discovers that the original humans went extinct from literally a war of red shirts vs blue shirts. A subplot details the conflict of morality the Ultramarines legion had with their Destroyer companies, especially the [[Nemesis]] Chapter (later a second founding) who held on to their Terran roots. Guilliman didn't much like their use, but eventually saw their necessity (especially when Imperium Secundus came swinging around).

===Leman Russ: The Great Wolf===
Focuses on Leman Russ' notorious rivalry with the Lion, explaining why to this day whenever the Chapters meet they throw the gauntlet down and beat the stuffing out of one another. Notably it reveals some interesting stuff like the Lion being aware of the Space Wolves' furry issue and keeping a lid on it, also that the Lion shanked Russ in the Imperial basement in front of a fresco of the compliance where they previously fought. Establishes clearly that even with overpowered Mech suits, baseline humans will always lose to legionary soldiers.

===Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero===
Depicts the unlikely friendship between Magnus and old Pert with a joint venture between their legions to evacuate a planet that's getting torn apart by accelerated magnetic polarity shifts. Things go wrong on the planet due to totally not Chaos cult nonsense, and it does a decent job of showing Magnus' flaws, specifically his inability to leave things that have "do not fuck with this" written on them alone; something Pert tries and fails at making him understand. Crucially it's set early enough in the Crusade that the use of psychic powers by Astartes is uncommon and the Thousand Sons basically have to keep a lid on how powerful they really are. They do not succeed.

The original colonists of Morningstar survived by rounding up all the psykers into their seed ship and splitting them from their psychic powers throne room of the emperor style. However since they didn't dissipate these psychic powers, the souls of the psykers just floated around inside the ship until they joined up into a single entity. When their jailers realized what was happening, they ran and sealed the ship but the psychic gestalt had already infected their minds with a doomsday meme, resulting in the shenanigans that Magnus and Pert arrive to. The entire Morningstar government fell victim to this meme and built a continent sized machine to destroy their planet which Pert & Magnus somehow didn't notice. Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt into his book, and the surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading.

===Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia===
Probably the book in the series that did the most character building of all. This book shows Perturabo's childhood on Olympia alongside a "current" day conflict against the Hrud, the former showing why Pert is the odd genius manchild guy he is, while the latter does a great job of showing why fucking with an alien species capable of controlling time is somewhat of a stupid idea. However, the real draw of the book is that it is mainly written as an attempt to merge together the seemingly contradictory depictions of Pert we've had over the years, showing how the ruthless dick who decimates his legion for not being good enough in the Forgeworld books is the same guy who just wanted to be a builder in Angel Exterminatus. Yep. Definitely a sperg. Also he may or may not have wanted to bang his adopted sister.

===Lorgar: Bearer of the Word===
Yep, the first(ish?) heretic himself gets his own obligatory messed-up childhood novel. Focuses slightly more on Kor Phaeron rather than Lorgar himself, showing him to be a manipulative dick who beat Lorgar as a child and never really bought into this whole "fatherhood" shtick or this whole concept of [[Emperor|One True God]], but allowed Lorgar his fantasies and the takeover Colchis (by "Word" or by "Mace") while Phaeron benefitted from increased power and secretly kept the faith of [[Chaos Gods]]. By the end Kor Phaeron wonders if Lorgar just let him think that he was manipulated and could have disposed of him at any time. The book does introduce a contrasting character to Kor Phaeron who actually shows Lorgar compassion growing up and was far more worthy of being named "father" but was far less useful to Lorgar's goals. The book shows that Lorgar isn't as stupid or naive as everyone thinks and does indeed realise that people have been using him for their own gains, but he only really cares about doing the work of the gods; so long as they both align he doesn't seem to care.

=== Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix ===
Fulgrim tries to conquer the newly discovered planet Byzas with only 7 men. Byzas has devolved to steam power and bolt-action bolters, but capital palace has DAOT gun defenses and anti-grav airships (think blimps without gasbags). Along the way Fulgrim encounters a brotherhood much like his own that wants to work with him; he dismisses them as a bunch of idealists. It's implied that he COULD have gotten the same results (Compliance) working with them but unfortunately that would have meant calling in backup and Fulgrim didn't want to do that. In the end Fulgrim takes the world but nearly dies from a hidden hydrogen bomb which he disarms. Several other characters such as Cyrius (who gets shanked by a squad from the brotherhood while wearing armor and has to be saved by Fulgrim) and Kasperos Telmar) later become prominent champions of chaos, while the others were blown up on Istvaan III. Also makes the first (but all too brief) direct mention of one of the Missing Primarchs, as well as the amusing spectacle of Fabius Bile in formal attire.

===Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa===
Ferrus is overseeing joint exercises between the Iron Hands and the Emperor's Children when he learns about a noncompliant human empire called the Gardinaal. He decides that he'll conquer them singlehandedly so as to impress the Emperor and his brothers and maybe even get appointed to that Warmaster position everyone's whispering about. He decides to quit fucking around after the Gardinaal try to assassinate him under the pretense of surrender negotiations and orders his fleet to demolish their entire capital planet before personally going down to smash faces in until they finally give up. In the end, he admits to Fulgrim that he doesn't have the patience to be Warmaster, and that he'll back whoever gets the job.

Probably the highlight of the novel is that we get a look inside Ferrus' head while it's still attached to the rest of him. Ferrus is a zealot who gives no fucks about anything beyond conquering systems in the name of the Emprah and being the best there is at what he does. In fact he was just as obsessed with perfection as Fulgrim, which is why they got along so well. He's also got a lot of built-up resentment toward Dorn since Dorn once called him a dumbass on the bridge of his own flagship in front of a bunch of his sons. He doesn't seem to like Guilliman very much either at this point, probably because the G-man encouraged restraint when dealing with noncompliant planets and Ferrus just wanted to smash everything and let someone else pick up the pieces.

===Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris===
Basically a recap of some of the White Scars' more important pre-Heresy campaigns, including conquering the Nephilim homeworld and killing a shitload of Orks on a planet made of psychically resonant crystals. The main thing the book does is confirm that Jaghatai was always meant to be a wild card. More importantly, it shows that while he didn't really agree with the Emperor about anything, especially the Imperial Truth, he was still willing to serve the Imperium in his own way (read: killing xenos on the edges of the galaxy while everyone else built an empire behind him). Also shows the Khan trying to plan ahead for the [[Council of Nikaea|inevitable showdown]] between pro and anti-psyker factions in the Imperium, and how the warrior lodges were first introduced to the Scars. On a side note, we learn that the V Legion's original name was the Star Hunters, and that they relied heavily on armor and mechanized infantry before the Khan and his Chogorian posse taught them to love jetbikes and going ''real'' fast. Oh, and they became known as the White Scars because of a mistranslation, not unlike the Vlka Fenryka/Space Wolves.

===Vulkan: Lord of Drakes===
Vulkan is united with the Terran members of his legion while they're on campaign against a fuckhueg WAAAGH! on a volcanic death world. The main takeaway from the book is that the XVIII Legion were stubborn badasses ready to lay down their lives for civilians right from the start of the Crusade. Without Vulkan around though, they kept throwing themselves into desperate last stands, to the point that other Imperial forces were starting to call them suicidal. Some of the Nocturnean legionaries even suggest that the Emperor kept Vulkan away from the legion for so long because he was waiting for all the Terrans to get themselves killed, but Vulkan dismisses that idea out of hand and nothing comes of it. There's also a pretty nifty sequence where Vulkan and a bunch of his sons surf a modified Termite assault drill into an attack moon and blow it up from the inside.

===Corax: Lord of Shadows===
Corax and the Raven Guard are sent to bring the Carinae system into compliance. The system is basically a thousand floating space station hive cities, all independent of each other with a thousand different governments, orbiting a star. Typically they hate each other's guts but are able to come together and combine firepower to a devastating effect when an Imperial compliance fleet gives them a common enemy. The leaders aren't keen on handing over all their power to the emperor. He initially tries to use stealth and surgical strikes to get them to surrender peacefully with minimal casualties, but a real Imperium hater forms a coalition and death stars the first city to surrender. When Corax targets him for surgical elimination, he releases a zombie virus on the whole station and escapes via a stealth shuttle to a hidden station masked by the sun's emissions. A pissed-off Corax orders his legion to hunt the dude down and disable the station engines, letting him broadcast his 5 stages of death to the whole system while he descends into the Sun. This also comes at the cost of dragging out the compliance and thousands of unnecessary casualties since the remaining orbitals are able to consolidate their strategic/tactical positions and form actual armies. There is also a subplot about Corax’s home planets of Kiavahr and Deliverance which shows that Imperial compliance didn’t actually make things all that much better for the people living there; the Kiavahr tech-guilds and the Mechanicum can barely tolerate each other and people from Deliverance are still routinely discriminated against to the point where some of them have turned to terrorism to express their displeasure. Corax himself admits that he didn't have time to fix everything before leaving but pledges that he'll come back and set Kiavahr to rights once the Crusade is over. Doesn't stop him from executing one of his best friends in the rebellion for being uppity.

The book shows us that Corax was an idealist who believed in the principles of the Great Crusade and genuinely didn’t understand why people would reject the Imperium. It’s shown that while he was a proponent of treating normal humans as equals, he could still be astoundingly arrogant when dealing with them since he was a genetically-engineered transhuman demigod and all. He is also shown to be constantly grappling with his need to deliver justice at any cost, aware that he might turn into another Konrad Curze if he’s not careful. We also get a look at what the Sable Brand is like through the eyes of an afflicted Raven Guard legionary; basically, it's a watered down version of the Black Rage that causes them to hallucinate and become suicidal, which some of them deal with by joining the [[Moritat]].

===Sons of The Emperor===
A collection of short stories showcasing the contrast between the Primarchs and the rest of mankind, getting down to how they really perceive themselves and how humanity sees them.
:'''The Passing of Angels:''' Sanguinius leads a Destroyer host to completely obliterate an abominable culture. He has his men adopt anonymity so they do not need to shoulder the burdens of what they do, but argues that since he was designed for dark deeds he cannot set aside what he is. Primarchs might be angels, "but angels were not created for kindness".
:'''Mercy of the Dragon:''' Recounts a conversation between Vulkan and the Emperor that shows us how Vulkan was always intended to be the "most human" of the Primarchs, and to be able to teach his brothers how to be more like him. Possibly hinting towards a plan after the Great Crusade that involved the Primarchs settling down into civilian life.
:'''The Abyssal Edge:''' Shows a conflict between Curze and Magnus that was kept confidential, because the rest of the Imperium were not allowed to see the Primarchs in disagreement with each other. Crucially shows a side of Curze that ISN'T a terrorizing murder junkie edgelord. Also the first chronological appearance of Khayon from the Black Legion series as well as Sevatar back on his finest snarking form.
:'''Shadows of the Past:''' Set some point after the Horus Heresy, a "daemon" starts killing its way through some Word Bearers. Turns out Corax has ascended into a creature made of pure darkness and gets into a duel with Daemon-Lorgar. Corax wins, but the Word Bearers act as a mass human shield to allow Lorgar a chance to escape.
:'''The Emperor's Architect:''' A biography of Perturabo showing what he was doing before awoke halfway up a mountain, then later. Hints that Perturabo's projected image was carefully stage-managed, and ''oh'' how he hated to be upstaged. He was destroying [[Rogal Dorn|artwork that embarrassed him]] long before he was discovered by the Emperor.
:'''Prince of Blood:''' After Angron gets Daemon-Prince'd by Lorgar, he goes mad and gets locked in his flagship, causing all sorts of changes. Kharn goes to him to talk, finding that Angron has been stripped of his sense of self, completely lost to Khorne. Angron warns them against his form of slavery, though it appears that Kharn and the others followed him down the same path simply because he was their father, but there is also a promise that they will [[Blam|"thank"]] Lorgar for what he did to them.
:'''The Ancient Awaits:''' Long after the Heresy is over, Magnus sends a Thousand Sons squad to an abandoned planet to find a repeating broadcast that says only "the Ancient awaits". In a deep underground hangar they find an ancient Dreadnought and realize that the planet is Istvaan III, and that the Dreadnought is Ancient Rylanor of the Emperor's Children, who's been sitting there ever since Horus Exterminatus'd the planet. Fulgrim appears to try and seduce Rylanor into joining up with the endless party machine that is the III Legion, and Rylanor goes "Surprise Motherfucker" and detonates a virus bomb he was sitting on. Thousand Sons feel sympathetic to how honorable Rylanor is (despite being a bit cuckoo from sitting on his ass) and let him do it. Fulgrim's ego is wounded from seeing that even after several millennia Rylanor rejected all the pleasures he had to offer.
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over a system without having to fight, but have to deal with one holdout planet defended by Frankenstein-like creatures spliced together from multiple human donors. Their creator was a five thousand year old bioengineer who encountered the Emperor at some point on Terra and then got the fuck out before the Great Crusade kicked off. For all his own abominations, he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails. Ever since taking command of the Legion, Angron has been ordering them to complete every planetary conquest they undertake in thirty-one hours, this being the length of a single day on Nuceria. When and if they fail, he has them kill one in every ten Astartes; the same thing Perturabo did when he took command of the Iron Warriors. This has happened so many times that the World Eaters are starting to suffer some serious daddy issues, and the only way for them to earn his approval is to accept the Butcher's Nails. Unfortunately for them, the implants keep failing, sometimes explosively so, until they're sent to bring a rebellious Imperial world back into compliance and find that it's been turned into a planet full of androids who were created with some of the same tech used in the Nails; with this, one of the Legion's Apothecaries is able to create a stable version of the Nails. Kharn is the first to successfully undergo the procedure, and the Nails make him [[Rip and Tear|RAGE]] so hard the book literally blacks out for a couple of pages. Angron orders the entire legion to be implanted, which triggers a brief spate of infighting between the World Eaters who want to earn Papa Angron's approval at any cost and those who think that he's a broken psychopath who needs to be taken to the Emperor for help. The one World Eater captain who still thinks the Nails are a terrible idea gets killed by Kharn in a duel and the rest of them submit to the procedure. The story ends right as Russ shows up with the entire VI Legion fleet, having decided that Angron needs a talking-to about all this nonsense. We all know how this ends, of course.

The book gives Angron some character development beyond "giant frothing berserker" which turns him into a pretty tragic figure. As it turns out, he didn't get the Butcher's Nails immediately after landing on Nuceria, but received them as a punishment for refusing to kill his adoptive father in the arenas. Before the Nails he was a pretty bro-tier guy who loved his fellow gladiators and used what appeared to be latent psyker powers to absorb all their nightmares so they could rest properly while he dealt with all their accumulated fear and anger. This Angron would have probably made one hell of a general for the Crusade. Then the Nails got pounded into his head and he Hulked out and killed his adoptive father, which broke him and turned him into the psychotic death machine we're all familiar with. He also has a death wish caused by the Emperor yoinking him from his last stand with the other gladiators on Nuceria and has spent the entirety of the Great Crusade looking for something tough enough to kill him.

===Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter===

Grimdark Batman finally gets his very own standalone novel! The entire thing is told in flashbacks framed by Curze talking to a statue of the Emperor he stitched together out of human flesh while waiting for M'Shen to come and kill him. Most of it involves explaining how Curze got out of the stasis coffin that Sanguinius stuffed him into at the end of ''Ruinstorm''. As it turns out he was adrift for a few decades after the end of the Heresy, until he got picked up by the crew of a sub-light freighter who planned to sell the coffin for a packet; instead Curze woke up and decided to [[rip and tear|play some tag]] [[grimdark|with the stupid humans.]] He left one of the crew alive and told him to drive the ship to Tsagualsa, mutilating the poor kid whenever he got bored. The kid had a chance to escape after dropping Curze off but followed him instead and was predictably [[grimdark|killed by the Night Lords when Curze decided he was done with him.]] Konrad also struggles under the weight of his visions throughout only for the Emperor to contact him and explain Konrad's great mistake: his visions of the future were not fixed and Curze could have chosen a different and better path if he had not been so convinced of the inevitability of fate. The Emperor also tells him two very interesting things: he does not consider any of the traitor primarchs irredeemable, and he forgives Konrad for all that he's done, just as Papa Sang had said he might. Konrad freaks out and insists he cannot be forgiven because there is no justice in that, then tears the statue down before leaving to get ready for M'Shen's imminent arrival.

Other highlights include some flashbacks to Curze's days murdering people on Nostramo, including killing a woman [[derp|who was about to commit suicide]] and Curze eating his victims [[grimdark|because he enjoyed it.]] Also Curze hated Corax, not because Corax was good, but because Corax was a better ninja than him. Oddly enough he also says he didn't hate any of his other brothers, even the ones who were dicks to him like Fulgrim or Dorn.

Seriously though, this summary doesn't do it much justice. It's still a pretty good book. And it's barely 200 pages, read it anyway.

===Scions of the Emperor===
A second short story collection and cocktease extraordinaire, originally a Weekender exclusive.
:'''Canticle:''' Focuses on Ferrus Manus during his early days on Medusa, fighting his way through hordes of cyborg monstrosities while he scavenges for armor, weapons, food, and equipment; battles the extreme weather; and tries to find a name for himself. He encounters a woman who tries to hold him up, but when he shows no fear of her and gives her his weapon on the grounds that she's earned it, she instead suggests he join her clan. He refuses, stating that he has something to do (namely killing Asirnoth). Amusingly, the story reveals that Primarchs can literally eat sand and metal to stay alive.
:'''The Verdict of the Scythe:''' Set during the Great Crusade. Having been yelled at by his brothers for trashing yet another planet, Mortarion tries being nice for once when bringing the world of Absyrtus into compliance. He roams the streets for a bit after the official compliance ceremony and realizes that the witch-cults which dominated Absyrtus before his arrival have only gone underground and will reemerge once he leaves, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him.
:'''A Game of Opposites:''' Set during the Heresy. An Iron Warriors warsmith tries to outthink Jaghatai Khan and loses hilariously because the Khan [[Oinkbane|is too subtle for him]]. Jaghatai easily defeats the trap the Iron Warriors tried to set, then explains to the warsmith why he lost before executing him: the warsmith may have studied the Khan's writings, but he failed to grasp their true meaning, and so he was doomed to defeat even if the Khan had not been present.
:'''Better Angels:''' Follows Jehoel, a line legionary of the Blood Angels, throughout the latter days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. Sanguinius chooses to be his patron as Jehoel commemorates the battles the legion has fought by making glass sculptures, all the while lamenting the destruction and loss wrought by the Heresy. Just before the Siege of Terra, he finally asks his father why Sanguinius chose to be his patron, and the primarch explains that he sees himself in Jehoel more than he does any of his other sons; he is the best expression of the Blood Angels' highest ideals.
:'''The Conqueror's Truth:''' A remembrancer gets herself assigned to the Night Lords so she can see some war, and Curze and Sevatar oblige her in the same way a jackass genie might grant your wish for a ton of gold by dropping it on you: they bring her to a city under assault by the Night Lords and allow her to record the civilian population being dumped en masse into its geothermal furnaces. When she declares that she will find some way to show this atrocity to the people of Terra, Curze tells her that's what he wants. He says that the citizens of the Imperium must know what kind of war is being waged in their name and that he'll use the footage to show other worlds that there are only two options for them: compliance, or death.
:'''The Sinew of War:''' A flashback to Guilliman's younger days on Macragge as he returns from putting down a tribal uprising to find Macragge City in flames and his adoptive father dead. He quickly realizes that his father's co-consul, Gallan, is responsible, and busts Gallan in front of the entire Senate. He fights down the temptation to just murder him, thus holding true to Konor's ideals. One of his bitterest enemies is so impressed that he swears allegiance to Roboute, and so does the rest of the Senate, thus setting Guilliman on the path to becoming the Lord of Macragge.
:'''The Chamber at the End of Memory:''' Also known as light touching above the clothes. Some workers fortifying a forgotten corner of the Imperial Palace in preparation for the forthcoming siege are killed by a psychic booby trap. When Rogal Dorn investigates, he discovers that they accidentally broke into the personal quarters of the Lost Primarchs, which have been heavily warded with psychic defenses forged by Malcador himself. When Malcador shows up, Dorn realizes that he can't even remember his brothers' names, and starts to tear into the Sigillite for having sealed his memories. Malcador counters by revealing that it was Dorn's idea to begin with, and further explains that he and Guilliman were able to save the II and XI Legions from being purged alongside their primarchs; they were mind-wiped and absorbed into the other Legions. He then unseals Dorn's memories long enough for him to realize that whatever his lost brothers did was so horrible that the Imperium would have long since fallen if they were still alive.
:'''First Legion:''' Also known as a gentle groping of your mental bits. Lion el'Jonson and the Dark Angels are in the midst of the [[Rangdan Xenocides]] when a mysterious legionary calling himself Alpharius turns up and requests an audience with the Primarch of the I Legion. He offers to secretly take over the war effort so that the Dark Angels may withdraw and rebuild their strength as this will improve the Lion's chances of one day being named commander of the entire Imperial war machine, which "Alpharius" believes is necessary for the Imperium to survive. The Lion rejects the offer immediately, stating that he will see the Xenocides through.

===Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First===
While the campaign for Ullanor takes place, the Emperor tasks the Lion with pacifying an irrelevant little world that had already been considered compliant. The Lion begins fortifying the world and bringing in more troops and fleets, keeping his true intentions to himself, while his senior commanders are keen to move on and earn real glory elsewhere. As it turns out, the planet was being used as a feeding world for the [[Khrave]], a race of uber-psychic xenos from before the [[Fall of the Eldar]] that can read minds, crush tanks with a gesture, and possess people in their millions from outside of a solar system. The book shows how clever and callous the Lion could be by [[Alpharius|coming up with a massively convoluted plan]] that he needed to keep secret from a race of mind readers, even going so far as to issue seemingly contradictory orders to his men to confuse the enemy as well as [[Perturabo|knowingly sacrificing millions of mortal lives]] in order to escalate the conflict and draw out the enemy leader in order to destroy them. This is all interspersed with some of his brief meetings with the [[Emperor]], highlighting how similar the two of them were in mindset. As the dutiful firstborn son, the Lion seemed to always know what his father desired and was the one most trusted to enact it. At one point, the Lion laments that his own contribution to the Imperium is nothing but ash and destruction, but the Emperor explains that this is the point of him and the I Legion: to do the things that even Konrad Curze and Leman Russ cannot, such as the complete erasure of opponents too troublesome to allow to exist (including obliterating all memory of them), and to do it without the need for recognition, accolades, or ceremony. The book even ends with the Lion having potentially [[Grey Knights|mind wiped his own Space Marines so that they cannot remember who they just fought.]] What the novel does best is illuminate the labyrinthine inner workings of the I Legion, showing why even the Alpha Legion thought they were a tough nut to crack. There are orders and cabals and subdivisions of orders and cabals threaded throughout the legion's structure, reaching across rank, station, and specialization, all of which are linked by a complex and ever-expanding web of coded heraldries, hidden symbols, and secret codes that only the Lion seems to fully grasp.

The book also reads like a tie-in novel to the recently released Horus Heresy 9: Crusade. It has many references to items and formations that were first introduced only months earlier such as the ''Fusil Actinaeus'', Excindio Battle Automata, Dreadwing Interemptors, Firewing Enigmatii Cabals, and the various hidden Orders of the Hekatonystika. It also disappoints because it actually shows the secret arsenals of those orders that are tantalizingly NOT represented on the tabletop, such as Fire Raptors equipped with psionic lance weapons, assault psycannons, archaeotech pistols [[Grimdark|that erase their target from memory]], and the Lion wearing a psychic dampening cloak.

===Alpharius: Head of the Hydra===
Long story short, everything we’ve been told about Alpharius is true, from a certain point of view (or maybe not). Alpharius himself (unless it was actually Omegon) lands on Terra after the primarchs were scattered. He immediately senses that [[Omegon|some part of him is missing]], but before he can ponder this too deeply the Emperor finds him and brings him back to the Palace, where he's raised in total secrecy by Malcador who explains that he will be the Emperor’s hidden blade, the son who can strike from the shadows and weave deceptions of surpassing subtlety. The Emperor further explains to him that Alpharius' job will be to preserve the Imperium at all costs, no matter what he might have to do. Alpharius interprets this to mean that he should test the Palace’s defenses, so he breaks into the Imperial Dungeon, kills a Custodian and steals his armor, and sets up a fake assassination attempt on the Emperor. Constantin Valdor stops him but Alpharius reveals that he had already hacked into an AA battery on the other side of the Palace and could have just shot down the Emperor’s shuttle at any time, proving his point and annoying Valdor. Alpharius and his legion go on to wage war in the shadows throughout the Great Crusade using wetwork teams, deep-cover sleeper agents, and psyops to defeat the Imperium’s enemies. The XX Legion apparently has agents seeded throughout the galaxy, even on worlds that haven’t yet been contacted by the Imperium, and uses them as appropriate to destabilize governments or cripple armies and infrastructures prior to the arrival of other Legions. Alpharius claims to have fought alongside the Dark Angels in their first deployment (as seen in Valdor’s novel) and also claims to have been present for the rediscoveries of several of his brothers, disguised as members of their legions. He and his legion are shown to be content with their role as black operatives though also a bit bummed that they don’t get to stomp around kicking ass and gaining glory like the rest of the Astartes do.

He later unmasks his legion’s existence to the Lion during the Third Rangdan War, and the account of this meeting directly contradicts the one from ''Scions of the Emperor'', in that this time Alpharius merely offers his legion’s support to the Dark Angels, rather than suggesting that they withdraw and let the XX Legion take over. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two accounts. While fighting the Rangdan behind the scenes and dealing with civil insurrections, Alpharius gets wind of a mysterious warrior who may possibly his missing twin on a world behind enemy lines. When he goes to investigate, he discovers that the world is being overrun by the [[Slaugth]], so Alpharius takes a small team in to find his brother. Most of his legionnaires die, but he finds Omegon (unless it's really Alpharius), and they sit down for a friendly chat. Omegon tells Alpharius that he fetched up on a deserted planet and stole a ship belonging to some space pirates in order to escape (unless he’s lying). They wonder if the Emperor had deliberately engineered them as twins or if they had been divided somehow by their passage through the Warp. Either way, they decide to keep the truth concealed from the rest of the Imperium, then escape the Slaugth together and start planning how to reveal Alpharius' existence to the Imperium. They decide to stage an attack on the ''Vengeful Spirit'', so Omegon sneaks onto the ship and fights his way to the bridge,where Horus recognizes him immediately and is overjoyed to have found his last brother, who introduces himself to the Lupercal as Alpharius. This is followed by the last line of the novel: “This was a lie.” So does that refer to Omegon calling himself Alpharius, or does it mean that the entire story was all one big lie? Hydra Dominatus, ladies and gentlemen.

Throughout the novel, Alpharius presents himself as a surprisingly philosophical person, often ruminating on his nature and that of his brothers. He isn’t particularly impressed with any of them except for Horus and Sanguinius (but he might be lying) and he reveals that he distrusted Rogal Dorn so much that he decided to plant some sleeper agents on Terra just in case. (Of course, one of these sleeper agents was Alpharius himself, according to ''Praetorian of Dorn'', so does this mean that the Alpharius who was narrating this novel is a disguised Alpha Legionnaire?) He might just been referencing the plan of sending those literal sleeping agents into the palace, Omegon was probably send in before their betrayal was unveiled but after their conspired with Horus.

===Blood of the Emperor===

Oh, look, another short story anthology. Only six stories this time.

:'''Lupis Daemonis:''' Turns out Cthonia is even shittier than we were told it was, ranking as possibly even shittier than Nostramo and Barbarus combined. Horus, who goes without a name until the end of the story, is the runt of his gang in the utter shitheap that is the Cthonian underworld and is only spared from getting shanked by the other members of his gang because the gang leader realizes he isn't normal. We find out Horus was made differently from the other Primarchs in that his Primarch-level growth rate was intentionally stunted until psychically activated by the Emperor from afar, for some reason. Long story short, Horus evolves into his current form Pokémon style at the end after killing his gang leader, who was the one who gave him his name. Also apparently the Justaerin got their name from a violent gang on Cthonia who enjoyed impaling people on stakes.
:'''Skjalds:''' We learn Russ returns to Fenris every once in awhile to fuck with the locals, in this case a hunting party trying to kill a warp tainted creature who killed a whole village. Also we get confirmation that, yes, he does indeed smell like a dog.
:'''The Sixth Cult of the Denied:''' Magnus soft-exiles a member of his legion (and disbands an entire cult of the Thousand Sons) for consorting with demons in the quest for forbidden knowledge, specifically how the fuck he managed to cure his legion of the Flesh Change. Oh, the irony.
:'''The Will of the Legion:''' Dorn happens upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack his ship and is a hair's breadth away from destroying every single one of them with extreme prejudice until they surrender at the very last moment. Basically a reminder that just because Dorn is a loyal good boy to the Emperor doesn't mean he isn't still a mass murderous dick at the end of the day.
:'''Council of Truth:''' Alpharius "confesses" to doing things the hard way as a means to constantly test himself in preparation for a day that his legion would have to fight foes just as strong as itself. Basically confirms that Alpharius saw the Heresy coming a loooong way off.
:'''Terminus:''' Two Death Guard at the Siege of Terra, fresh off the events of 'The Buried Dagger', wonder if they're (gasp) the bad guys, what with their rotting flesh and awful smell and such.

===Valdor: Birth of the Imperium===
Not a Primarch (like Malcador), but still technically part of this series. Will cover Constantin Valdor's role in the Unification Wars, and according to previews it will hold some new insights on the Emperor's plans.

As it turns out, it doesn't really tell us anything that we didn't know already, though it does expand on a few things. The book is set near the end of the Unification Wars on Terra. The new Provost Marshal, Uwoma Kandawire, has uncovered evidence of some shady doings at Mount Ararat and confronts Constantin Valdor as to the Custodians’ role in that battle. Along the way, he tells her of the war against the warp-tainted Confederacy of Maulland Sen, where the inherent instability of the Thunder Warriors first became apparent. They weren't just genetically unstable; the influence of the Warp also caused them to go more berserk than usual, so it became evident to the Emperor that a [[Space Marines|long-term solution would be required]]. Valdor also tells Kandawire about the primarchs being scattered by the Chaos gods; the psychic backlash from the event was so strong that it wrecked a large section of the Imperial Dungeon and killed thousands of those present. Valdor himself waded in to save the stored gene-seed from being destroyed, alongside Amar Astarte, the Imperium’s best gene-wright and the namesake of the Adeptus Astartes, though everyone believed that the primarchs had been killed. The Provost Marshal concludes that the Custodes are trying to make a grab for power and leads an uprising alongside Lord Ushotan, the “primarch” of the Thunder Warriors’ Fourth Legion, who survived the purge at Ararat. Valdor confronts Kandawire and Ushotan outside the Lion’s Gate and explains himself thus: the Custodians and the Emperor are the architects of humanity’s future, and any crime can be forgiven and any virtue dismissed if it is in service to that future. Then he unleashes the fledgling [[Dark Angels|I Legion]] to destroy the insurrectionists and personally kills Ushotan in a duel. In the aftermath, he explains to Kandawire the Imperium’s ultimate aim: not just Unity on Earth, but [[Great Crusade| Unity throughout the galaxy]], a vast undertaking which will require hundreds of thousands of these new soldiers. Meanwhile, Amar Astarte has come to the conclusion that the Space Marine project will fall apart without the primarchs and has decided to destroy the stored gene-seed in order to stop them from failing like the Thunder Warriors did. She manages to blow up the gene-seed vaults underneath the Palace, but Malcador already had copies of all twenty batches moved to Luna. He then reveals to Valdor that the Emperor believes the primarchs are still alive and intends to seek them out. Valdor wonders if it wouldn't just be better to abandon them or destroy them outright, since they might be tainted by [[Chaos|whatever power]] snatched them away in the first place. Malcador's dialogue heavily implies that the Emperor actually did have some paternal affection for the primarchs at this point, as he mentions that the Emperor has started referring to them as his sons and suggests that he has a lingering attachment to them which has yet to fade. Valdor's response is equally telling: he notes that the Emperor's "human sentiments" are slowly ebbing away, and Malcador acknowledges that this is the price the Emperor was willing to pay to secure his dream of Unity.

===Luther: First of the Fallen===
A story told from the perspective of Luther starting at the time he’s found by Redloss after the events of Caliban’s destruction. Locked in a cell and tortured on and off so frequently that he barely even registers it anymore, he’s constantly forced to deal with Dark Angel Chapter Master after Dark Angel Chapter Master as the millennia go by, each one coming to him for knowledge of the past in between being frozen in stasis by the Watchers in the Dark. Each time he’s asked a question, Luther answers it in a roundabout way by telling a story from his past as a way to demonstrate some point to whichever Chapter Master happens to be listening: some get what he’s saying, and some don’t. One story gets misinterpreted so badly that the Chapter Master in question comes back afterwards and kills himself in Luther’s cell. By the time of the events of great rift with Azrael as the current chapter master, while the Rock is under siege, he finds that his cell door is open and he literally just tip-toes his way out.

===Audiobooks===
'''<u>The Sigillite</u>''' Despite not being a Primarch, his short story is included in the Primarch sub-series of the Horus Heresy. It covers a discussion between Malcador and a Stormtrooper named Khalid Hassan about the nature of the Emperor's plans and whether or not Malcador agreed with everything the Emperor thought(hint: he didn't). Khalid had brought the Rosetta Stone to Malcador without fully understanding its significance, whereupon Malcador reveals that he is part of an ancient order dedicated to the preservation of humanity's knowledge and history, and whose symbol will later become the Inquisitorial =I=.

Malcador also reveals the doors to the Golden Throne and indicates the awesome battle going on behind them, foreshadowing the events of the Webway War that are covered later on in the main series.

'''<u>Malcador: First Lord of the Imperium</u>''' In the story Malcador visits his elderly personal astropath who is on her deathbed. The pair have a few conversations where Malcador shows surprising compassion and humanity. During the conversations there are some major revelations about Malcador and the origins of the Heresy. You should listen to it yourself as it's cheap and short (25 mins), but in case you don't care about spoilers here's some stuff: he's 6718 years old, he helped the Emperor go from being just the biggest warlord on Terra to... well, being the Emperor, and he explains who the Sigillites are and what their role in the Imperium is. After the astropath despairs about the countless billions who've died in the Heresy, he drops the mother of all bombshells: the Heresy was planned by him and the Emperor from the beginning. Just as how the Thunder Warriors served their purpose and were betrayed and wiped out, the plan was to eventually pit the Primarchs against one another and have them wipe themselves out. He says the two of them carefully maneuvered the Primarchs into specific roles and situations, as well as the Emperor showing unequal favour between them, in order to foster hostility. The ones who "couldn't be controlled" never made it to the endgame (possibility referencing the lost Primarchs). He admits though that his failure was underestimating Chaos who caused the Heresy to happen much sooner than expected, which turned it into the calamity that it is.

After she dies Malcador he admits he lied but doesn't say exactly which bit he lied about. Some people think the truth is they planned to wipe out the Primarchs and Astartes, but the Heresy was never planned and was instead a lie intended to comfort an old woman on her deathbed (by saying they have it under control, sorta). Some other people think the lie is where he tells her that the Emperor "will catch her" when she dies (hinting at an afterlife and saving her soul from Chaos). The truth is we'll probably never know as this is typical Malcador obfuscation. If there's even a shred of truth to the origins of the Heresy, though, the implications are staggering: Horus was right in turning against the Emperor even if his reasons for doing so were wrong.

'''<u>Perturabo: Stone and Iron</u>''' A minor story largely about showing the differences between the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists, so doesn't provide any major revelations for the series. The Iron Warriors are supposed to be supporting an Imperial Fist position that is currently under assault, but Perturabo holds back and uses the opportunity to instruct his own officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Kurze giving his thoughts on why the Emperor made him like he did and the Night Lord definition of "compliance" during the Great Crusade. Hint: It involves flaying. Lots of it.

===Short Stories===
'''<u>Grandfather's Gift:</u>''' Mortarion has a lab accident and knocks himself out. He wakes up in Nurgle's Garden, wanders around for a bit, and has a nice chat with [[Ku'Gath]] the Plaguefather, whose name is misspelled [[Derp|for some reason]]. It's revealed that Nurgle has tracked down his foster father's soul and will let Mortarion capture it as a gift for joining his service. The timeline is a bit squiffy due to warp fuckery. Mortarion knows what daemons are and knows that he's fought alongside them, but doesn't recognize Ku'Gath. Ku'Gath knows Mortarion, but also says that they haven't met yet. Morty himself doesn't know where he is or what's going on at first, but eventually his memories return, and he mutates into his daemon primarch form and captures his foster father's soul.

'''<u>A Lesson in Iron:</u>''' Ferrus Manus chases some orks into a warp rift and stumbles across an Iron Hands ship from a few thousand years in the future. The boarding parties he sends are attacked by daemons which fuck them up, and Ferrus himself finds a dead future Iron Hand whose bionics look like a shitty hack-job to him, so he gets pissy and orders everyone to leave. When his Mechanicum adept points out that they might be able to mine the databanks for advanced technology and info on [[Drop Site Massacre|future events]], he declares that he wants no part of this future. Also reveals that Ferrus had seen enough shit on Medusa to know that the Imperial Truth was a "useful lie."

==The Tabletop Wargame==
[[Forge World]] produces a 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 [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Space Marines/Legion List‎|tactica]]), and rules for special characters and units from the [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[Emperor's Children]], and [[World Eaters]] Legions, including their [[Primarch]]s (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. The book's storyline is essentially just the ''first day'' of the battle, leading up to the death of [[Ferrus Manus]].

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===
Focusses 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 includes 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.

====Condensed Lists====
The ICL and LACAL were initially released as part of the limited edition run of Extermination, but were then later released separately. They are fluff-lite, codex-equivalent books that also included all of the FAQs/Errata up to their release; which unfortunately was still the end of 6th edition so some rules haven't carried over well. ''(eg. [[Lorgar]]s psychic rules.)''

The Legiones Astartes Crusade Army List is basically the generic 30k Space Marine "codex", whilst the Isstvan Campaign Legions contains all of the collected rules for the legions from Books 1-3; their units, characters and wargear in the previous three books. Meaning you can have a cheaper alternative to buying multiple £70+, huge black tomes JUST to play the game. The ICL was continued in the Age of Darkness Legions, which collected everything to book 5, including the errata.

Later came the Mechanicum Taghamata Army List, which contained all the Mechanicum units and army lists mentioned and rearranged them to keep everything on the same page, but lacked the Questoris Knight Army. The Crusade Imperialis Army Lists contain the Solar Auxilia, Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults, and Questoris Knight Crusade army lists.

===Conquest===
Horus Heresy Volume Four is entitled 'Conquest', despite early hints from Forgeworld that it would be about the Battle of Prospero, it instead features Horus' conquest of the Imperium and the [[Skub|"Major"]] battles of this time, which is to say some battle-zones that Forgeworld made up to fill time whilst they worked on the more well known events from the in-universe history. ''(And to be fair, their response as to why Prospero was delayed was because it included four major factions, [[Adeptus Custodes|two of]] [[Sisters of Silence|which have]] NEVER been represented on the tabletop, so required more time to do them justice.)''

A large portion of the book is given over to running battles in the '''"Age of Darkness"''', which is a variant ruleset used as the default for Horus Heresy games ''(where only Troops usually score, amongst other things)'' and has rules and FOCs for Cityfight missions, rules for running ongoing campaigns, variant rules for mysterious terrain and objectives as well as including unique relics to be taken by the various army lists to add flavor to non-special characters.

It also introduces the [[Solar Auxilia]] and [[Imperial Knight|"Questoris" Knights]] (as an AdMech list) armies to play while the modellers take a break from building power armor 24/7.

===Tempest===
The fifth Horus Heresy book covered the Battle of Calth. The rules for the [[Ultramarines]] (including [[Roboute Guilliman]] himself) as well as several warp-corrupted Word Bearer units are brought in alongside a few other new miscellaneous FW releases, including the Deredeo and the new Thanatars. There's also an Imperial Militia (Read: PDF) list that's super-customizable so you can make both loyalist and traitor lists. Also, the MOTHERFUCKING [[Warlord Titan|WARLORD TITANS]] IS IN IT TOO. PREPARE YOUR WALLET.

===Retribution===
Focused on 'Shadow Wars' far from the main fronts of the Heresy, in particular the Shattered Legions - that is, the [[Iron Hands]], [[Raven Guard]], and [[Salamanders]] in their weakened state following their losses in the Drop Site Massacre. But other Legions can also be included, with special rules for the Shattered Legions, Black Shields and a list for Armies of Dark Compliance - mixed traitor Legiones/Militia lists, as well as ten new special characters. It includes Legiones Astartes rules for the White Scars, Blood Angels and Dark Angels, so that players of those legions can start playing properly; however, it does not include special units, characters, or Primarchs for those legions. It also includes Garro and the Knights Errant and additional Mechanicum units and characters, including a new Dark Magos, [[Anacharis Scoria]]. Space Wolves and Thousand Sons will still need to wait for the Prospero book (Inferno, Book 7).

===Inferno===
In <s>Set to be book 3.</s> <s>late 2016.</s> <s>early 2017 (Because FW can't keep to schedule)</s> <s>December 2016</s> February 4, 2017, comes with what many neckbeards are waiting for: THE BURNING OF PROSPERO!!! For those [[Thousand Sons]] players, start saving up so you can play your space Egyptian sorcerers in all their 30k glory. Rules for the Sisters of Silence as an allied detachment and the Adeptus Custodes as a full army list will be present as well.

Well, it's come, and... it's uninspiring to say the least, with stuff like [[What|Magnus being straight up impossible to hit if he casts invisibility, not to mention pumping out 2d6 destroyer hits at every unit within 18" if he likes]], [[Derp|Custodes captains beating out every Primarch with a rollable 3+ invulnerable save]], some Custodes wargear being straight up [[Wat|left out of the book]] and to cap it all, [[Herp|pictures of tourists in the book ('''twice''') where you'd expect miniatures to be]]. You'd think with such a long development cycle the quality assurance would have been more thorough. Didn't help that [[Alan Bligh]] was likely fairly ill in late 2016, and his death in May of 2017 means the Horus Heresy team now has a big hole in it.

===Malevolence===
After the untimely death of Alan Bligh, this will be the first book with John French behind the wheel after two years of internal re-organizing. Covers the events of Signus Prime and the Chondax Campaigns. It features [[White Scars]] and [[Blood Angels]] including rules for both Jaghatai and Sanguinius, [[Dark Angel Shoulder Pad|making the Lion the only Primarch without rules]]. Introduced as a new army is Daemons of the Ruinstorm, an army of 'unknown aberrant xenoforms' (since this was before the Imperium really understood what Daemons really were) which play quite differently to the Daemons of Fantasy/Sigmar/40K. Also included are 5 new consuls and two new squads that interact with Psykers and Daemons.

===Crusade===
Was originally to be called ''Angelus'', though it eventually was renamed to ''Crusade''. It covers the [[Thramas Crusade]] with the Dark Angels vs Night Lords, and introduces new Legion-specific units and characters for the Dark Angels, including Dreadwing units and rules for upgrading DA characters to represent any of the six Wings of the Hexagrammaton. Most importantly, the Lion finally has his rules. The Night Lords got revamped rules and some new toys, including a new VIII Legion-specific Terminator squad that [[Derp|isn't the Atramentar]]. Unfortunately leaks have confirmed that the Dark Mechanicum army list has been pushed back to the next book. Also has rules for some new Space Marine vehicles, including the Sabre strike tank and the Arquitor Bombard, plus new additions for the Solar Auxilia, Imperial militia, and Chaos cults. Finally released in September 2020, having been delayed due to Nurgle's interference. Remarkable for atrocious fluff like Dark Angel auxiliary fleets usually including [[Gloriana-class_Battleship|Glorianas]], [[Rangdan_Xenocides|"the biggest threat to the existence of Imperium"]] being reduced to 80k Marine casualties in all three campaigns spanning for two decades, Legion recruits retaining their noble status after being conscripted, and many, many more things that would give even Matt Ward a pause.

==See Also==
* [[The War of The Beast]], for the next massive shit-show the Imperium was involved with.
* [[Alternate Heresy]], for a discussion of other possible outcomes of the (not necessarily Horus) Heresy.
* [[Army compatibility between Warhammer settings]]

==External Links==
* [http://geekdo.com/boardgame/3170/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (1993)] at BoardGameGeek
* [http://geekdo.com/boardgame/63543/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (2010)] at BoardGameGeek

{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category:Board Games]][[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Wargames]]

Horus Heresy

2021-07-12T10:22:12Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The Siege of Terra series */

[[File:zbrothers.jpg|500px|thumb|right|It was pretty much ''this''.]]
{{Topquote|1=[[Fulgrim|They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me.]]<br>[[Magnus the Red|Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them.]]<br>[[Angron|They will be of iron will and steely muscle.]]<br>[[Perturabo|In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed.]]<br>[[Mortarion|They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them.]]<br>[[Alpharius|They will have tactics, strategies and machines]] [[Omegon|so that no foe can best them in battle.]]<br>[[Konrad Curze|They are my bulwark against the Terror.]]<br>[[Lorgar|They are the Defenders of Humanity.]]<br>[[Horus|They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear.]]|2=The [[God-Emperor of Mankind]], [[Not as planned|getting exactly what he wanted.]]}}
{{Topquote|The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.|Karl Popper}}

The '''Horus Heresy''' also known as '''Horus Humbug''', '''Cosmic Scale Daddy Issues''', '''That time [[Erebus]] fucked everyone over forever''' and (in-universe) as '''The Great Heresy War''' is one of the single biggest clusterfuck of events in [[Warhammer 40,000]] fluff, alongside the [[Eldar]]'s creation of a new [[Slaanesh|Chaos God]] and the [[War in Heaven|rampage and fall of the]] [[C'Tan|star gods]]. Needless to say, this heresy derailed the Emperor's plan and himself, and gave the Chaos Gods their most prominent armies to carry out their will in realspace.

In the Horus Heresy, the Emperor's favorite son, [[Horus| Horus Lupercal]], formerly Warmaster of the Imperium, was corrupted by Chaos and rebelled against the Emperor, taking nine [[First Founding|Space Marine Legions]] (Including [[Luna Wolves|his own]]), their respective Primarchs, and about half 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 cut the head off the proverbial snake by killing the Emperor and winning the war.

Things went [[Not as Planned]] however, as he was eventually surrounded by loyalist forces at the height of the siege on Terra. As a final gambit, he dropped the shields of his flagship which allowed the Emperor to beam up and challenged him to a duel for the fate of humanity. Horus beat the Emperor within an inch of his life but was killed in turn after the Emperor put his foot down and obliterated Horus' soul from existence (as in it didn't go to the warp to be resurrected by daemons, it was literally erased from existence) when it finally became clear to him that Horus was beyond forgiveness. 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==
[[File:HHMap.jpg|600px|right|thumb|The Clusterfuck in motion. If this map reminds you of the Syrian Civil War, consider getting a gold star.]]
The Horus Heresy screwed with almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course) 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 [[Exterminatus|or your whole planet]] 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|Burning]] [[Magnus_the_Red#Horus_Heresy|of Prospero]]
*[[Drop Site Massacre]]
*[[Battle of Calth|Battle of Calth]]
*[[Shadow Crusade]]
*[[Thramas Crusade]]
*[[Signus Campaign]]
*[[Battle of Phall]]
*[[Battle of Tallarn]]
* The TitanDeath at [[Beta Garmon]]
*[[Siege of Terra]]

Following the Siege of Terra, Horus was permakilled, Konrad allowed himself to be assassinated, Sanguinius was KIA, Big E was interred onto the Golden Throne, the surviving primarchs freaked out trying to figure out what do now that daddy was in a coma, the surviving traitors fucked off into the Eye of Terror, and overall the galaxy slowly and collectively lost their minds now that their wise and all-powerful ruler was no longer around to tell them what to do.

==The Board Game==
First published in 1993 by [[Game Designer's Workshop]], it was the Emprah versus his [[Horus|evil bastard of a son]] in the scorched earth of Terra. Units include [[Titan#Warhammer_40k|titans]] and [[Chaos Spawn|Chaos Spaw-]] oh shiARHGRBLLYRBGRDEWUODHGRYEB.

Ahem. As he was saying, the more recent edition (2010) was published by [[Fantasy Flight Games]]. Also a two-player [[wargame|war]] [[board game|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 [[heresy|traitor's]] flagship ''Vengeful Spirit''. Combat is less [[dice|dice-y]] and more card-y.

(Not to be confused with the lame Horus Heresy card game, whose only saving grace was the awesome card art that would appear in the Horus Heresy artbooks anyway.)

==The Main Book Series==
{{Spoilers}}
For the last decade, [[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 [[Dan Abnett|the first trilogy]], The First Heretic, Know No Fear, Fear To Tread, [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|Betrayer]], [[White Scars|Scars]], and the short story [[Alpha Legion|The Serpent Beneath]].

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

===Books I - X===
*'''''Horus Rising:''''' A prologue story, introducing us to the series and Garviel Loken who will grow into a very significant and popular character, the 'Jim Raynor from Starcraft' of the heresy. Black Library needed a killer opener and they succeeded, Dan Abnett handling it pretty well. An Emperor (not [[Emperor|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?". Negotiations with them go sour when [[Erebus]] steals the '''MURDER SWORD''' from them. It is worth noting that if the Interex had some goddamn CCTV set up in their museum of awesome and valuable weapons then the whole heresy could possibly have been avoided.
*'''''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 and Horus being reviled and forgotten) he decides to make war on the Imperium to [[FAIL|prevent]] all this from happening. Actually a rather weak and rushed affair when it comes to detailing the Horus Heresy's origin story. Until this point, we've been exploring Horus' character in great detail for 1.5 books, but then he has a nasty fever dream, sees a few bad prophecies and boom, he wakes up as a traitorous Saturday morning cartoon villain, after which point his machinations to create the Isstvan III event and Dropsite Massacre or any other bits of the heresy go completely undetailed and left behind the scenes. The really cool shit in this book is the battle on Davin, as the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Army fights against a massive horde of chaos zombies in a foggy swamp and the wreck of a space ship.
*'''''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 is presumed dead after a duel with Abaddon. While it's good to have a whole book detailing a key event in the Heresy, there isn't actually any important or interesting dialogue to read that would make you glad you didn't just read a synopsis. There's also an embarrassingly written sequence towards the end, where a large number of loyalists survive an Exterminatus event by fleeing to some magical and super convenient bunkers. They see plague bombs entering the planet's atmosphere with the naked eye and somehow have enough time to run deep enough underground to survive one of the Empire's most effective super weapons.
*'''''Flight of the Eisenstein:''''' the other side of ''Galaxy in Flames'', Nathaniel Garro escapes and gets marooned in the warp fighting daemons, eventually gets saved (and mega-bitchslapped) by [[Rogal Dorn]], who does not take the news from Isstvan [[Rage|very well]]. The first bit of the novel is so far 'the Death Guard's novel'. There is also the very first canonical appearance of Plague Marines, Euphrati Keeler being all mystical and shit, and Malcador recruiting Garro as the first Knight-Errant.
*'''''Fulgrim:''''' A divisive entry that is either forgettable to some or pretty interesting depending on who you ask - depends how much you like the Emperor's Children. Tells 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 McNeill though, and it has an awesome quote from Fulgrim: "My Emperor's Children. What beautiful music they make." The second plot of this book is about some human, but it is so forgettable the writer has it dropped halfway through the book. The human plot also explains where [[Lucius]] get his self-scarring habit from: a painter woman told him it will make his face perfect (ugly) again, because he wouldn't shut up about how Loken ruined his perfect beauty with a suckerpunch.
*'''''Descent of Angels:''''' This is the Heresy book that isn't about the Heresy, instead focusing on [[Zahariel]]'s time on [[Caliban]]. It portrays [[Lion El'Jonson]] having to deal with some social awkwardness (he can not read people at all, so he comes off as 'do what I say or die!') and having Luther to handle the small talk. Hints that the Great Crusade <s>does more harm than good</s> {{BLAM|is bringing the lost colonies of mankind together into a united future!}} Luther gets sent home with Zahariel to hustle up more Dark Angels. Another divisive book, but could definitely have used some more time with the editor. Be aware that this book was published long before the GW has decided what to do with Lion's Loyalty and personality, so its descriptions on Lion are outdated and does not match to his current status.
*'''''Legion''''' introduces [[the Cabal]], the [[Perpetual]]s 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. I still would recommend reading it since when the novel introduces these ideas they are very fresh and interesting. Don't blame ''Legion'' when the rest of the novels were what ruined it. The [[Alpha Legion]], along with the Geno Chiliad, a regiment of genetically engineered supermen-yet-not-Astartes lead by anime lolis called ''uxors'' (High Gothic for "wives") is trying to bring some Chaos cultists in <s>space Afghanistan</s>[[Nurth]] into compliance. The cultists activate planetary self-destruct blood sacrifice; as this goes down, the Alpha Legion meets with the [[Cabal]], gets a glimpse of their vision of the future ("the Alpharius gambit"), agrees to work with them, then kills off all non-legion bystanders & ships with "FOR E-MONEY"!
*'''''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 thought it was cobbled together from [[Matt Ward|Wardian fluff]] stitched together by [[C. S. Goto]]. Reading this book, in fact, causes mind cancer, which is to say, that it does not create brain tumors, but hurts the ideas of reader. Everyone dies, so it does not affect much (as in anything). The only thing you need to remember is [[Lorgar]] built a fuckhueg space ship and filled it with Dreadnoughts, and it failed miserably. The book's adherence to canon is an atrocity, but it does contain some decent depictions of ship-to-ship combat as a mildly redeeming quality.
*'''''Mechanicum:''''' Easily one of the best novels in the series. Including exploring many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanimum. 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 [[Emperor|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 as he uses divine golden light to heal machines and instant access super wikipedia. Contains a lot of Titan awesomeness and [[Imperial Knight|Knights]] badassery. And for extra Grimdark, a tech priestess discovers that the Dark Age era humans stored a backup copy of Wikipedia in the warp and <s>with a giant psyker powered terminal accesses said Wikipedia and restores all the knowledge of mankind</s> floods her forge with lava to deny the traitors access. A psyker tech savant meets up with the gaoler of the Void Dragon and takes over his fuck long shift.
*'''''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. The assassin was a Custodes probing the palace defences. The traitor was a triple agent working for Dorn. The bodyguard of the triple agent turns out to be an Sons of Horus assassin who detonates a bomb that kills the triple agent and nearly accomplishes a suicide run to destroy a bunch of reactors controlled by the triple agent.
** '''''Wolf at the Door:''''' The Space Wolves kill some Dark Eldar and are the defenders of everyone who does not defy the Emperor. When the liberated planet chooses freedom over the Emperor, the Wolves invade it, of course.
** '''''Scions of the Storm:''''' The Word Bearers destroy a human civilization that has crystal cities, crystal robots, and lots of lightning. They worshiped the Emperor, but Lorgar no longer does. This is also later a chapter of ''The First Heretic'', but there narrated from a slightly different point of view .
** '''''The Voice:''''' A squad of Sisters of Silence investigate a Black Ship that became derelict in the Warp. Turns out [[Blank|the youngest of the squad]] in the future [[Wat|used sorcery]] to beam back her consciousness through time onto some psykers on the Black Ship. She <s>successfully warns the squad about Horus's Rebellion </s> is executed by a hard-core Sister for breaking her vow of [[Psyker|no funny stuff]].
** '''''Call of the Lion:''''' Half of the Dark Angels are dicks, the other half are not. Totally not foreshadowing.
** '''''[[The Last Church]]:''''' A story about the Emperor destroying one of the churches on Terra during the reunification era in his effort to wipe out religion. The Emperor and the priest of the church have an enlightening conversation about what the Emprah's trying to accomplish. The conversation ends up with the priest accusing the Emperor of being a hypocrite, with him decrying that he's no different from the old warlords who waged crusades and holy wars in the past to push their own agendas on other people. The Emperor reveals himself as the very god the priest was worshiping, and nearly convinces him to stand by his side while his soldiers destroy the church. Priest gets cold feet and walks back into the church while it collapses. An end-times alarm clock starts ringing in the ruins.
** '''''After Desh'ea:''''' The War Hounds meet their Primarch. Angron defeats 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 ''after the War Hounds chain of command calmed Angron down as fleshy squeeze balls''.

===Books XI - XX===
*'''''Fallen Angels:''''' this sequel to Descent of Angels is actually two stories rolled into one book that never converge. The Lion heads to a strategically important forge world only to find that the magos has turned traitor, then fights a war to reclaim some Ordinatus devices only to hand them to Perturabo to gain his trust, not realising that his brother has already turned. He's really spergily awkward with people throughout. Meanwhile, [[Zahariel]] and Luther encounter a daemon cult on Caliban and get into shennanigans with [[Cypher]], setting the stage for the rise of the [[Fallen]] as they reject the Lion and the Emperor due to misplaced patriotism for Caliban and butthurt over feeling abandoned by their primarch.
*'''''A 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 forcing himself through the palace psychic spam filter, breaking the Golden Throne in the process. Space Wolves come knocking shortly after. Tragedy ensues and the Thousand Sons become a thousand sons all over again. Ahriman starts writing his Rubric.
*'''''Nemesis:''''' [[Malcador the Sigillite]] invents the [[Officio Assassinorum]] Execution Task Force and sends six assassins to kill Horus. They fail because Horus sent a look-a-like, but in the process slay a 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 [[rage|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 and generally considered one of the better books in the series. While you may never sympathize with them, this book really lets you understand why The Word Bearers fell to chaos, rather then being the "CHAOTIC EVIL MONSTERS" they are portrayed in the rest of the series.. 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 [[Adeptus Custodes|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, [[/d/|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 of Khaine|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 [[A Game of Pretend|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.
*'''''Prospero Burns:''''' Part 2 of the Battle for Prospero. A civilian archeologist named Kasper Hawser (as typical for GW authors flexing obscuring knowledge, not very subtle given that the real Kaspar Hauser was a liar from 1820s Germany, who thrived on getting public attention and [[Derp|accidentally killed himself]] when public attention faded) 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 (they thought he worked for Magnus).
* '''''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 <s>which is a load of bull given that the Codex lets said commander win all the wars in the most efficient way possible while blindly following it and only failed in the last battle because he was in a war game against Girlyman</s>. (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. An Alpha Legion serf arrives on a agri-world and turns its allegiance to Horus by only hacking all their interplanetary communications.
** '''''Forgotten Sons:''''' A [[Salamanders|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 [[Exterminatus|wreck shit]] for the lulz and to send the message that neutrality will be punished. The [[Iron Warriors]] were doing weird shit on that world for years beforehand and were probably a bigger factor than the lulz.
** '''''The Last Remembrancer:''''' Horus sent 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, Iacton Qruze makes his first appearance since forever, but nobody gives a shit. Dorn says it's all lies and enemy propaganda before executing said remembrancer and torching all his ramblings.
** '''''Rebirth:''''' Magnus's absent fleet from the Burning of Prospero 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 <s>parade</s> 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 [[Blood Ravens|shift into kleptomania]].
** '''''The Face of Treachery:''''' The tie-in and conclusion of the audiodrama featuring the Raven Guard after Istvaan and the prequel to Deliverance Lost. After getting fed up with Corax [[troll]]ing 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 him roll a natural 20 on stealth checks no matter how ridiculous it would be, and that the Alpha Legion ''once again'' can out-troll everybody when they fuck things up for the World Eaters (they let the World Eater commander think he was in command then blew his brains out when he tried to actually command). 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 [[Abaddon|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 the PTSD he had 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 over an ocean of prometheum in a hellhole of a world (giant cavern system & acidic atmosphere), 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 (after a full year of siege thanks to the genius of a certain [[Barabas Dantioch]]), drop the fortress from the ceiling onto a titan, and get the hell out of there by hijacking one of the Iron Warriors warships via teleportation. An Ultramarine bigwig was there to bring the loyalists home, informing them that [[Skub|Guilliman was fortifying Terra]] and he needed good siege workers to stall the traitors then to fortify Terra. While loyalist Iron Warriors were pretty cool, the story itself was pretty forgettable and 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 with the Imperium Secundus; 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 yo shit!" and left a fortress with no space or warp conveyance and arguably little strategic value in itself in the middle of nowhere alone. It mentions a few times that it looks really bad for a rebellion trying to gain initiative when a mere captain of their Legions tells their Primarch "fuck off, imma keeping this fortress & resources for the Emperor!" The message behind it being if you can't even control your own men, maybe this rebellion thing needs a rethinking, because hearing Horus can't even take this shitty outpost middle of nowhere and he's going to Terra might be bad press.
** '''''Savage Weapons:''''' A good story written by [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|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 [[Rage|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 Jonson is a <s>badass among primarchs</s> cheating bitch (he initiated the fight, ending the parlay, by getting in a cheap shot when he plunged his sword into Curze's heart), until Curze, ignoring a terrible wound even by Primarch standards, whoops that ass and goes to his old fallback of strangling a fucker. Their respective honor guards go at it in the meantime, 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. [[derp|''Riggggghhhhtttt.'']] More importantly: shortly after the start of the Heresy an astropath has routine nervous breakdown and is returned to Terra to get [[Witch Hunters|some R&R]]. 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 ''"[[Anal Circumference|Ve haff vays of making you talk.]]"'' and hand him over to a pair of [[Inquisition|kind counselors]] who torture the poor man half to death. After a time, he gets busted out in the nick of time by some convict Space Marines from the Traitor Legions. Why they do this is explained by the Thousand Son sagely stating "Just because" to the others. They name themselves the eponymous Outcast Dead and try to get the hell off of Terra. Amusingly, none of the escapees is very happy at the prospect of the Heresy but they are all [[rage|slightly miffed]] at being treated like shit by the Custodes just because of the Legion they belong to. 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 <s>[[Rip and tear|an unarmed, unarmored World Eater ripping a Custodes' spine out through his chest]]</s> the portrayal of the Emperor playing chess in dreams, revealing that the message is about his upcoming bitchslap from Horus.
*'''''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) have 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'' with the potential to conscript literally anybody willing to become a Space Marine. 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 Corax ended up with. In one of the instances of retcon that was actually flavored with [[awesome]] and win, the mutant marines [[Grimdark|were still sapient]] but were left 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 just happened in here. 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 a retirement home: everybody got screwed (even ''Horus''), nobody got what they hoped for (except for [[Omegon|the really deviant bastard]]), and all-around the reproductive material was a waste. Corax shut down his hothousing method and starts fucking with the Traitors even at reduced numbers. The book ends with Alpharius-Omegon deciding that while their plan for saving the galaxy was still good, they decide working with Xenos isn't for them.
*'''''Know No Fear:''''' The book that made the Ultramarines (of all people) cool again. The Ultras are still ignorant about Istvaan and the civil war erupting around the galaxy, and are mustering at Calth with the Word Bearers [[troll|on orders from Horus]] to go kill some Orks together as a conciliatory gesture. They're in for a surprise: the Word Bearers, while happy as hell to get revenge, are really trying to [[Eldrad|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 shipyards that leave the Ultramarine forces blind, deaf, and crippled. They use the confusion to say that the Ultras are ''still'' fucking them over, and take the chance to open not only a can but entire cases of whoop-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 [[Sorcerer (Warhammer 40,000)|Chaos mindbullets]], in a moment of self-aggrandizement he holds back and tries to corrupt Guilliman with his own dagger-sized '''MURDER SWORD'''. Guilliman calmly tells him "The Codex Astartes <s>does</s> will not support this action" (it was really "You made an error" followed by an explanation of that error, and "but while I'm alive, I can do this") and [[Rip and Tear|rips out Kor Phaeron's main heart with an unpowered Power Fist]]. 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, transitioning into underground war. Special features of this novel include the Ultramarines finally being portrayed as awesome, Guilliman not being a cock, [[Ollanius Pius]] being the special guest star with his very own subplot, and the Word Bearers having athame blades as special issue, one of which will [[Uriel Ventris|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. While not exactly winning awards on the philosophical or psychological side, the book itself is a genuinely thrilling read that really knows how to keep its tension up.
*'''''The Primarchs:''''' A novella anthology. As the name suggests, it contains stories featuring Primarchs.
**'''''The Reflection Crack'd:''''' - <s>[[Lucius]] and friends anally rape [[Fulgrim]]. Yeah.</s> While questionable use of a ''pear of anguish'' is featured during a game of "Stab the Fulgrim," the real story is this: Lucius and his buddies are deep into the [[/d/|sickfuckery]] which will come to characterize their Legion 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 (though they find out that a Primarch can grow back a foot and just about any other wound). Among everything else: [[Fabius Bile|Fabulous Bill]] is still an arrogant dick; Lucius is still a maniacal and colossally narcissistic sick fuck; Julius Kaesoron is still an angry badass; Marius Vairosean is still a sycophantic cunt; and Eidolon was still a self-important, whiny douche, but Fulgrim throws a tantrum and cuts his head off, and there was much cheering from the readers, and that ''plus'' almost certain off-screen fapping among the Legionaries leads into ''Angel Exterminatus''.
**'''''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 bullshit. 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 [[Fulgrim|giant purple snake]] (which is [[/d/|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 [[/tg/ gets shit done|get shit done]] rather than bitch about their 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. [[Drop Site Massacre|I wonder if that's important]].
**'''''The Lion:''''' - Dark Angels fight daemons and reinstitute Librarians. The Lion teamkills Nemiel for reminding him about Nikaea, ruining all the buildup from the previous two <s>Dark</s> Fallen Angels Books because [[Gav Thorpe]] wanted to prove he's a big boy author who can kill his characters. Then they steal an intelligent super warp engine (instashifts the Dark Angel fleet into the warp without need for a jump point while teleporting itself and the Lion onto his flagship; Lion is capable of talking politely in front of so much power) 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 [[Cake|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.

===Books XXI - XXX===
*'''''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 [[/tg/|fa/tg/uy]]s 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 [[Slaanesh]]i 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. Sanguiniuns and Co end up reaching Imperium Secundus.
*'''''Shadows of Treachery:''''' Yet another anthology. Most of the stories are tie-togethers or "in betweens", and some are very short.
**'''''The Crimson Fist''''' - A story about two parallel story lines. The first is set during the [[Battle of Phall]], a space battle between the Iron Warriors' entire fleet, and what was left over after a third of the Imperial Fists' fleet was dispatched to reinforce the loyalists going to Istvaan, got caught in a warpstorm and were run "ashore" leaving them drifting and isolated in the backwater Phall system. The Iron Warriors, having the advantage of knowing what the hell is going on and having the powers of Chaos to guide them through the storm, show up at Phall and wreck shit for some good old fashioned revenge. Despite having the superior numbers, more and bigger guns, suicidal expenditure cohorts, and the power of a raging hateboner, the Iron Warriors were losing to the Imperial Fists's superior maneuverability and [[Alexis Polux|Captain Polux's]] protagonist power. Eventually, the Fists get the order and window to withdraw to Terra, though turning tail would put their fleet at a huge disadvantage. Given the choice between blind obedience to his father or carrying on with the battle they were winning, Polux chooses the former and takes his Fists back to Terra, but ends up in the Imperium Secundus instead. This was also one of the first solid depictions of Perturabo, and clearly the worse of the two as he's shown to be nothing more than an abusive, cold-hearted Saturday morning cartoon villain with rage issues and the depth and complexity of a kiddy pool. The second story line follows [[Sigismund]] as he follows Rogal around the Imperial Palace after deciding to stay home, even though he was ordered to command the same fleet trapped at Phall, but delegated it to Polux's predecessor. The twist is that he met Euphrati Keeler, had a spiritual experience when they spoke, and felt that he would be needed more at Terra instead of as a drifting corpse permanently lost in orbit around some backwater, and so handed off the job of commanding the fleet. When he eventually opened up to Rogal about this, it got him in trouble. See, Rogal was still one of the [[Imperial Truth|stupid atheists]] at this point, so he disowned Sigismund because he thought "serving a higher purpose" was arrogant and got in the way of doing his job. This left Sigismund feeling really sad and pissed off, thus was his start of <s>darkness</s> daddy issues. [[Black Templars|Really pissed off and bad ass daddy issues.]]
**'''''The Dark King''''' - A look into the head and story of Konrad Curze during the events leading up to the Dropsite Massacre. It shows that, even if you buy that Curze was a [[Lawful Evil|murderous paladin of justice and order]] rather than just a [[Chaotic Evil|deranged serial killer]], he's pretty fucked up in the head and lives with the knowledge of his demise haunting him (which isn't that great for what little sanity he has left). It also involves him beating up Rogal Dorn, killing some Imp Fists and Emp's Children terminators <s>with his more advanced suit and built-in vox jammers</s> [[Rip and tear|with his bare fucking hands]], then blowing up Nostramo.
**'''''The Lightning Tower''''' - Basically, 20 pages of Rogal Dorn. The first 10 is him being sad about ruining the Imperial Palace as a grand piece of art by fortifying it into a coldly functional fortress. The next 10 is Rogal having an existential monologue, then a conversation with Malcador all about why he doesn't know why Horus declared war on the Emperor and is afraid to find out why in case it makes sense. Malcador ends up knowing at least a little about Chaos and somehow got his hands on a tarot deck Curze used throughout his life even up to the close of ''The Dark King''. (Don't ask how he got them. Really.) Also that (*Name Drop*) the Lightning Tower is the important card that comes up, signifying [[Siege of Terra|a destruction of fortifications]] and/or [[Imperium of Man|a change of thinking brought about by sacrifice]].
**'''''The Kaban Project''''' - Right before Istvaan, techpriest Pallas Ravachol is working on a top secret "Kaban" robot project on Mars and realizes that the project has achieved sapience, and is in fact a form of full AI. Though he genuinely befriended the Kaban machine, Ravachol complains to boss Magos Chrom that working on an AI is both highly illegal and insanely dangerous. Chrom tells Ravachol not to be such a pussy since Horus himself gave the OK, and after some deliberation has a death squad waiting to escort Ravachol off site the next morning. Ravachol, thinking there were few ways this could end well, makes a break for it and flees for Magos Malevolus's forge, hoping to get somebody with some clout to reveal that his old boss and Horus were up to something bad. On the way, he spends time running away from a latex-clad sadist babe who persistently chases after him; since she's an AdMech equivalent of a Death Cultist assassin, this is a ''much'' better idea than it sounds. When he gets to Malevolus's forge, Malevolus distracts him with a legion of shiny Mk6 suits of Marine Power Armor long enough to drop the bomb to drop that they were for Horus. The latex-clad babe catches up to them both, and the techpriest flees again, only to be puzzled why Malevolus and the assassin are letting him run. As he gets out the door, he meets the Kaban machine, <s>who realizes friendship was most important thing, the Kaban decides to side with the good guys, and the day is saved.</s> Chrom told the Kaban Machine that it and Ravachol simply can't be friends for realsies because of the rules and stuff, and taking up with Horus was a great idea. The Kaban Machine, not understanding how humans work nor '''The Power of Friendship''' didn't know any better than to agree, and kills Ravachol right on the steps of Malevolus's forge. The end. An okay story, somewhat generic feeling prose. More of a who's who of the Dark Mechanicus during ''Mechanicum'' and telling where the hell that Kaban machine from the same book came from, and how they seduced an AI into Chaos worship.
**'''''Raven's Flight''''' - A bridge between Istvaan V and ''Deliverance Lost'', also a companion story to the Raven's Flight audio drama. The story tells how Commander Marcus Valerius of the Imperial Army is stationed on Deliverance and keeps having recurring nightmares which is causing him worry about Corax. Commander Branne of the Raven Guard's garrison on Deliverance, is getting tired of how the Legion's pet human won't stop bitching about it, and decides to take Valerius out on a trip in the battle barge to Istvaan just to show him that everything is just fine. Meanwhile, Corax and a relative handful of surviving Raven Guard are fighting a guerilla war against the traitors, trying to stay one step ahead of the Iron Warriors and then the World Eaters. In between skirmishes Corax spends a few thoughtful moments feeling bad about his Legion and the state of the Imperium now that things have gone to shit.
**'''''Death of a Silversmith''''' - The title says it all. A silversmith attached to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet is tasked with making four rings for the Mournival, after that he makes tokens (for the warrior-lodge, but he doesn't know that) and then gets his windpipe crushed to make sure word doesn't get out about the tokens. The story is seen from the perspective of the silversmith who describes his life up until the point where he's lying on his own floor slowly suffocating to death. Ultimately it is kind of irrelevant, but the lore nerds or people who have been paying attention might find it interesting. At barely 20 pages long, you might as well read it anyway.
**'''''Prince of Crows''''' - A novella featuring the Thramas Crusade as viewed by First Captain [[Sevatar]] of the Night Lords. With the Night Lords's forces all but shattered by the Dark Angels, Curze in a coma and nearly dead, and the Dark Angels's fleet in pursuit, Sevatar has to knock some heads for the Night Lords to get their shit together to reorganize and rethink strategy. It's essentially about showing the fractures in the Night Lords Legion. As most stories written by [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]], it's pretty good.
*'''''Angel Exterminatus:''''' [[Perturabo]] just finished [[skub|fucking up (or being fucked by)]] some Fists, and [[Fulgrim]] finds him to polish off a plot hook from ''The Reflection Crack'd'' and recruit Pert for an expedition into the Eye of Terror because a renegade Eldar said he knows where to get ''the good shit'' (the eponymous Angel Exterminatus). Fulgrim wanted to make a show out of delivering exposition, and he had Pert use his skills to build a stadium and went storyteller mode; then the moment was killed when a Shattered Legion detachment composed of Iron Hands and a Raven Guard commando sniped Fulgrim (he got better). Of course, Pert took the moment to remind himself that this is why he can't have and [[Rage|won't ever have]] nice things. Thinking that Fulgrim had the scent of a powerful artifact or a superweapon, and seeing that Fulgrim was becoming the Primarch equivalent of a crack addict member of the Jersey Shore and his legion wasn't looking much better, Pert decided to play it safe by tagging along and making sure Fulgrim wouldn't break anything. On the way, a different Eldar scholar came to the Shattered Legion, telling them that Fulgrim and Pert can't be allowed to get to the Angel Exterminatus, or [[Daemon|Bad Things (Warp-registered trademark)]] will happen. Well into the journey into the Eye, the Iron Hands's resident mad scientist accidentally gives away their location, and the Emp's Children and Iron Warriors decide to throw a boarding party. After a few pages of pulse-pounding action, Pert says "fuck this" and leaves as the Iron Hands' same mad scientist overloads the engines and does a [[Battlefleet Gothic|mother of a ramming maneuver]] which kills an Emp's Children ship. (Pert was getting sick of Fulgrim's shit at this point, so he decided not to let them know, leading to the loss of the ship and thousands of casualties for Fulgrim.) When they finally get there, they find a [[Crone World]] covered in ruins and occupied spirit stones being held in orbit around a black hole. Some wraithbone constructs pop up and Pert and Fulgrim have to fight to the heart of the planet to get at the Angel Exterminatus. On the way, Pert kills their renegade Eldar because he was a lyin' bitch. When they ''finally'' get there, surprise! Daemon Primarch Fulgrim is supposed to be the Angel Exterminatus, and he betrays Pert (a bauble Fulgrim gave to Pert at the start of the book was a vitality-leeching thing), and they start the ritual which would sacrifice Pert to turn Fulgrim into a Daemon Prince. Then the Shattered Legion crashes the ceremony and assists the Iron Warriors since it's clear they weren't working with the Emp's Children anymore. Pert kills Fulgrim but it doesn't count since Fulgrim's mortal essence works just as well as sacrifice. He goes full Daemon Prince despite a generous helping of Thunder Hammer to his [[gay|pretty face]], breaks every spirit stone on the planet, and disappears with every last one of his sick fucks. The Eldar scholar helping the Shattered Legion throws a bitch fit, revealing that both scholars were Dark Eldar who had cut a deal with Fulgrim (help him become a daemon and they get assloads of spirit stones to fuck with), and he had made sure that the Shattered Legions were there to put a wedge in that deal because... reasons. The Shattered Legion gets the hell out and the Iron Warriors try to GTFO as the planet starts to fall into the black hole. The book ends with Pert, [[pretend|being a wise man]], ordering them to reverse course and fly right into that fucker. (It works out for them in the end.) Subplots include a lot of buildup for McNeil's Iron Warriors stories, the Shattered Legions' feelings on trying to unfuck an irreversibly fucked situation, and a tense story of two Imperial Fists as they try to survive Fabius's turning them into mutants (which actually had a poor payoff). Despite being overall good, it's a bit of a skub novel because the depiction of Perturabo is so different from expected; rather than being the bitter [[RAGE|Rage]] machine from every other depiction, he's a quiet [[Neckbeard|nerd who plays with toys as a hobby]] but with muscles. The ghosts of Eldar's Aspect Warriors and Wraith-Constructs inside a planet left inside the Eye of Terror, the first death of Lucius at the hands of a Mary Sue despite previous claims that he was undefeated during the Heresy and his unexplained first resurrection, and an Iron Hands legionnaire somehow being immune to sonic weapons by being deaf is canon rape on par with C.S. Goto. And worst of all, a rotating Shadowsword turret.
*'''''Betrayer:''''' Lorgar and Angron rampage over the Ultramarines' 500 worlds. Lots of references to Angron's past and his Butcher's Nails 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 totally bro-tier until that bitch Erebus decides to intervene and becomes a team-killing asshole. Why Erebus isn't modeled with a long mustache fit for twirling is beyond us. Best known for containing Angron's dressing-down speech toward Gulliman having it easy since birth while Angron had a pretty shit life from day one.
*'''''Mark of Calth:''''' Another set of short stories, though all focused 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. Also shows how he returned to Davin to learn how to teleport with the '''MURDER SWORD''', then killing the priestess that helped him turn Horus. She somehow wins because she served Chaos before dying which pisses Erebus off.
**'''''Calth That Was''''' - The story focuses on an Ultramarine Captain and Co. and on a Word Bearers commander and his Dark Apostle. Keeps bringing up what Calth used to be like. Longer-than-the-rest-story short, Word Bearers try to Nurgle 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 he ended up killing his mentor with dark powers (turned him insta inside out). A kind of nice story that shows the <s>degradation</s> enlightenment of the Legion.
**'''''The Traveller''''' - A spacedock traffic controller survives the destruction of his star fort, and the fatal crash of his escape shuttle before ending up in a small underground arcology with other human survivors. Imperial cultists believe he is blessed, and when he starts hearing whispers and seeing unbelievers they start rounding everybody up for execution. Everybody gets slowly executed till he's the last one left. He learns he's been possessed and reveals to an Ultramarine that he was was infected by the vox from the ''Campanile''.
**'''''A Deeper Darkness''''' - An Ultramarine has a hard-on for a certain Word Bearer trolling him. Hunts down said Word Bearer into a cave system with a team of soldiers and Spess Merheens. Word Bearer trolls them by summoning a Gorgon. Ultramarine wins by tricking the Gorgon into looking at its reflection.
**'''''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... turns out Daemons give visions of the future to potential Gal Vorbak, and said Gal Vorbak was given a vision of him not abandoning his fallen brothers on Calth. The Daemon doesn't have time for that shit so it lets him die during his transformation, much to the distress of the still fairly bro tier [[Argel Tal]] who is soothed by the honeyed words of [[Lorgar|did nothing wrong]].
**'''''Athame''''' - A narrated story of the history of a knife, though not one from the '''MURDER SWORD'''. That's about it... totally... right? Wrong. The small sacrificial knife that Ollanius found was carved on Terra for a benign ritual, stolen by an evil Perpetual who was killed by ''the Emperor'' in medieval times, found in an archeological dig by Kasper Hawser, and went on other crazy murder-adventures, all while having rudimentary sentience.
**'''''Unmarked''''' - Ollanius Pius and friends are traveling through time and space using the athame from the previous story. We learn a lot more about Oll's past, going into detail about his offhand mentions that he was one of the Argonauts and that he served in the First World War and the First Gulf War. It's based as all fuck and written by [[Dan Abnett]], so don't miss it. Also features Ol' Oll's much, much earlier encounters with the [[Emperor|big daddy E]] in flashbacks and kinda proves O.P. Diddy right in his contention against Him that faith has power it not directed [[Lorgar|in the wrong]] [[Chaos|places]] and has in fact protected Terra for fuckawatts worth of millenia, and if He hadn't have been such an aspergated edgelord about atheism, more daemons might have been conquered due to the power of 19th century English hymnody with some of the words altered to refer apparently to the very same edgy athiest. Also features a traumatized but insightful qt3.14 psyker witch.
*'''''Vulkan Lives:''''' What happened to Vulkan after the Dropsite Massacre? He got made Konrad Curze's torture bitch. Plenty of fun with dining implements and an awesome ending involving a hammer to the face. Not one of the best HH Books though is a somewhat necessary read for continuing the plot arc. Remember the Shattered Legions crew from ''Angel Exterminatus''? Now you get a new group that is far more bland and less distinct. The major problem with the story is that, while it is fun reading Curze taunting Vulkan, not much happens in it and it barely affects the stakes or the overall plot to a great degree, except we now know that Vulkan is a perpetual.
*'''''The Unremembered Empire:''''' [[Perpetual|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?'' No one knows what it is really about, especially the book's description of itself (which describes its ''sequels''). Several things happen in the book and several unrelated subplots collide as several entities are drawn by the Pharos device to Macragge. There are implications that Guilliman's new backup Imperium is starving resources from Terra.
*'''''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, also gets into a fight with Mortarion on the way, also [[The Fallen|half his legion turns traitor]] but turns out it's no big deal.
** '''''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 and the Chaos Gods give it to him by sending him to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber from Dragon Ball Z (kinda). 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. (In all seriousness though, the Chaos Gods have been claiming this throughout the series. It could be the truth or one of their beautifully crafted lies.) Loken comes back. There's also the Knights of <s>Lannister</s> Molech, who fall to Slaanesh through copious amounts of Twincest. Also, if you have been ignoring the audio books, you will be a bit lost at the start of this one.
*'''''The Damnation of 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. Adds just about as much to the overall series as ''Furious Abyss'' did, but is actually pretty well written (unlike "Furious Abyss"). To cut a long story short, daemons take over a world in the Pandorax system, capture a starship, and use it to start ferrying cultists from place to place. The book also has some crossover with 40k and the Pandorax Campaign.

===Books XXXI - XL===
*'''''Legacies of Betrayal''''' Another anthology, though this time it's a bit of a cheat; they just consolidated several pre-existing stories and some of the the novellas but also included print versions of audio books.
**'''Brotherhood of the Storm''' - see above
**'''Serpent''' - A really short and out-of-place story about a Davinite Priest.
**'''Hunters Moon''' - Originally an audiobook involving peasant fishermen rescuing a crashed Space Wolf who is running from the Alpha Legion after killing Alpharius. It obviously doesn't end well.
**'''Veritas Ferrum''' - A prequel to "Damnation of Pythos", about an Iron Hands starship escaping (against their better nature) from Isstvan with some survivors.
**'''Riven''' - An Iron Hand from the Crusader Host is sent by Sigismund to look for some of his brothers, scattered after Istvaan V. He finds one suspicious-looking group and discovers that they use forbidden technologies to fight traitors even after death.
**'''Strike and Fade''' - More survivors of Isstvan, though this is about Salamanders just killing time (and Night Lords) whilst they wait to be rescued.
**'''Honour to the Dead''' - An Ultramarine squad fights its way through Calth with a innocent woman and child trying their hardest to follow them to safety, while loyalist and traitor Titans punch each other's faces in the background.
**'''Butcher's Nails''' - A good one to read: Angron & Lorgar go on the Shadow Crusade and come to an understanding whilst fighting Eldar. It is also a prequel to "Betrayer".
**'''Warmaster''' - Horus considers how much of a badass he is while chatting with Ferrus Manus's skull.
**'''Kryptos''' - Somewhere in the Galactic East (either Thramas Crusade or Imperium Secundus), Nykona Sharrowkyn and company go kidnap a warp code interpreter that will let them intercept garbled enemy communications. Prequel to "Angel Exterminatus".
**'''Wolf's Claw''' - Bjorn the Fell-Handed needs a replacement arm but the Iron Priests are too busy; he happens to find a nice fancy relic one just lying around.
**'''The Divine Word''' - Marcus Valerius (army commander from Raven Guard story arc) receives some prophetic dreams and subsequently prevents an Alpha Legion diversion. It serves as his final push to join the Imperial Cult.
**'''Thief of Revelations''' - After Prospero, the Thousand Sons need something to stop all their rampant mutation, so Ahriman goes to ask why Magnus has locked himself away. He's got bigger things to worry about and is looking across time and space for key events for future [[Just as Planned]] manipulations.
**'''Lucius the Eternal Warrior''' - After his first death ''(and unexplained resurrection)'' at the hands of Nykona Sharrowkyn, Lucius has somehow abandoned the Heresy and goes to the Planet of Sorcerers to fight a duel with the bestest Thousand Son swordsman (cause he cheats and reads your mind to see what you do next) and ends up meeting Ahriman. [[wat|Uh-huh...]]
**'''The Eightfold Path''' - Kharn and the World Eaters realise that too much rip and tear is leading them [[Khorne|down a damning path]], but they're already too far gone.
**'''Guardian of Order''' - [[Cypher]] and [[Zahariel]] discover that the Ouroboros (banished in Fallen Angels) is coming back.
**'''Heart of the Conqueror''' - Angron's Navigator gets a bit uppity about being made to turn traitor, despite having been picked for the job as the angry man's chauffeur by the Emperor himself. Blams herself during mid-warp transit with not-fun results for flagship.
**'''Censure''' - Aeonid Thiel is killing time and Word Bearers in the Underworld War on Calth, writing notes about it on his armour. Said notes will eventually get written into Guilliman's draft of the [[Codex Astartes|Codex]] on the subject of killing Word Bearers (because it's that damn important to kill Word Bearers). Goes on a buddy cop adventure with an army trooper. Thiel eventually gets bored and goes back to Macragge in the end.
**'''Lone Wolf''' - Bjorn has lost all of his squad, but is now such an awesome badass that he can solo Bloodthirsters.
*'''''Deathfire''''' - "vUlKaN lIvEs" What the Salamanders have been saying since Isstvan is true: Vulkan lives! Well now he does. Basically a bunch of Salamanders take his body from Macragge to Nocturne (with some side help from didn't-ask-for-this Magnus) and throw him into Nocturne's largest volcano, and lo and behold he comes back to life, making that entire plotline pointless. Still has the fucking Fulgurite in his chest, though. TL;DR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7nzml-zZ9M
*'''''War Without End''''': Anthologies Without End.
**'''The Devine Adoratrice''' - Prequel to "Vengeful Spirit" shows that House Devine was rotten to the core long before the coming of Fulgrim.
**'''Howl of the Heathworld''' - Space Wolves get sent to Terra to watch over Rogal Dorn so he doesn't start using psykers; it's a pointless task and everyone involved knows it. Also offers insight into the Wolves' naming conventions.
**'''Lord of the Red Sands''' - During Istvaan III, Angron indulges himself in some philosophizing about the nature of his rebellion and what is good cause while butchering his own sons. I swear, I'm telling the truth.
**'''Artefacts''' - On his way to Istvaan V, Vulkan decides that all of his artefacts should be destroyed to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. His forgemaster intervenes and persuades him to keep at least some so Vulkan grants him the right to choose seven items to preserve and give him the title of Forge Father, keeper of these artefacts.
**'''Hands of the Emperor''' - Depicts one typical day of the Adeptus Custodes through eyes of their newly appointed Master of the Watch, including colossal orbital plates invading Imperial Palace and Custodes and the Imperial Fists being stubborn assholes even when facing battle with each other at the heart of the Imperium, never-ceasing Blood Games and bureaucratic and diplomatic hell wrapping all that entanglement.
**'''The Phoenician''' - A dying Morlock witnesses the final duel between Ferrus Manus and Fulgrim.
**'''Sermon of Exodus''' - Another prequel to "Damnation of Pythos", explains the appearance of the huge cultists' fleet from Davin in orbit of Pythos. Provides rare insight on the life on Davin and origins of Chaos cults there. Also features really bizarre description of the first Davinite priest, who spent the last several thousand years in the warp.
**'''By the Lion's Command''' - Prologue to "Angels of Caliban". Corswain is tasked by the Lion to hunt Death Guard ships, but is experiencing a severe lack of manpower. After an uneven engagement with Typhon that nearly costs him his life and fleet, he decides to send Chapter Master Belath to Caliban for recruits.
**'''The Harrowing''' - Some random Alpha Legionnaires take over some random Mechanicus ship. Turns out that they are so god-mode that everyone important is their operative, so they meet no resistance at all. The end.
**'''All That Remains''' - A transport ship full of war orphans and Imperial Army soldiers with severe PTSD is lost in space during warp transit. Fear not though, because in fact they are being stolen by one of Malcador's agent for transfer to Titan and induction into the Grey Knights.
**'''Gunsight''' - The Vindicare Assassin from Nemesis is still alive and on Horus' flagship; it's about him spending years waiting for the opportune moment to get a shot, but he starts going mad while he waits. Gives ups when Horus plucks his killshot from the air and Horus gives him a chaos rifle for his change in loyalty.
**'''Allegiance''' - Revuel Arvida spends some time on the White Scars flagship trying to understand what to do after losing all his Legion. He reflects on his time on Prospero, attends the Khan's trial for the pro-Horus plotters from "Scars", and tries to escape, but in the end he chooses to spend some more time with the Scars.
**'''Daemonology''' - After his duel with Jaghatai, Mortarion tries to interrogate a Daemon, which goes as well as you'd expect. Also shows that Malcador and the Emperor planned Nikaea for almost seventy years before it took place.
**'''Black Oculus''' - A Navigator that serves the IV Legion loses his mind after Perturabo drives his ships into the black hole in the center of the Eye of Terror.
**'''Virtues of the Sons''' - Sanguinius forsees that he will not always be in charge of the Blood Angels, but worries about the Red Thirst causing havoc with his sons' futures, so gets Amit to duel Kharn and Azkaellon to duel Lucius in hopes they'll learn something. Azkaellon learns to let the rage out a bit and Amit learns a modicum of restraint.
**'''The Laurel of Defiance''' - Lucretius Corvo (later founder of the Novamarines) and his squad kill a Traitor Titan using only their wits and one meltagun.
**'''A Safe and Shadowed Place''' - [[Night Lords]] start stabbing each other in the back as soon as Curze goes missing while solo'ing Macragge. It's about a ship floating in the ruinstorm that has just discovered the [[Imperium Secundus|Pharos]] and foreshadows problems for Ultramar.
**'''Imperfect''' - Daemon-Fulgrim has been getting Fabius to clone Ferrus Manus, because the split personality thing makes him feel guilty about failing to turn his brother to Horus's side, but the clones are never quite right and go mental at each suggestion. Fabius also has his own stuff going on.
**'''Chirurgeon''' - Fabius is dying from the genetic flaw that's been killing Emperor's Children since before they found Fulgrim - or not, since he found a way to distill other Marines into drug that keeps the illness at bay.
**'''Twisted''' - Maloghurst solves some routine troubles on the ''Vengeful Spirit'' like persistent petitioners, lack of water, rogue daemons and the Davinite cult plotting to control Horus.
**'''Wolf Mother''' - Right after events of ''Vengeful Spirit'' Alivia Sureka goes searching for her daughter, who was stolen by a Slaaneshi cult that escaped from Molech, with a little help from Severian The Wolf. No, really, she is so badass that Severian doesn't even look like someone superior.
*'''''Pharos''''': Night Lords fucking up the Pharos Lighthouse on Sotha. Sanguinius eventually grows some balls and starts standing up to Guilliman instead of just being a pantomime Emperor, while the Lion is nowhere to be seen as usual. Warsmith Dantioch bites it while using the Pharos to burn the Night Lords out of his fortress, but inadvertently piques the interest of the [[Tyranids]], causing them to show up 10,000 years later. Skraivok become a prime example of DAEMON SWORDS: NOT EVEN ONCE.
*'''''Eye of Terra''''': Another anthology.
**'''The Wolf of Ash and Fire''' - takes place before Ullanor. Emperor and Horus destroy one really powerful WAAAGH!!!, lead by an exceptionally huge Big Mek. Story consists almost completely of foreshadowing.
**'''Aurelian''' - see "First Heretic"
**'''Massacre''' - A young Night Lords apothecary named [[Talos_(Warhammer_40,000)|Talos]] takes part in the Istvaan V Massacre.
**'''Brotherhood of the Moon''' - After the failed coup from ''Scars'', Torghun Khan is being interrogated and explains why he chose Team Horus.
**'''Inheritor''' - [[Eliphas_The_Inheritor|Eliphas]] The Inheritor (yes, that one from the DoW series) sacrifices the population of a city on a planet Kronos (yes, again from DoW) and a company of Ultramarines to have a nice little chat with Lorgar.
**'''Vorax''' - An unlucky Dark Mechanicum priest falls to a loyalist ambush and subsequently being killed by Vorax-class battle servitor. Really short and forgettable story.
**'''Ironfire''' - Turns out that Idriss Krendl (that arrogant warsmith who had a stronghold dropped on his head by Dantioch) is alive! Really tough bastard, though several months under debris has affected his sanity a little. He now spends his time testing new siege tactics on the Emperor's Children world in preparation for the siege of the Imperial Palace.
**'''Red-Marked''' - Aeonid Thiel starts his band of cliche badass marines and learns about the mysterious Nightfane, that threatens Macragge itself.
**'''Master of the First''' - Astelan takes part in a coup to remove Luther from command, but only to prevent it.
**'''Stratagem''' - Guilliman explains to Aeonid Thiel how important it is not to follow military books to the letter and concludes that he'll just have to write a book about it (guess [[Codex_Astartes|what book]] it is).
**'''The Long Night''' - Jago Sevatarion is chilling in Dark Angels captivity, slowly losing his mind due to his suppressed psyker powers, when some girl from the ship's astropath corps starts to talk to him from boredom. When her superiors find out, they flog her nearly to death because it was obviously forbidden. Sevatar doesn't take it lightly, flees captivity and kills the main astropath and calls it JUSTICE, because a man who skins young girls by the dozens on a daily basis simply to strike fear in a populace is definitely all about justice.
**'''Sins of the Father''' - During his emo-phase Sanguinius contemplates how his legion will fall after his death. He then decides that switching roles between Azkaellon and Amit during ritual combat will probably solve all problems.
**'''The Eagle's Talon''' - While the Battle of Tallarn rages, some Imperial Fists '''covert operatives''' try to take over a huge macro-transporter. They fail and are forced to crash the transporter onto raging battlefield below, blasting everything within 300km and causing nuclear fallout.
**'''Iron Corpses''' - One really tough and stubborn Iron Warriors Warsmith refuses to die despite the nuclear fallout from the previous story, waits for the storm to subside, finds and reanimates Warlord Titan and returns to action.
**'''The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen''' - The Imperial governor of some backwater world recollects memories of his long service to the Imperium, while preparing himself to spit in the face of Horus's representatives when they come to demand his surrender.
**'''Herald of Sanguinius''' - Azkaellon invents the Sanguinor to free his gene-father from the burden of being the figurehead of Imperium Secundus.
*'''''The Path Of Heaven''''': Sequel to Scars. The White Scars have been fighting traitor legions for a few years but are starting to show the strain. They finally decide to head back to Terra, but things don't go as planned. Notable for digging into the Webway storyline and the Navis Nobilite as well as featuring a resurrected and suddenly competent Eidolon. Navigators weren't going to sit around while E-money built their replacement, White Scars use a prototype webway portal to escape their last stand, and Moratarion starts using sorcery to locate Typhon.
*'''The Silent War:''' Guess What?! It's ''another'' anthology of stories that GW have already sold individually as audio-books. So value might be had for those who hadn't listened to them.
**'''The Purge''' - The story consists of two story lines. In the first of them, Sor Talgron purges one of the worlds in Ultramar during the Shadow Crusade, but gets tricked and takes a bombful of life-eater virus to the face (he survives nontheless, though). In second, he undertakes some covert actions on Terra before Istvaan V and leaves a nasty surprise for Dorn in the catacombs beneath the Imperial Palace.
**'''The Sigillite''' - see below, in section "Audio Books"
**'''Wolf Hunt''' - [[Awesome|Samurai witch hunter]] Yasu Nagasena hunts Severian the Wolf right after the events of Outcast Dead.
**'''Army of One''' - An Eversor assassin is sent out for the routine "kill everyone" mission, but finds out that his main target is not only a stereotypical Stupid Fat Decadent Planetary Governor who turned traitor, but also a jerk from his past. So he kills him.
**'''The Gates of Terra''' - Dorn and Malcador have an idea that it will be good for the defences of Terra if they use some psykers to run some chosen veterans through endless hypno-simulations of ill-fated space battles with the Vengeful Spirit within the boundaries of Sol.
**'''Ghosts Speak Not''' - Amendera Kendel, who had a crisis over her moral values after the events of The Voice and left the Silent Sisterhood, returns to Luna to recruit some of the Garro's Death Guard into the Knights Errant. They then are dispatched to a mission to uncover a traitor's plot at Proxima Centauri.
**'''Templar''' - Sigismund purges an asteroid temple of Word Bearers, this being the same temple that was mentioned in The Purge (those cross-references are awesome).
**'''Distant Echoes of Old Night''' - Some Death Guard are drowning Imperial Fists' defences with bodies on some shithole moon in the middle of nowhere, but it seems they are running out of time. They launch a final assault but fail to coordinate the phosphex bombardment with the assault and actually destroy themselves with little help from a primitive trap built by the Fists. Facepalm on the house to everyone.
**'''Grey Angel''' - Loken, fresh from Istvaan III and accompanied by Iacton Qruze, is sent to Caliban to check Luther's loyalty to Terra. The mission actually fails as Loken gets caught and is interrogated by Luther himself, but Loken is rescued by the Watcher in the Dark and Lord Cypher and subsequently flees the planet.
**'''Lost Sons''' - Tylos Rubio goes to Baal to disband the Blood Angels Legion and recruit their last battle company into Malcador's Knights Errant after Sanguinius and the rest of the legion go missing after Signus. The Angels understandably don't like this news and Rubio nearly gets killed, but is saved by a message from Raldoron announcing that Sanguinius and the IX Legion are alive.
**'''Child of Night''' - it turns out that one of the Night Lord Librarians had fled his Legion and went into hiding on Terra. One of the Knight Errant finds him and recruits him for the Grey Knights.
**'''Luna Mendax''' - After his fail on Caliban, Garviel Loken shuts himself away in a forgotten garden on Luna and spends his time growing flowers and feeling sorry for himself. This is so pathetic that the spirit of the long-dead and eaten by daemons Tarik Torgaddon escapes the warp to return Loken to his senses.
**'''Patience''' - Helig Gallor from Ghosts Speak Not, now acting on his own, is searching for Garro who is too busy killing giant daemons to report to Malcador's office on time.
**'''The Watcher''' - Ison from the Knights Errant finds and saves a horrifyingly mutilated and nearly dead survivor from the Space Wolves squad that was sent to watch over Konrad Curze.
*'''''Angels of Caliban:''''' Two Dark Angels stories in one book again, though this one actually moves the plot forward. In Ultramar, the Lion captures Konrad Curze but only after discreetly nuking a whole region despite Guilliman's ban on orbital weapon use, which results in his disgrace and we find that it is Guilliman who breaks the Lion Sword. Curze reveals that there were Chaos cults on Macragge too and that Guilliman would be a traitor if he had landed a little to the left. On Caliban, the Fallen openly declare their rebellion from the Imperium and ironically steal some starships that were meant to collect them and actually bring them into the war again. [[Zahariel]] kills [[Cypher]] and takes his place.
*'''''Praetorian of Dorn''''' Alpharius tries to invade <s>Terra</s> Pluto. Dorn kills him. Yes, Alpharius is now dead. And not a fake either, but the real Alpharius. Omegon can confirm. Alpha Legions fags blew a gasket. Oh shit believe we did.
*'''''Corax''''' A compilation of all the Corax Stories plus a new one, '''Weregeld''', which manages to undo all the hard work the previous stories have done and turn Corax into a douchebag. Kills all his mutated Raven Guard because he promised to kill warp stuff. Saves Russ though.

===Books XLI - L===
*'''''The Master of Mankind''''': The Emperor is a dick: the book. We all knew this but now it's set in stone. Highlights include the Emperor stating to Arkhan Land that the Primarchs are tools and he views them with a scientific but detached fascination. He refers to them as numbers but seems content to allow the fantasy of being their "father", an interpretation of the character that was fairly divisive to say the least. He actually seems to care more for his Custodians than he does any of his other creations, but they don't consider him their father and see him as just their warlord. Drach'nyen is also revealed to be the daemon created when Cain killed Abel. In the end the Emperor closes the door on the Webway and has to spend the rest of his time sitting in the chair keeping it shut. Despite this, it does show off why the Chaos Gods fear him, as he pretty much rapes an infinite army of Daemons; the greater daemons either flee or try and fail to fight him (being destroyed in a matter of moments) whilst the lesser ones die just by looking at him. Despite this, Drach'nyen nearly kills him, and claims that it will kill the Emperor (keep in mind that the future is malleable and Daemons lie). But how will it feast on the Emperor's tattered soul when Abaddon lacks arms to plunge it into his chest? (Abaddon never lost his arms due to the same retcon that let Eldrad live) Also known as Master of Skubkind. The Emperor reveals his grand plan of saving the human race from the Eldar fate by giving absolute control of every human to a Custodian before shanking him with Drach'nyen and making him run into the Webway. Also put all his chips into the ''Human Webway'' plan and screwed us all over without a backup. Can you tell that this is an ADB book? It also features one of the most depressing endings of the whole Heresy series as in the last scene of the book the Emperor somberly acknowledges to one of his Custodian that he has run out of cards to play and can't think of a way out of the whole situation, grimdark indeed.
*'''''Garro''''': Compilation of all the stories about Garro and his boy band, though they insist it isn't just an anthology since the audio book stories were expanded to be more written novel friendly.
*'''''Shattered Legions''''': It's an anthology containing an anthology. I shit thee not. It shoves together the limited edition anthology Meduson with a few other shorter stories, including some Alpha Legion stuff like the Seventh Serpent.
*'''''The Crimson King''''': Magnus was broken into shards when Russ felled him. Now the Thousand Sons with the help of Lucius the Eternal must put him back together. Kairos Fateweaver makes an appearance. Ties into the Ahriman Trilogy
*'''''Tallarn''''': Does it even need to be stated? It's another fucking anthology, this time putting all the tank porn of the Tallarn books into one binding. It is worth a read if you are a fan of Imperial Guard (Army), as most of the storylines are about around mortal tank crews doing what they do best (dying).
*'''''Ruinstorm:''''' The conclusion to the Imperium Secundus plotline, as well as the follow on to Damnation of Pythos. Shows the Lion, Sanguinius and Guilliman trying to cross the Ruinstorm to reach Terra. After a brief stopover at Pandorax, they decide to head out to Davin where the Heresy began and where destinies are remade; they pass systems along the way that show what the Galaxy would look like if Chaos wins, such as a Forge World surrounded by an immense fortress wall in outer space 4000 miles thick and a sector of space filled with solid ritualised geometric shapes that are perhaps light years across. Davin itself is surrounded by a cloud of bones and wreckage millions of kilometers thick, but the planet has long since been abandoned. There Sanguinius finds out that in order to live through the Heresy he must become a monster even worse than Horus, but dying will curse his sons with the Black Rage; blood is on his hands either way. Instead, Sanguinius tries to sacrifice himself to save the day, but the [[Sanguinor]] steps in and takes his place while the fleets rain down a shitstorm and destroy the planet. In the aftermath, the Ruinstorm abates enough for them to reach Terra, but Horus has so much force that it is impossible for all three legions to reach, so Guilliman and the Lion agree to distract the Traitors long enough to give Sanguinius a window to get back and face his destiny, explaining why they never made it to the Siege since they were engaging Traitor fleets and burning their worlds.
*'''''Old Earth:''''' Set immediately after ''Deathfire'', Vulkan and three Salamander legionaries (the rest of the Salamanders weren't informed of their Primarch's resurrection) travel through the Webway by a gate hidden in a cave on Nocturne. On their path to Terra, they came across the Shattered Legions who were preparing for their first major void engagement with the Sons of Horus. Just before the attack, some Medusan-born Iron Hands tried to stage a coup against Shadrak Meduson by revealing a hideous contraption of machines and the last remnants of Ferrus Manus - ''his iron hand'' (they were under the illusion that they could resurrect their Primarch through cybernetics; it is hinted that the Mechanicum had some <s>hand</s>{{BLAM}}{{blam|that pun was so bad heresy is automatic}} in this affair). Thankfully Vulkan shatters the hand and Meduson assumes command again, though he was killed by '''Tybalt Marr''' in a boarding action after the Iron Hand refused to send reinforcements to him. In the end, it is revealed that the Emperor had Vulkan forge a weapon that, in the event Terra fell to Horus, would amplify the power of the Golden Throne into a potentially fatal/crippling FUCK YOU nuke into the heart of the Chaos God's domains, sadly also wiping out the entire Throneworld (this is possibly also one of Vulkan's nine relics). Oh, and Eldrad rescues [[Knights-Errant|Barthusa Narek]] from Nocturne and makes him his assassin. They killed most of the Cabal, including a vaguely amphibian alien sitting on top of a jungle pyramid. Yes, Eldrad Ulthran might just be the only person alive to have killed an Old One. Finally they rescue John Grammaticus, who had his memory wiped after his failure to assassinate Vulkan. With his memory restored, Grammaticus is ordered by Eldrad to find Ollanius Pius and go to Terra.
*'''''The Burden of Loyalty:''''' In the grim darkness of the 3rd millenium, there are only anthologies.
**'''The Thirteenth Wolf:''' Old Guard Space Wolves get lost in a a series of Warp Portals during the battle of Prospero.
**'''Into Exile:''' Arkhan-the-Humble-Land basically has to have a Boltgun Shoved in his face to leave during the initial Mars Revolt.
**'''Cybernetica:''' Story full of [[awesome]] about how Carrion the Raven Guard Tech-aspriant awaiting graduation watches his fellows get slaughtered before hulking out Sith-Style. Meanwhile an Iron Warrior proves how badass they are when not under the thumb of their whiny emo excuse of a primarch by literally throwing Carrion off a tower so he's the sole target of an incoming Warlord Titan. Carrion then joins the Knights-Errants and actually makes Dorn backpedal and heads back to Mars to aid the Resistance in taking it back through use of Heretek.
*'''''Wolfsbane:''''' Leman Russ faces off against Horus, with the help of the Spear of Russ mentioned in the FUCKOLD Space Wolves novels. They're evenly matched but Russ seems to get the better of Horus when the Spear partially de-corrupts the Warmaster. Unfortunately for him, Russ tries to bring his brother back to his senses rather than strike a killing blow and is dragged away barely conscious by his men after Horus retaliates, setting the stage for the Battle of Yarant. Also a glimpse of [[Belisarius Cawl]] from back in his earlier, fleshier years.
*'''''Born of Flame:''''' ANTHOLOGIES!

===Books LI-LIV===
*'''''Slaves to Darkness''''' The traitor primarchs gather for the assault on Terra but things aren't going well. Guilliman and the Lion are giving them a helluva hard time and Horus himself is still quite literally drained from his duel with Russ. Basically how the gang gets back together for the push on Terra. The Sons of Horus start fracturing badly and Maloghurst takes it upon himself to cure Horus. In so doing, he forces a daemon to act as his guide through the Warp and finds out from this surprisingly forthcoming daemon (presumably from the Chaos God of Exposition) that even though Horus was superpowered from his Molech makeover, he'd left a part of his soul behind in the Chaos God's realms, which had come to the realization that Chaos had been using him from the beginning. The daemon also suggests that Horus was never meant to win in the first place and that for all his new power he is no match against The Emperor, but Maloghurst very loudly refuses to believe it. Maloghurst meets his end as he resurrects Horus due to infighting within the Sons of Horus, erasing the last uncorrupted part of Horus's soul in the process. Mortarion is named the vanguard of the Siege, Perturabo is sent to pick up Angron, and Lorgar manages to bind Fulgrim into joining the party. However, Lorgar makes the fucking massive mistake of trying to depose the Warmaster, which leads him to being utterly curbstomped by the revived Horus and told that he will be killed if Horus ever sees him again. Lorgar merely names Zardu Layak as the acting commander of the Word Bearers before he leaves, but warns Horus that his refusal to completely submit before the Chaos Gods will lead to the Traitor Legions' ultimate defeat at Terra. Magnus makes an appearance at the end, swearing himself to Horus's service. "Alpharius" makes a token appearance to hand over Terra's defence data before disappearing without a trace and no mention of his legion at all, although Alpharius does basically mime they are done fighting for the Warmaster's ends.
*'''''Heralds of the Siege''''' You know the drill by now. Anthology. But the end is in sight.
**'''Myriad:''' Loyalist Mechanicum forces hiding underground in Mars launch guerilla attacks on targets of opportunity from below. During one raid which blows the head off of a Warlord Titan, they retrieve a Castellan automata with the Abominable Intelligence from ''Cybernetica'' and a tech menial. Putting them into quarantine the Abominable Intelligence wakes up from probing and cleanses the menial of all scrap code & corruption to display it means no ill will to the loyalists. The Tech Inquisitor leader decides it's time to go Tech Radical "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Abominable Intelligence supplies them with a complete battleplan and strategy (4.7k item checklist) for wiping out all the Dark Mechanicum on Mars and starts off with seizing & cleansing a Warlord Titan searching for their headquarters.
**'''The Grey Raven:''' A ship sent back to Terra by Corax arrives in the solar system, with the Librarian Raven Guard who opened the Emp's gene-banks for Corax, seven custodians, and an Imperial Fist force. Presenting to a border post for inspection, the Custodian commander, upon discovering the identity of the Raven Guard, states a code word to the Custodians on ship and they all try to pull the librarian's head off. The Fist Captain saves him and his men try to hold off the Custodians while he and librarian try to get off the ship. The Custodian captain corners them and slays the Fist captain. The Librarian gets angry and is about to use his psychic powers on the Custodian when he remembers his vow to Corax and surrenders to execution. Revealed to be an elaborate test by Malcador, who subsequently recruits him into the Grey Knights after apologizing for the death of the Fist captain.
**'''Valerius:''' Marcus Valerius of the Therion cohort (unaugmented troops fighting with Raven Guard) is now a big believer in the Lectitio Divinatus. He sets his forces to defend cross over points on a river where a bigger enemy force is attempting to cross. Corax had sent the Therion cohort (23k soldiers) and Valerian to die fighting against traitor marines & titans for a planet near Beta-Garmon with no escorts for their transport ships. Gives a speech about how proud all his soldiers should be for facing a suicidal mission to die for the emperor. Therions manage to take out all titans before being overrun. As the remaining marines breach his command leviathan, Valerius gives the order to detonate their reactor and leads a prayer with the remaining command crew. Another regiment of the imperial army happens across the aftermath and think that the Therions were wiped out and some other regiment managed to hold the line against the traitors. Leviathan's death took out everybody on the battlefield. Valerius stumbles out of the wreckage of the Leviathan, and proclaims his survival a miracle.
**'''The Ember Wolves:''' A Warhound titan pack attached to the World Eaters takes down a warmonger titan on some planet. World Eater influence leads to a leadership challenge shortly after tipping over the warmonger. Despite the pack leader putting down the leadership challenge, the downed loyalist warmonger blows up its reactor and takes out all named characters.
**'''Blackshield:''' Khorak, a renegade member of Mortarion's [[Deathshroud]], is on the run from loyalist hunters. He and his squad escape down to the surface of a swamp planet where they are slaughtered till only he remains. He recognizes the leader of the loyalists as another Death Guard member who reveals himself to be Crysos Morturg, a survivor of Isstvan III. Khorak explains that he turned against Mortarion after Molech, when his entire squad was sacrificed by Mort for witchcraft. They both express their hatred of Mortarion, and Khorak briefly considers teaming up with Morturg but then one of his buddies proves to be not quite dead and tries to shoot Morturg, who deflects the shell with his psychic abilities. Khorak immediately tries to kill him and is gunned down. Morturg is revealed to be a mangled mess who survived Isstvan thanks solely to his psychic power and an extensive cybernetic rebuild by Calleb Decima, another Istvaan III survivor (who by the end of the battle was so mangled he resembled a spider more than a person). After Crysos ruminates on the pointlessness of Khorak's death, he decides it's time to go see the Emperor.
**'''Children of Sicarus:''' Kor Phaeron and the remainder of his party are on the run in Sicarus, a daemon planet, being constantly harassed by daemons that are whittling them down. They gain the attention of a warlord acoloyte of Tzeentch and at the same time a prophet appears to them and offers them sanctuary. The prophet leads them into a camouflaged valley where he reveals to them glyphs and Lorgar's athame that show how Kor Phaeron would arrive, slit his own throat to open a portal, and the remaining legionaries would lead the prophet's people through to join Lorgar at the Siege of Terra. Kor Phaeron kills the prophet, announcing that his fate is his own. The camouflage breaks down with the prophet's death and the warlord meets him. She offers him lordship of the planet after she ascends to daemonhood, and he accepts letting her have the prophet's people. As she is about to ascend on the spot, he sneaks up behind her and slits her throat with the athame. Shortly after Sicarus is now a worship planet with slaves laboring to create monuments of worship. Kor Phaeron states that it is now a refuge for the Word Bearers in the neverending war ahead of them.
**'''Exocytosis:''' Typhon is refitting his fleet at Zaramund by the grace of Luther. The Death Guard forces have set up an isolated camp away from any of the Fallen or natives of Zaramund. Luther decides to send a Fallen to spy on the Death Guard to see what's up with their shyness. Typhon is trying to get used to the gifts of the Grandfather when a group of civilians approach the camp. They reveal themselves to have been expecting his arrival, and all of them are revealed to be dead but kept alive by the grace of Nurgle. They call him Typhus and proclaim that with his arrival they are finally free to spread Papa Nurgle's gifts everywhere. The Dark Angel captain observing all of this sees a crowd of zombies and flies and Typhon conversing with them. Typhon sees regular people, though he can glimpse their true nature. The Death Guard sentries just see regular people. The captain springs out of his observation spot and starts attacking the tainted civilians like a true Dark Angel. Typhus kills him and in the process becomes one with his gifts. The Death Guard depart shortly afterwards with no contact with the Dark Angels. Luther is puzzled by this, ignoring a medicae request for apothecary aid for a sudden new disease in the civilian population, and wonders what other effects the Death Guard may have left on Zaramund. Typhon uses his blood to poison his commanding officers after announcing they will reunite with the Primarch.
**'''The Painted Count:''' Gendor Skraivok is having a hard time getting rid of his daemon blade. He tries burning it, tossing it into a plasma reactor, and out an airlock, but it keeps coming back. In a political battle for command of the legion, a rival tosses him into the impossible maze built by Perturabo to contain Vulkan. Failing to leave the maze normally, he seals his pact with the daemon blade and it leads him out of the maze. Killing the rival in a duel, he takes command of the Night Fall and leads the Night Lords to Terra to join the Warmaster.
**'''The Last Son of Prospero:''' Revuel Arvida is transformed into Ianius after teaming up with the soul shard of Magnus. Jaghatai Khan & Malcador happen to be in the room.
**'''The Soul, Severed:''' Eidolon puts down a leadership challenge from a leader who is loyal only to Fulgrim and wants the legion to sit around waiting for him to return. Being still reasonable, the challenger lures Eidolon's forces into a chemical treatment factory, blows up the chemical tanks, then counterattacks. The challenger deepstrikes with a bodyguard squad directly onto Eidolon, and then Eidolon and every single other noise marine giggle and laugh at the same time, obliterating the entire battlefield. Eidolon realises that he needs a planet with limitless numbers of potential slaves so he could spend lifetimes in debauchery, and so accepts that his fate and that of his forces is to eventually assault the Imperial Palace.
**'''Dark Compliance:''' Argonis, an emissary of Horus meets Decigus the Lord of a star system. Decigus is pretty intent on executing Argonis in person, and Argonis tells him to swear fealty to Horus or else... and starts to relate the tale of how he became an emissary, starting over a mechanicus world that also gave Horus the finger and roasted his emissary. Horus meets with Argonis and reveals the emissary was a distraction to the Mechanicum ruler, while another plan was put into place. Horus sends a distraction fleet, followed by another distraction fleet, followed by hidden fighters and vortex missiles he had dropped off point-blank on the moon when his emissary had been killed. Wiping out all orbital defenses the magos still believes he can extract a heavy toll on Horus over several months of fighting. Horus flies down, summons a demon w/ invasion on the side, then departs with his forces. The world gets covered in blood clouds and is infested by demons. Argonis then reapeats his question to Decigus, join us or die.
**'''Duty Waits:''' The Imperial Fists have beefed up security protocols around the Imperial Palace to ridiculous levels after the Alpha Legion shenanigans from ''Praetorian of Dorn''. All the civilians in the Palace are barely tolerated and given limited rations. There is a food riot & all the new Imperial Fists who were inducted during Heresy and have never killed anybody get their first taste by shooting rioters, which they're not thrilled about.
**'''Magisterium:''' Valdor is busy handling the Custodes post-Webway war. Not enough resources, custodian serfs are working to their deaths, and Custodians dealing with the fact that they can no longer effectively protect the emperor. Flashback to Valdor being talked to dismissively by Leman Russ during the Burning of Prospero.
**'''Now Peals Midnight:''' Rogal Dorn is told that long-range sensors & astropathic choirs have detected something big approaching through the Warp, and he realizes that Horus's arrival in the solar system is imminent. He passes along the message to his brothers on Terra. A strategium general is amazed at how she was bred, augmented, and trained to process insane amounts of info and what takes her 15 minutes to re-appraise herself of the solar system tactical info takes Dorn a brief glance at the screens. Archamus and Andromeda-17 from ''Praetorian of Dorn'' have a quiet chat concerning the imminent siege and the fact that humanity will be forever psychologically scarred by what is about to happen. Dorn, Sanguinius, and the Khan gather on a wall of the Palace and stare up at the sky. At midnight a new star blossoms, signalling the exit of Horus's fleet from warp space.
**'''Dreams of Unity:''' A terminally ill Thunder Warrior helps some Custodes kill an Alpha Legion infiltrator while continuously having flashbacks to the Unification Wars and the Emperor's grand dream of Unity. Once the Alpha is dead, he surrenders himself for execution to the Custodes.
**'''The Board is Set:''' Malcador contacts the Emperor for advice just before the Siege and plays a game of strategy that they have been playing for a ''long'' time, detailing the movements and eventual fates of the Primarchs. Shows that the Emperor was certainly manipulating them but was mostly on the back foot for much of his conflict with the the Chaos Gods so the outcome could have been much worse. Emps reveals a final gambit that will screw over Malcador in order to deny Chaos their victory.
*'''''Titandeath''''' Titan-centric book taking place during the battle for Beta-Garmon, the Loyalists' final effort to prevent the Traitors from reaching Terra. How one book could be made of a battle taking place across an entire solar system that had, according to Slaves to Darkness, more casualties than the last five years of the Great Crusade remains to be seen. As it happens... fairly feasibly. Beta Garmon represented the tipping point for both the loyalists and the traitors; if the traitors didn't move past it, Guilliman would crush them from behind. If the loyalists didn't engage, then Horus would take his overwhelming numbers unopposed. The point is that Horus would win Beta Garmon either way. Rogal Dorn makes the only proactive move that he can make in the whole war, and sends a sizeable contingent of Terra's defenses to Beta Garmon to delay the Warmaster for as long as possible. And because Titan's aren't really well suited to defending Terra, they are let out in force on Beta Garmon. Which makes perfect target practice for the massive orbital platform that Horus proceeds to use. Unfortunately the story is let down by its ham-fisted portrayal of an all-female Titan Legion (mostly out of wasted potential) and a rushed storyline. Also a mopey Sanguinius who makes 'I do not die here today' into the new 'Vulkan Lives!'.
*'''''The Buried Dagger''''' This is the final book in the "main" Horus Heresy series, and tells the story of how Mortarion and the Death Guard fell to Nurgle's service. It happens essentially as has already been seen in other fluff sources: Typhon murders all the Navigators and claims he can guide the Death Guard fleet to Terra himself, only to deliberately strand them in the Warp so that Nurgle can turn them to his service. Mortarion becomes increasingly horrified and outraged as he realizes what's happening to his legion and finally kills Typhon in retaliation, but the Destroyer Host reanimates his corpse, turning him into Typhus. After some more internal angst and butthurt, Mortarion finally accepts his destiny and becomes Nurgle's champion. The B-plot of the book concerns the founding of the [[Grey Knights]], as well as an assassination attempt on Malcador by Erebus, who planted a psychic suggestion in Tylos Rubio's head all the way back on Calth. Rubio, Sevarian, Revuel Arvida/Ianius, and several other Knights-Errant are named as the first eight Grey Knights and are shipped off to Titan to prepare for what will come after the Heresy. Garviel Loken is supposed to be the ninth Knight, but he turns it down because he still wants a shot at Horus. Nathaniel Garro gets cut loose from the Knights-Errant and sets off to find his own destiny.

==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 eight 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, only it turns out "Keeler" was Samus manipulating her 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 bit 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 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 Guardsmen, 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. Meanwhile, 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 punts 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 shown to be getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. Turns out the 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 if Horus falls.
*'''''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 beginning to recognize that Horus is just 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 and 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 doesn't stop the Warmaster's fleet bombing their city to shit from orbit (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, 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. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand (also takes his sword) and kills Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that pretty much all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead. Abaddon goes on a killing spree, 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]]. 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 just straight-up punts Eidolon off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on traitor's side who still gives a shit about winning the siege, the rest of 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, Shiban Khan from ''Scars'' and ''Path of Heaven'', who has a shuttle crash, 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 - 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 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 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 but with all of its stories having a common beginning, and converging in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus finally decided to take up the command, but his first order was to let Perturabo send everything they had, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objected to such terrible strategy, but he immediately realized that Horus was about to pull up some serious warp fuckery and that pissed him off even more then already, so Perturabo ordered a full on retreat of all Iron Warriors' assets on Terra and fucked off, abandoning the siege completely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the titan battle in front of Mercury Wall; traitors use warp power to reanimate countless titan wreckages they gathered during the war and use them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalists defenses, then attack with the full might of entire Legio Mortis, the largest titan legion in the entire imperium, to break through the loyalist titan legions' defense.
** Meanwhile, in some corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist mortal soldiers were still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them was Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of gun from previous books, who fought from out wall all the way into the central palace and still fighting. They were initially led by a Blood Angel, but he died during the battle, so Katsuhiro took up the command 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 the shuttle crash he had in Saturnine because he got some really good Biomechanical augmentation or something like that. He woke up in middle of nowhere and the started hearing voices of his dead brothers; it could be warp fuckery, because the land shown various sighs of chaos corruption, or perhaps more likely, he just had some severe head trauma due to the shuttle crash; the sky's the limit when it comes to head trauma. Either way, Shiban wanted to return to the fight, so he started to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encountered a man with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and they started to walk together. The man, who was an army lieutenant, 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 was severely injured by an actual daemon but Shiban refused to leave him behind and carried him and the baby to continue his walk home. Eventually, they came across the line Katsuhiro was defending; though the lieutenant didn't make it, the baby survived which amazed the crumbling troopers to no end. Shiban had some word exchange with Katsuhiro and then kept walking towards the inner palace. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** Corswain came to reinforce the loyalists; he was expecting to find his primarch Lion and the main force of Dark Angels here, but instead he was the only reinforcement that shown up. 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 were given to him by Luther, which means they were most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitor took the Astronomican fortress and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitor's offence long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican fortress was not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? But the plot must give Corswain and his Dark Angels something to do I guess. Nevertheless, 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' fleet, Corswain successfully made a full force planetfall on Terra and retakes the Astronomican fortress by killing some daemons. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain can not allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the librarian, Vassago, thought it was a bad idea to keep on the traitor path after the daemon horrors he just witnessed. When he told this to his fallen brothers, what Vassago saw was their warp corrupted faces, and so realized he himself and many like him, were been deceived all along.
** The siege story lines were tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist titan legions began to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's line face off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago was attacked by his fallen brothers; and Legio Mortis finally reached 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 can 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 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 will. 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, and Alpharius turns up again briefly with Olly and John Grammaticus, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it just got nothing to do with the on going siege. This, and John's plot from last book, feel like they should be put together and have their own book instead of been cut to pieces and stitch into a siege book. But again, its not as bad and irrelevant as the black girl's plot from The First Wall. At least it revealed Olly was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close you ask? He use to be the Emperor's Warmaster. And yes, he betrayed and backstab him too.
* '''''Warhawk''''': Khan vs. Morty, round two. As the situation grows increasingly desperate for the loyalist forces, Jaghatai rallies the White Scars to retake the Lion's Gate spaceport and comes face-to-face with Mortarion and the Death Guard once more.
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The crew of the Sisypheum returns to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna. Its crew is nearly wiped out by traitor forces, but they are able to recover the Magna Mater- a powerful relic used to create the first generation of Space Marines. Said relic is also the same Sangprimus Portum that Archmagos Cawl would later use to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which will focus on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed deep inside the Palace.

==The Primarchs Series==
Because Black Library don't seem satisfied confusing us with all their anthologies, audio-books, and short stories, they have begun releasing a spin-off series of Horus Heresy novels centered on the Primarchs. The series don't really take place in a specific time, but generally focuses on expanding on the titular Primarch's backstory and motivations during events before the Horus Heresy (though some of them also have events occurring after it). Why Black Library lists it as part of the Horus Heresy series when that isn't always the case is beyond our comprehension. Hopefully the Horus book finally shows us his conquest of Ullanor.

===Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar===
Centers on Papa Smurf himself and his trying to deal with how the Emperor used him like a rusty hammer to smack Lorgar in the head at Monarchia. Uses a conflict against Orks squatting on human ruins as a vehicle for him and the smurfs to express their angst over the event. He eventually discovers that the original humans went extinct from literally a war of red shirts vs blue shirts. A subplot details the conflict of morality the Ultramarines legion had with their Destroyer companies, especially the [[Nemesis]] Chapter (later a second founding) who held on to their Terran roots. Guilliman didn't much like their use, but eventually saw their necessity (especially when Imperium Secundus came swinging around).

===Leman Russ: The Great Wolf===
Focuses on Leman Russ' notorious rivalry with the Lion, explaining why to this day whenever the Chapters meet they throw the gauntlet down and beat the stuffing out of one another. Notably it reveals some interesting stuff like the Lion being aware of the Space Wolves' furry issue and keeping a lid on it, also that the Lion shanked Russ in the Imperial basement in front of a fresco of the compliance where they previously fought. Establishes clearly that even with overpowered Mech suits, baseline humans will always lose to legionary soldiers.

===Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero===
Depicts the unlikely friendship between Magnus and old Pert with a joint venture between their legions to evacuate a planet that's getting torn apart by accelerated magnetic polarity shifts. Things go wrong on the planet due to totally not Chaos cult nonsense, and it does a decent job of showing Magnus' flaws, specifically his inability to leave things that have "do not fuck with this" written on them alone; something Pert tries and fails at making him understand. Crucially it's set early enough in the Crusade that the use of psychic powers by Astartes is uncommon and the Thousand Sons basically have to keep a lid on how powerful they really are. They do not succeed.

The original colonists of Morningstar survived by rounding up all the psykers into their seed ship and splitting them from their psychic powers throne room of the emperor style. However since they didn't dissipate these psychic powers, the souls of the psykers just floated around inside the ship until they joined up into a single entity. When their jailers realized what was happening, they ran and sealed the ship but the psychic gestalt had already infected their minds with a doomsday meme, resulting in the shenanigans that Magnus and Pert arrive to. The entire Morningstar government fell victim to this meme and built a continent sized machine to destroy their planet which Pert & Magnus somehow didn't notice. Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt into his book, and the surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading.

===Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia===
Probably the book in the series that did the most character building of all. This book shows Perturabo's childhood on Olympia alongside a "current" day conflict against the Hrud, the former showing why Pert is the odd genius manchild guy he is, while the latter does a great job of showing why fucking with an alien species capable of controlling time is somewhat of a stupid idea. However, the real draw of the book is that it is mainly written as an attempt to merge together the seemingly contradictory depictions of Pert we've had over the years, showing how the ruthless dick who decimates his legion for not being good enough in the Forgeworld books is the same guy who just wanted to be a builder in Angel Exterminatus. Yep. Definitely a sperg. Also he may or may not have wanted to bang his adopted sister.

===Lorgar: Bearer of the Word===
Yep, the first(ish?) heretic himself gets his own obligatory messed-up childhood novel. Focuses slightly more on Kor Phaeron rather than Lorgar himself, showing him to be a manipulative dick who beat Lorgar as a child and never really bought into this whole "fatherhood" shtick or this whole concept of [[Emperor|One True God]], but allowed Lorgar his fantasies and the takeover Colchis (by "Word" or by "Mace") while Phaeron benefitted from increased power and secretly kept the faith of [[Chaos Gods]]. By the end Kor Phaeron wonders if Lorgar just let him think that he was manipulated and could have disposed of him at any time. The book does introduce a contrasting character to Kor Phaeron who actually shows Lorgar compassion growing up and was far more worthy of being named "father" but was far less useful to Lorgar's goals. The book shows that Lorgar isn't as stupid or naive as everyone thinks and does indeed realise that people have been using him for their own gains, but he only really cares about doing the work of the gods; so long as they both align he doesn't seem to care.

=== Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix ===
Fulgrim tries to conquer the newly discovered planet Byzas with only 7 men. Byzas has devolved to steam power and bolt-action bolters, but capital palace has DAOT gun defenses and anti-grav airships (think blimps without gasbags). Along the way Fulgrim encounters a brotherhood much like his own that wants to work with him; he dismisses them as a bunch of idealists. It's implied that he COULD have gotten the same results (Compliance) working with them but unfortunately that would have meant calling in backup and Fulgrim didn't want to do that. In the end Fulgrim takes the world but nearly dies from a hidden hydrogen bomb which he disarms. Several other characters such as Cyrius (who gets shanked by a squad from the brotherhood while wearing armor and has to be saved by Fulgrim) and Kasperos Telmar) later become prominent champions of chaos, while the others were blown up on Istvaan III. Also makes the first (but all too brief) direct mention of one of the Missing Primarchs, as well as the amusing spectacle of Fabius Bile in formal attire.

===Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa===
Ferrus is overseeing joint exercises between the Iron Hands and the Emperor's Children when he learns about a noncompliant human empire called the Gardinaal. He decides that he'll conquer them singlehandedly so as to impress the Emperor and his brothers and maybe even get appointed to that Warmaster position everyone's whispering about. He decides to quit fucking around after the Gardinaal try to assassinate him under the pretense of surrender negotiations and orders his fleet to demolish their entire capital planet before personally going down to smash faces in until they finally give up. In the end, he admits to Fulgrim that he doesn't have the patience to be Warmaster, and that he'll back whoever gets the job.

Probably the highlight of the novel is that we get a look inside Ferrus' head while it's still attached to the rest of him. Ferrus is a zealot who gives no fucks about anything beyond conquering systems in the name of the Emprah and being the best there is at what he does. In fact he was just as obsessed with perfection as Fulgrim, which is why they got along so well. He's also got a lot of built-up resentment toward Dorn since Dorn once called him a dumbass on the bridge of his own flagship in front of a bunch of his sons. He doesn't seem to like Guilliman very much either at this point, probably because the G-man encouraged restraint when dealing with noncompliant planets and Ferrus just wanted to smash everything and let someone else pick up the pieces.

===Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris===
Basically a recap of some of the White Scars' more important pre-Heresy campaigns, including conquering the Nephilim homeworld and killing a shitload of Orks on a planet made of psychically resonant crystals. The main thing the book does is confirm that Jaghatai was always meant to be a wild card. More importantly, it shows that while he didn't really agree with the Emperor about anything, especially the Imperial Truth, he was still willing to serve the Imperium in his own way (read: killing xenos on the edges of the galaxy while everyone else built an empire behind him). Also shows the Khan trying to plan ahead for the [[Council of Nikaea|inevitable showdown]] between pro and anti-psyker factions in the Imperium, and how the warrior lodges were first introduced to the Scars. On a side note, we learn that the V Legion's original name was the Star Hunters, and that they relied heavily on armor and mechanized infantry before the Khan and his Chogorian posse taught them to love jetbikes and going ''real'' fast. Oh, and they became known as the White Scars because of a mistranslation, not unlike the Vlka Fenryka/Space Wolves.

===Vulkan: Lord of Drakes===
Vulkan is united with the Terran members of his legion while they're on campaign against a fuckhueg WAAAGH! on a volcanic death world. The main takeaway from the book is that the XVIII Legion were stubborn badasses ready to lay down their lives for civilians right from the start of the Crusade. Without Vulkan around though, they kept throwing themselves into desperate last stands, to the point that other Imperial forces were starting to call them suicidal. Some of the Nocturnean legionaries even suggest that the Emperor kept Vulkan away from the legion for so long because he was waiting for all the Terrans to get themselves killed, but Vulkan dismisses that idea out of hand and nothing comes of it. There's also a pretty nifty sequence where Vulkan and a bunch of his sons surf a modified Termite assault drill into an attack moon and blow it up from the inside.

===Corax: Lord of Shadows===
Corax and the Raven Guard are sent to bring the Carinae system into compliance. The system is basically a thousand floating space station hive cities, all independent of each other with a thousand different governments, orbiting a star. Typically they hate each other's guts but are able to come together and combine firepower to a devastating effect when an Imperial compliance fleet gives them a common enemy. The leaders aren't keen on handing over all their power to the emperor. He initially tries to use stealth and surgical strikes to get them to surrender peacefully with minimal casualties, but a real Imperium hater forms a coalition and death stars the first city to surrender. When Corax targets him for surgical elimination, he releases a zombie virus on the whole station and escapes via a stealth shuttle to a hidden station masked by the sun's emissions. A pissed-off Corax orders his legion to hunt the dude down and disable the station engines, letting him broadcast his 5 stages of death to the whole system while he descends into the Sun. This also comes at the cost of dragging out the compliance and thousands of unnecessary casualties since the remaining orbitals are able to consolidate their strategic/tactical positions and form actual armies. There is also a subplot about Corax’s home planets of Kiavahr and Deliverance which shows that Imperial compliance didn’t actually make things all that much better for the people living there; the Kiavahr tech-guilds and the Mechanicum can barely tolerate each other and people from Deliverance are still routinely discriminated against to the point where some of them have turned to terrorism to express their displeasure. Corax himself admits that he didn't have time to fix everything before leaving but pledges that he'll come back and set Kiavahr to rights once the Crusade is over. Doesn't stop him from executing one of his best friends in the rebellion for being uppity.

The book shows us that Corax was an idealist who believed in the principles of the Great Crusade and genuinely didn’t understand why people would reject the Imperium. It’s shown that while he was a proponent of treating normal humans as equals, he could still be astoundingly arrogant when dealing with them since he was a genetically-engineered transhuman demigod and all. He is also shown to be constantly grappling with his need to deliver justice at any cost, aware that he might turn into another Konrad Curze if he’s not careful. We also get a look at what the Sable Brand is like through the eyes of an afflicted Raven Guard legionary; basically, it's a watered down version of the Black Rage that causes them to hallucinate and become suicidal, which some of them deal with by joining the [[Moritat]].

===Sons of The Emperor===
A collection of short stories showcasing the contrast between the Primarchs and the rest of mankind, getting down to how they really perceive themselves and how humanity sees them.
:'''The Passing of Angels:''' Sanguinius leads a Destroyer host to completely obliterate an abominable culture. He has his men adopt anonymity so they do not need to shoulder the burdens of what they do, but argues that since he was designed for dark deeds he cannot set aside what he is. Primarchs might be angels, "but angels were not created for kindness".
:'''Mercy of the Dragon:''' Recounts a conversation between Vulkan and the Emperor that shows us how Vulkan was always intended to be the "most human" of the Primarchs, and to be able to teach his brothers how to be more like him. Possibly hinting towards a plan after the Great Crusade that involved the Primarchs settling down into civilian life.
:'''The Abyssal Edge:''' Shows a conflict between Curze and Magnus that was kept confidential, because the rest of the Imperium were not allowed to see the Primarchs in disagreement with each other. Crucially shows a side of Curze that ISN'T a terrorizing murder junkie edgelord. Also the first chronological appearance of Khayon from the Black Legion series as well as Sevatar back on his finest snarking form.
:'''Shadows of the Past:''' Set some point after the Horus Heresy, a "daemon" starts killing its way through some Word Bearers. Turns out Corax has ascended into a creature made of pure darkness and gets into a duel with Daemon-Lorgar. Corax wins, but the Word Bearers act as a mass human shield to allow Lorgar a chance to escape.
:'''The Emperor's Architect:''' A biography of Perturabo showing what he was doing before awoke halfway up a mountain, then later. Hints that Perturabo's projected image was carefully stage-managed, and ''oh'' how he hated to be upstaged. He was destroying [[Rogal Dorn|artwork that embarrassed him]] long before he was discovered by the Emperor.
:'''Prince of Blood:''' After Angron gets Daemon-Prince'd by Lorgar, he goes mad and gets locked in his flagship, causing all sorts of changes. Kharn goes to him to talk, finding that Angron has been stripped of his sense of self, completely lost to Khorne. Angron warns them against his form of slavery, though it appears that Kharn and the others followed him down the same path simply because he was their father, but there is also a promise that they will [[Blam|"thank"]] Lorgar for what he did to them.
:'''The Ancient Awaits:''' Long after the Heresy is over, Magnus sends a Thousand Sons squad to an abandoned planet to find a repeating broadcast that says only "the Ancient awaits". In a deep underground hangar they find an ancient Dreadnought and realize that the planet is Istvaan III, and that the Dreadnought is Ancient Rylanor of the Emperor's Children, who's been sitting there ever since Horus Exterminatus'd the planet. Fulgrim appears to try and seduce Rylanor into joining up with the endless party machine that is the III Legion, and Rylanor goes "Surprise Motherfucker" and detonates a virus bomb he was sitting on. Thousand Sons feel sympathetic to how honorable Rylanor is (despite being a bit cuckoo from sitting on his ass) and let him do it. Fulgrim's ego is wounded from seeing that even after several millennia Rylanor rejected all the pleasures he had to offer.
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over a system without having to fight, but have to deal with one holdout planet defended by Frankenstein-like creatures spliced together from multiple human donors. Their creator was a five thousand year old bioengineer who encountered the Emperor at some point on Terra and then got the fuck out before the Great Crusade kicked off. For all his own abominations, he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails. Ever since taking command of the Legion, Angron has been ordering them to complete every planetary conquest they undertake in thirty-one hours, this being the length of a single day on Nuceria. When and if they fail, he has them kill one in every ten Astartes; the same thing Perturabo did when he took command of the Iron Warriors. This has happened so many times that the World Eaters are starting to suffer some serious daddy issues, and the only way for them to earn his approval is to accept the Butcher's Nails. Unfortunately for them, the implants keep failing, sometimes explosively so, until they're sent to bring a rebellious Imperial world back into compliance and find that it's been turned into a planet full of androids who were created with some of the same tech used in the Nails; with this, one of the Legion's Apothecaries is able to create a stable version of the Nails. Kharn is the first to successfully undergo the procedure, and the Nails make him [[Rip and Tear|RAGE]] so hard the book literally blacks out for a couple of pages. Angron orders the entire legion to be implanted, which triggers a brief spate of infighting between the World Eaters who want to earn Papa Angron's approval at any cost and those who think that he's a broken psychopath who needs to be taken to the Emperor for help. The one World Eater captain who still thinks the Nails are a terrible idea gets killed by Kharn in a duel and the rest of them submit to the procedure. The story ends right as Russ shows up with the entire VI Legion fleet, having decided that Angron needs a talking-to about all this nonsense. We all know how this ends, of course.

The book gives Angron some character development beyond "giant frothing berserker" which turns him into a pretty tragic figure. As it turns out, he didn't get the Butcher's Nails immediately after landing on Nuceria, but received them as a punishment for refusing to kill his adoptive father in the arenas. Before the Nails he was a pretty bro-tier guy who loved his fellow gladiators and used what appeared to be latent psyker powers to absorb all their nightmares so they could rest properly while he dealt with all their accumulated fear and anger. This Angron would have probably made one hell of a general for the Crusade. Then the Nails got pounded into his head and he Hulked out and killed his adoptive father, which broke him and turned him into the psychotic death machine we're all familiar with. He also has a death wish caused by the Emperor yoinking him from his last stand with the other gladiators on Nuceria and has spent the entirety of the Great Crusade looking for something tough enough to kill him.

===Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter===

Grimdark Batman finally gets his very own standalone novel! The entire thing is told in flashbacks framed by Curze talking to a statue of the Emperor he stitched together out of human flesh while waiting for M'Shen to come and kill him. Most of it involves explaining how Curze got out of the stasis coffin that Sanguinius stuffed him into at the end of ''Ruinstorm''. As it turns out he was adrift for a few decades after the end of the Heresy, until he got picked up by the crew of a sub-light freighter who planned to sell the coffin for a packet; instead Curze woke up and decided to [[rip and tear|play some tag]] [[grimdark|with the stupid humans.]] He left one of the crew alive and told him to drive the ship to Tsagualsa, mutilating the poor kid whenever he got bored. The kid had a chance to escape after dropping Curze off but followed him instead and was predictably [[grimdark|killed by the Night Lords when Curze decided he was done with him.]] Konrad also struggles under the weight of his visions throughout only for the Emperor to contact him and explain Konrad's great mistake: his visions of the future were not fixed and Curze could have chosen a different and better path if he had not been so convinced of the inevitability of fate. The Emperor also tells him two very interesting things: he does not consider any of the traitor primarchs irredeemable, and he forgives Konrad for all that he's done, just as Papa Sang had said he might. Konrad freaks out and insists he cannot be forgiven because there is no justice in that, then tears the statue down before leaving to get ready for M'Shen's imminent arrival.

Other highlights include some flashbacks to Curze's days murdering people on Nostramo, including killing a woman [[derp|who was about to commit suicide]] and Curze eating his victims [[grimdark|because he enjoyed it.]] Also Curze hated Corax, not because Corax was good, but because Corax was a better ninja than him. Oddly enough he also says he didn't hate any of his other brothers, even the ones who were dicks to him like Fulgrim or Dorn.

Seriously though, this summary doesn't do it much justice. It's still a pretty good book. And it's barely 200 pages, read it anyway.

===Scions of the Emperor===
A second short story collection and cocktease extraordinaire, originally a Weekender exclusive.
:'''Canticle:''' Focuses on Ferrus Manus during his early days on Medusa, fighting his way through hordes of cyborg monstrosities while he scavenges for armor, weapons, food, and equipment; battles the extreme weather; and tries to find a name for himself. He encounters a woman who tries to hold him up, but when he shows no fear of her and gives her his weapon on the grounds that she's earned it, she instead suggests he join her clan. He refuses, stating that he has something to do (namely killing Asirnoth). Amusingly, the story reveals that Primarchs can literally eat sand and metal to stay alive.
:'''The Verdict of the Scythe:''' Set during the Great Crusade. Having been yelled at by his brothers for trashing yet another planet, Mortarion tries being nice for once when bringing the world of Absyrtus into compliance. He roams the streets for a bit after the official compliance ceremony and realizes that the witch-cults which dominated Absyrtus before his arrival have only gone underground and will reemerge once he leaves, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him.
:'''A Game of Opposites:''' Set during the Heresy. An Iron Warriors warsmith tries to outthink Jaghatai Khan and loses hilariously because the Khan [[Oinkbane|is too subtle for him]]. Jaghatai easily defeats the trap the Iron Warriors tried to set, then explains to the warsmith why he lost before executing him: the warsmith may have studied the Khan's writings, but he failed to grasp their true meaning, and so he was doomed to defeat even if the Khan had not been present.
:'''Better Angels:''' Follows Jehoel, a line legionary of the Blood Angels, throughout the latter days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. Sanguinius chooses to be his patron as Jehoel commemorates the battles the legion has fought by making glass sculptures, all the while lamenting the destruction and loss wrought by the Heresy. Just before the Siege of Terra, he finally asks his father why Sanguinius chose to be his patron, and the primarch explains that he sees himself in Jehoel more than he does any of his other sons; he is the best expression of the Blood Angels' highest ideals.
:'''The Conqueror's Truth:''' A remembrancer gets herself assigned to the Night Lords so she can see some war, and Curze and Sevatar oblige her in the same way a jackass genie might grant your wish for a ton of gold by dropping it on you: they bring her to a city under assault by the Night Lords and allow her to record the civilian population being dumped en masse into its geothermal furnaces. When she declares that she will find some way to show this atrocity to the people of Terra, Curze tells her that's what he wants. He says that the citizens of the Imperium must know what kind of war is being waged in their name and that he'll use the footage to show other worlds that there are only two options for them: compliance, or death.
:'''The Sinew of War:''' A flashback to Guilliman's younger days on Macragge as he returns from putting down a tribal uprising to find Macragge City in flames and his adoptive father dead. He quickly realizes that his father's co-consul, Gallan, is responsible, and busts Gallan in front of the entire Senate. He fights down the temptation to just murder him, thus holding true to Konor's ideals. One of his bitterest enemies is so impressed that he swears allegiance to Roboute, and so does the rest of the Senate, thus setting Guilliman on the path to becoming the Lord of Macragge.
:'''The Chamber at the End of Memory:''' Also known as light touching above the clothes. Some workers fortifying a forgotten corner of the Imperial Palace in preparation for the forthcoming siege are killed by a psychic booby trap. When Rogal Dorn investigates, he discovers that they accidentally broke into the personal quarters of the Lost Primarchs, which have been heavily warded with psychic defenses forged by Malcador himself. When Malcador shows up, Dorn realizes that he can't even remember his brothers' names, and starts to tear into the Sigillite for having sealed his memories. Malcador counters by revealing that it was Dorn's idea to begin with, and further explains that he and Guilliman were able to save the II and XI Legions from being purged alongside their primarchs; they were mind-wiped and absorbed into the other Legions. He then unseals Dorn's memories long enough for him to realize that whatever his lost brothers did was so horrible that the Imperium would have long since fallen if they were still alive.
:'''First Legion:''' Also known as a gentle groping of your mental bits. Lion el'Jonson and the Dark Angels are in the midst of the [[Rangdan Xenocides]] when a mysterious legionary calling himself Alpharius turns up and requests an audience with the Primarch of the I Legion. He offers to secretly take over the war effort so that the Dark Angels may withdraw and rebuild their strength as this will improve the Lion's chances of one day being named commander of the entire Imperial war machine, which "Alpharius" believes is necessary for the Imperium to survive. The Lion rejects the offer immediately, stating that he will see the Xenocides through.

===Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First===
While the campaign for Ullanor takes place, the Emperor tasks the Lion with pacifying an irrelevant little world that had already been considered compliant. The Lion begins fortifying the world and bringing in more troops and fleets, keeping his true intentions to himself, while his senior commanders are keen to move on and earn real glory elsewhere. As it turns out, the planet was being used as a feeding world for the [[Khrave]], a race of uber-psychic xenos from before the [[Fall of the Eldar]] that can read minds, crush tanks with a gesture, and possess people in their millions from outside of a solar system. The book shows how clever and callous the Lion could be by [[Alpharius|coming up with a massively convoluted plan]] that he needed to keep secret from a race of mind readers, even going so far as to issue seemingly contradictory orders to his men to confuse the enemy as well as [[Perturabo|knowingly sacrificing millions of mortal lives]] in order to escalate the conflict and draw out the enemy leader in order to destroy them. This is all interspersed with some of his brief meetings with the [[Emperor]], highlighting how similar the two of them were in mindset. As the dutiful firstborn son, the Lion seemed to always know what his father desired and was the one most trusted to enact it. At one point, the Lion laments that his own contribution to the Imperium is nothing but ash and destruction, but the Emperor explains that this is the point of him and the I Legion: to do the things that even Konrad Curze and Leman Russ cannot, such as the complete erasure of opponents too troublesome to allow to exist (including obliterating all memory of them), and to do it without the need for recognition, accolades, or ceremony. The book even ends with the Lion having potentially [[Grey Knights|mind wiped his own Space Marines so that they cannot remember who they just fought.]] What the novel does best is illuminate the labyrinthine inner workings of the I Legion, showing why even the Alpha Legion thought they were a tough nut to crack. There are orders and cabals and subdivisions of orders and cabals threaded throughout the legion's structure, reaching across rank, station, and specialization, all of which are linked by a complex and ever-expanding web of coded heraldries, hidden symbols, and secret codes that only the Lion seems to fully grasp.

The book also reads like a tie-in novel to the recently released Horus Heresy 9: Crusade. It has many references to items and formations that were first introduced only months earlier such as the ''Fusil Actinaeus'', Excindio Battle Automata, Dreadwing Interemptors, Firewing Enigmatii Cabals, and the various hidden Orders of the Hekatonystika. It also disappoints because it actually shows the secret arsenals of those orders that are tantalizingly NOT represented on the tabletop, such as Fire Raptors equipped with psionic lance weapons, assault psycannons, archaeotech pistols [[Grimdark|that erase their target from memory]], and the Lion wearing a psychic dampening cloak.

===Alpharius: Head of the Hydra===
Long story short, everything we’ve been told about Alpharius is true, from a certain point of view (or maybe not). Alpharius himself (unless it was actually Omegon) lands on Terra after the primarchs were scattered. He immediately senses that [[Omegon|some part of him is missing]], but before he can ponder this too deeply the Emperor finds him and brings him back to the Palace, where he's raised in total secrecy by Malcador who explains that he will be the Emperor’s hidden blade, the son who can strike from the shadows and weave deceptions of surpassing subtlety. The Emperor further explains to him that Alpharius' job will be to preserve the Imperium at all costs, no matter what he might have to do. Alpharius interprets this to mean that he should test the Palace’s defenses, so he breaks into the Imperial Dungeon, kills a Custodian and steals his armor, and sets up a fake assassination attempt on the Emperor. Constantin Valdor stops him but Alpharius reveals that he had already hacked into an AA battery on the other side of the Palace and could have just shot down the Emperor’s shuttle at any time, proving his point and annoying Valdor. Alpharius and his legion go on to wage war in the shadows throughout the Great Crusade using wetwork teams, deep-cover sleeper agents, and psyops to defeat the Imperium’s enemies. The XX Legion apparently has agents seeded throughout the galaxy, even on worlds that haven’t yet been contacted by the Imperium, and uses them as appropriate to destabilize governments or cripple armies and infrastructures prior to the arrival of other Legions. Alpharius claims to have fought alongside the Dark Angels in their first deployment (as seen in Valdor’s novel) and also claims to have been present for the rediscoveries of several of his brothers, disguised as members of their legions. He and his legion are shown to be content with their role as black operatives though also a bit bummed that they don’t get to stomp around kicking ass and gaining glory like the rest of the Astartes do.

He later unmasks his legion’s existence to the Lion during the Third Rangdan War, and the account of this meeting directly contradicts the one from ''Scions of the Emperor'', in that this time Alpharius merely offers his legion’s support to the Dark Angels, rather than suggesting that they withdraw and let the XX Legion take over. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two accounts. While fighting the Rangdan behind the scenes and dealing with civil insurrections, Alpharius gets wind of a mysterious warrior who may possibly his missing twin on a world behind enemy lines. When he goes to investigate, he discovers that the world is being overrun by the [[Slaugth]], so Alpharius takes a small team in to find his brother. Most of his legionnaires die, but he finds Omegon (unless it's really Alpharius), and they sit down for a friendly chat. Omegon tells Alpharius that he fetched up on a deserted planet and stole a ship belonging to some space pirates in order to escape (unless he’s lying). They wonder if the Emperor had deliberately engineered them as twins or if they had been divided somehow by their passage through the Warp. Either way, they decide to keep the truth concealed from the rest of the Imperium, then escape the Slaugth together and start planning how to reveal Alpharius' existence to the Imperium. They decide to stage an attack on the ''Vengeful Spirit'', so Omegon sneaks onto the ship and fights his way to the bridge,where Horus recognizes him immediately and is overjoyed to have found his last brother, who introduces himself to the Lupercal as Alpharius. This is followed by the last line of the novel: “This was a lie.” So does that refer to Omegon calling himself Alpharius, or does it mean that the entire story was all one big lie? Hydra Dominatus, ladies and gentlemen.

Throughout the novel, Alpharius presents himself as a surprisingly philosophical person, often ruminating on his nature and that of his brothers. He isn’t particularly impressed with any of them except for Horus and Sanguinius (but he might be lying) and he reveals that he distrusted Rogal Dorn so much that he decided to plant some sleeper agents on Terra just in case. (Of course, one of these sleeper agents was Alpharius himself, according to ''Praetorian of Dorn'', so does this mean that the Alpharius who was narrating this novel is a disguised Alpha Legionnaire?) He might just been referencing the plan of sending those literal sleeping agents into the palace, Omegon was probably send in before their betrayal was unveiled but after their conspired with Horus.

===Blood of the Emperor===

Oh, look, another short story anthology. Only six stories this time.

:'''Lupis Daemonis:''' Turns out Cthonia is even shittier than we were told it was, ranking as possibly even shittier than Nostramo and Barbarus combined. Horus, who goes without a name until the end of the story, is the runt of his gang in the utter shitheap that is the Cthonian underworld and is only spared from getting shanked by the other members of his gang because the gang leader realizes he isn't normal. We find out Horus was made differently from the other Primarchs in that his Primarch-level growth rate was intentionally stunted until psychically activated by the Emperor from afar, for some reason. Long story short, Horus evolves into his current form Pokémon style at the end after killing his gang leader, who was the one who gave him his name. Also apparently the Justaerin got their name from a violent gang on Cthonia who enjoyed impaling people on stakes.
:'''Skjalds:''' We learn Russ returns to Fenris every once in awhile to fuck with the locals, in this case a hunting party trying to kill a warp tainted creature who killed a whole village. Also we get confirmation that, yes, he does indeed smell like a dog.
:'''The Sixth Cult of the Denied:''' Magnus soft-exiles a member of his legion (and disbands an entire cult of the Thousand Sons) for consorting with demons in the quest for forbidden knowledge, specifically how the fuck he managed to cure his legion of the Flesh Change. Oh, the irony.
:'''The Will of the Legion:''' Dorn happens upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack his ship and is a hair's breadth away from destroying every single one of them with extreme prejudice until they surrender at the very last moment. Basically a reminder that just because Dorn is a loyal good boy to the Emperor doesn't mean he isn't still a mass murderous dick at the end of the day.
:'''Council of Truth:''' Alpharius "confesses" to doing things the hard way as a means to constantly test himself in preparation for a day that his legion would have to fight foes just as strong as itself. Basically confirms that Alpharius saw the Heresy coming a loooong way off.
:'''Terminus:''' Two Death Guard at the Siege of Terra, fresh off the events of 'The Buried Dagger', wonder if they're (gasp) the bad guys, what with their rotting flesh and awful smell and such.

===Valdor: Birth of the Imperium===
Not a Primarch (like Malcador), but still technically part of this series. Will cover Constantin Valdor's role in the Unification Wars, and according to previews it will hold some new insights on the Emperor's plans.

As it turns out, it doesn't really tell us anything that we didn't know already, though it does expand on a few things. The book is set near the end of the Unification Wars on Terra. The new Provost Marshal, Uwoma Kandawire, has uncovered evidence of some shady doings at Mount Ararat and confronts Constantin Valdor as to the Custodians’ role in that battle. Along the way, he tells her of the war against the warp-tainted Confederacy of Maulland Sen, where the inherent instability of the Thunder Warriors first became apparent. They weren't just genetically unstable; the influence of the Warp also caused them to go more berserk than usual, so it became evident to the Emperor that a [[Space Marines|long-term solution would be required]]. Valdor also tells Kandawire about the primarchs being scattered by the Chaos gods; the psychic backlash from the event was so strong that it wrecked a large section of the Imperial Dungeon and killed thousands of those present. Valdor himself waded in to save the stored gene-seed from being destroyed, alongside Amar Astarte, the Imperium’s best gene-wright and the namesake of the Adeptus Astartes, though everyone believed that the primarchs had been killed. The Provost Marshal concludes that the Custodes are trying to make a grab for power and leads an uprising alongside Lord Ushotan, the “primarch” of the Thunder Warriors’ Fourth Legion, who survived the purge at Ararat. Valdor confronts Kandawire and Ushotan outside the Lion’s Gate and explains himself thus: the Custodians and the Emperor are the architects of humanity’s future, and any crime can be forgiven and any virtue dismissed if it is in service to that future. Then he unleashes the fledgling [[Dark Angels|I Legion]] to destroy the insurrectionists and personally kills Ushotan in a duel. In the aftermath, he explains to Kandawire the Imperium’s ultimate aim: not just Unity on Earth, but [[Great Crusade| Unity throughout the galaxy]], a vast undertaking which will require hundreds of thousands of these new soldiers. Meanwhile, Amar Astarte has come to the conclusion that the Space Marine project will fall apart without the primarchs and has decided to destroy the stored gene-seed in order to stop them from failing like the Thunder Warriors did. She manages to blow up the gene-seed vaults underneath the Palace, but Malcador already had copies of all twenty batches moved to Luna. He then reveals to Valdor that the Emperor believes the primarchs are still alive and intends to seek them out. Valdor wonders if it wouldn't just be better to abandon them or destroy them outright, since they might be tainted by [[Chaos|whatever power]] snatched them away in the first place. Malcador's dialogue heavily implies that the Emperor actually did have some paternal affection for the primarchs at this point, as he mentions that the Emperor has started referring to them as his sons and suggests that he has a lingering attachment to them which has yet to fade. Valdor's response is equally telling: he notes that the Emperor's "human sentiments" are slowly ebbing away, and Malcador acknowledges that this is the price the Emperor was willing to pay to secure his dream of Unity.

===Luther: First of the Fallen===
A story told from the perspective of Luther starting at the time he’s found by Redloss after the events of Caliban’s destruction. Locked in a cell and tortured on and off so frequently that he barely even registers it anymore, he’s constantly forced to deal with Dark Angel Chapter Master after Dark Angel Chapter Master as the millennia go by, each one coming to him for knowledge of the past in between being frozen in stasis by the Watchers in the Dark. Each time he’s asked a question, Luther answers it in a roundabout way by telling a story from his past as a way to demonstrate some point to whichever Chapter Master happens to be listening: some get what he’s saying, and some don’t. One story gets misinterpreted so badly that the Chapter Master in question comes back afterwards and kills himself in Luther’s cell. By the time of the events of great rift with Azrael as the current chapter master, while the Rock is under siege, he finds that his cell door is open and he literally just tip-toes his way out.

===Audiobooks===
'''<u>The Sigillite</u>''' Despite not being a Primarch, his short story is included in the Primarch sub-series of the Horus Heresy. It covers a discussion between Malcador and a Stormtrooper named Khalid Hassan about the nature of the Emperor's plans and whether or not Malcador agreed with everything the Emperor thought(hint: he didn't). Khalid had brought the Rosetta Stone to Malcador without fully understanding its significance, whereupon Malcador reveals that he is part of an ancient order dedicated to the preservation of humanity's knowledge and history, and whose symbol will later become the Inquisitorial =I=.

Malcador also reveals the doors to the Golden Throne and indicates the awesome battle going on behind them, foreshadowing the events of the Webway War that are covered later on in the main series.

'''<u>Malcador: First Lord of the Imperium</u>''' In the story Malcador visits his elderly personal astropath who is on her deathbed. The pair have a few conversations where Malcador shows surprising compassion and humanity. During the conversations there are some major revelations about Malcador and the origins of the Heresy. You should listen to it yourself as it's cheap and short (25 mins), but in case you don't care about spoilers here's some stuff: he's 6718 years old, he helped the Emperor go from being just the biggest warlord on Terra to... well, being the Emperor, and he explains who the Sigillites are and what their role in the Imperium is. After the astropath despairs about the countless billions who've died in the Heresy, he drops the mother of all bombshells: the Heresy was planned by him and the Emperor from the beginning. Just as how the Thunder Warriors served their purpose and were betrayed and wiped out, the plan was to eventually pit the Primarchs against one another and have them wipe themselves out. He says the two of them carefully maneuvered the Primarchs into specific roles and situations, as well as the Emperor showing unequal favour between them, in order to foster hostility. The ones who "couldn't be controlled" never made it to the endgame (possibility referencing the lost Primarchs). He admits though that his failure was underestimating Chaos who caused the Heresy to happen much sooner than expected, which turned it into the calamity that it is.

After she dies Malcador he admits he lied but doesn't say exactly which bit he lied about. Some people think the truth is they planned to wipe out the Primarchs and Astartes, but the Heresy was never planned and was instead a lie intended to comfort an old woman on her deathbed (by saying they have it under control, sorta). Some other people think the lie is where he tells her that the Emperor "will catch her" when she dies (hinting at an afterlife and saving her soul from Chaos). The truth is we'll probably never know as this is typical Malcador obfuscation. If there's even a shred of truth to the origins of the Heresy, though, the implications are staggering: Horus was right in turning against the Emperor even if his reasons for doing so were wrong.

'''<u>Perturabo: Stone and Iron</u>''' A minor story largely about showing the differences between the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists, so doesn't provide any major revelations for the series. The Iron Warriors are supposed to be supporting an Imperial Fist position that is currently under assault, but Perturabo holds back and uses the opportunity to instruct his own officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Kurze giving his thoughts on why the Emperor made him like he did and the Night Lord definition of "compliance" during the Great Crusade. Hint: It involves flaying. Lots of it.

===Short Stories===
'''<u>Grandfather's Gift:</u>''' Mortarion has a lab accident and knocks himself out. He wakes up in Nurgle's Garden, wanders around for a bit, and has a nice chat with [[Ku'Gath]] the Plaguefather, whose name is misspelled [[Derp|for some reason]]. It's revealed that Nurgle has tracked down his foster father's soul and will let Mortarion capture it as a gift for joining his service. The timeline is a bit squiffy due to warp fuckery. Mortarion knows what daemons are and knows that he's fought alongside them, but doesn't recognize Ku'Gath. Ku'Gath knows Mortarion, but also says that they haven't met yet. Morty himself doesn't know where he is or what's going on at first, but eventually his memories return, and he mutates into his daemon primarch form and captures his foster father's soul.

'''<u>A Lesson in Iron:</u>''' Ferrus Manus chases some orks into a warp rift and stumbles across an Iron Hands ship from a few thousand years in the future. The boarding parties he sends are attacked by daemons which fuck them up, and Ferrus himself finds a dead future Iron Hand whose bionics look like a shitty hack-job to him, so he gets pissy and orders everyone to leave. When his Mechanicum adept points out that they might be able to mine the databanks for advanced technology and info on [[Drop Site Massacre|future events]], he declares that he wants no part of this future. Also reveals that Ferrus had seen enough shit on Medusa to know that the Imperial Truth was a "useful lie."

==The Tabletop Wargame==
[[Forge World]] produces a 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 [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Space Marines/Legion List‎|tactica]]), and rules for special characters and units from the [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[Emperor's Children]], and [[World Eaters]] Legions, including their [[Primarch]]s (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. The book's storyline is essentially just the ''first day'' of the battle, leading up to the death of [[Ferrus Manus]].

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===
Focusses 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 includes 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.

====Condensed Lists====
The ICL and LACAL were initially released as part of the limited edition run of Extermination, but were then later released separately. They are fluff-lite, codex-equivalent books that also included all of the FAQs/Errata up to their release; which unfortunately was still the end of 6th edition so some rules haven't carried over well. ''(eg. [[Lorgar]]s psychic rules.)''

The Legiones Astartes Crusade Army List is basically the generic 30k Space Marine "codex", whilst the Isstvan Campaign Legions contains all of the collected rules for the legions from Books 1-3; their units, characters and wargear in the previous three books. Meaning you can have a cheaper alternative to buying multiple £70+, huge black tomes JUST to play the game. The ICL was continued in the Age of Darkness Legions, which collected everything to book 5, including the errata.

Later came the Mechanicum Taghamata Army List, which contained all the Mechanicum units and army lists mentioned and rearranged them to keep everything on the same page, but lacked the Questoris Knight Army. The Crusade Imperialis Army Lists contain the Solar Auxilia, Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults, and Questoris Knight Crusade army lists.

===Conquest===
Horus Heresy Volume Four is entitled 'Conquest', despite early hints from Forgeworld that it would be about the Battle of Prospero, it instead features Horus' conquest of the Imperium and the [[Skub|"Major"]] battles of this time, which is to say some battle-zones that Forgeworld made up to fill time whilst they worked on the more well known events from the in-universe history. ''(And to be fair, their response as to why Prospero was delayed was because it included four major factions, [[Adeptus Custodes|two of]] [[Sisters of Silence|which have]] NEVER been represented on the tabletop, so required more time to do them justice.)''

A large portion of the book is given over to running battles in the '''"Age of Darkness"''', which is a variant ruleset used as the default for Horus Heresy games ''(where only Troops usually score, amongst other things)'' and has rules and FOCs for Cityfight missions, rules for running ongoing campaigns, variant rules for mysterious terrain and objectives as well as including unique relics to be taken by the various army lists to add flavor to non-special characters.

It also introduces the [[Solar Auxilia]] and [[Imperial Knight|"Questoris" Knights]] (as an AdMech list) armies to play while the modellers take a break from building power armor 24/7.

===Tempest===
The fifth Horus Heresy book covered the Battle of Calth. The rules for the [[Ultramarines]] (including [[Roboute Guilliman]] himself) as well as several warp-corrupted Word Bearer units are brought in alongside a few other new miscellaneous FW releases, including the Deredeo and the new Thanatars. There's also an Imperial Militia (Read: PDF) list that's super-customizable so you can make both loyalist and traitor lists. Also, the MOTHERFUCKING [[Warlord Titan|WARLORD TITANS]] IS IN IT TOO. PREPARE YOUR WALLET.

===Retribution===
Focused on 'Shadow Wars' far from the main fronts of the Heresy, in particular the Shattered Legions - that is, the [[Iron Hands]], [[Raven Guard]], and [[Salamanders]] in their weakened state following their losses in the Drop Site Massacre. But other Legions can also be included, with special rules for the Shattered Legions, Black Shields and a list for Armies of Dark Compliance - mixed traitor Legiones/Militia lists, as well as ten new special characters. It includes Legiones Astartes rules for the White Scars, Blood Angels and Dark Angels, so that players of those legions can start playing properly; however, it does not include special units, characters, or Primarchs for those legions. It also includes Garro and the Knights Errant and additional Mechanicum units and characters, including a new Dark Magos, [[Anacharis Scoria]]. Space Wolves and Thousand Sons will still need to wait for the Prospero book (Inferno, Book 7).

===Inferno===
In <s>Set to be book 3.</s> <s>late 2016.</s> <s>early 2017 (Because FW can't keep to schedule)</s> <s>December 2016</s> February 4, 2017, comes with what many neckbeards are waiting for: THE BURNING OF PROSPERO!!! For those [[Thousand Sons]] players, start saving up so you can play your space Egyptian sorcerers in all their 30k glory. Rules for the Sisters of Silence as an allied detachment and the Adeptus Custodes as a full army list will be present as well.

Well, it's come, and... it's uninspiring to say the least, with stuff like [[What|Magnus being straight up impossible to hit if he casts invisibility, not to mention pumping out 2d6 destroyer hits at every unit within 18" if he likes]], [[Derp|Custodes captains beating out every Primarch with a rollable 3+ invulnerable save]], some Custodes wargear being straight up [[Wat|left out of the book]] and to cap it all, [[Herp|pictures of tourists in the book ('''twice''') where you'd expect miniatures to be]]. You'd think with such a long development cycle the quality assurance would have been more thorough. Didn't help that [[Alan Bligh]] was likely fairly ill in late 2016, and his death in May of 2017 means the Horus Heresy team now has a big hole in it.

===Malevolence===
After the untimely death of Alan Bligh, this will be the first book with John French behind the wheel after two years of internal re-organizing. Covers the events of Signus Prime and the Chondax Campaigns. It features [[White Scars]] and [[Blood Angels]] including rules for both Jaghatai and Sanguinius, [[Dark Angel Shoulder Pad|making the Lion the only Primarch without rules]]. Introduced as a new army is Daemons of the Ruinstorm, an army of 'unknown aberrant xenoforms' (since this was before the Imperium really understood what Daemons really were) which play quite differently to the Daemons of Fantasy/Sigmar/40K. Also included are 5 new consuls and two new squads that interact with Psykers and Daemons.

===Crusade===
Was originally to be called ''Angelus'', though it eventually was renamed to ''Crusade''. It covers the [[Thramas Crusade]] with the Dark Angels vs Night Lords, and introduces new Legion-specific units and characters for the Dark Angels, including Dreadwing units and rules for upgrading DA characters to represent any of the six Wings of the Hexagrammaton. Most importantly, the Lion finally has his rules. The Night Lords got revamped rules and some new toys, including a new VIII Legion-specific Terminator squad that [[Derp|isn't the Atramentar]]. Unfortunately leaks have confirmed that the Dark Mechanicum army list has been pushed back to the next book. Also has rules for some new Space Marine vehicles, including the Sabre strike tank and the Arquitor Bombard, plus new additions for the Solar Auxilia, Imperial militia, and Chaos cults. Finally released in September 2020, having been delayed due to Nurgle's interference. Remarkable for atrocious fluff like Dark Angel auxiliary fleets usually including [[Gloriana-class_Battleship|Glorianas]], [[Rangdan_Xenocides|"the biggest threat to the existence of Imperium"]] being reduced to 80k Marine casualties in all three campaigns spanning for two decades, Legion recruits retaining their noble status after being conscripted, and many, many more things that would give even Matt Ward a pause.

==See Also==
* [[The War of The Beast]], for the next massive shit-show the Imperium was involved with.
* [[Alternate Heresy]], for a discussion of other possible outcomes of the (not necessarily Horus) Heresy.
* [[Army compatibility between Warhammer settings]]

==External Links==
* [http://geekdo.com/boardgame/3170/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (1993)] at BoardGameGeek
* [http://geekdo.com/boardgame/63543/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (2010)] at BoardGameGeek

{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category:Board Games]][[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Wargames]]

Scourge Stars

2021-07-08T01:47:31Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB:

{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= Scourge Stars
|image= [[Image:Death_Guard_Flag.PNG|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital=Unknown, perhaps the Plague Planet
|Official Languages=Low Gothic
|Power=Minor Power
|Size=3 Systems, 10 Confirmed Planets
|Head of State=[[Daemon Prince|Daemon]] [[Primarch]] [[Mortarion]]
|Head of Government=[[Daemon Prince|Daemon]] [[Primarch]] [[Mortarion]]
|Governmental Structure=Unitary Totalitarian Theocratic Dictatorship
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Nurgle]] Worship
|Demographic=[[Humans]], [[Daemons|Daemons of Nurgle]], Warp Beasts
|Military Force=[[Death Guard]], [[Plague Zombies]], [[Daemons|Daemons of Nurgle]], Cultists
}}
The Scourge Stars is the new mini-empire formed by the [[Death Guard]] under the leadership of [[Mortarion]] and a few others (But mostly Morty).

Made up of 3 diseased star systems, [[Cringe|pretentiously named Noxias, Verminox and Rottgrave Imperium]] (seriously, Administratum? Might as well wrap the stars in tape and hand'em to Nurgle), it was created during the waning years of the [[Indomitus Crusade]] in the 42nd millennium and its existence is there to simply [[Troll]] the fuck out of the [[Ultramarines|Smurfs]] and annoy the heck out of [[Roboute Guilliman|Rowboat Girlyman]] since it is located right to the galactic north of [[Ultramar]].

Essentially speaking, the Scourge Stars is pretty much the North Korea of WH40K. You know, as in that they are [[That Guy|that asshole neighbor that borders just north from Ultramar (South Korea), ''really'' want to have Ultramar despite being significantly weaker, have a fat and bloated tin-pot dictator that rules over a half-dead population and is constantly flinging shit over your fence.]] Except instead of shit, it's... ok, it's still shit but it's Nurgle shit alongside [[Plague Wars|waves of Virus Bombs, Nurgle Marines, and Mortarion's unwashed socks and underwear]]. How rude.
[[File:Scourge_Stars_Map_2.jpg|400px|left|thumb|Astrocartographic location of the Scourge Stars.]]
==Overview==
[[File:Scourge_Stars_Map.jpg|400px|left|thumb|Star systems of the Scourge Stars. That's some forced names eh?]]
The Scourge Stars were originally three loyal systems of the [[Imperium of Man|Imperium,]] until the outbreak of the [[Black Crusade|Thirteenth Black Crusade]] and the creation of the Great Rift; which caused the [[Warp]] to run unchecked, within an area of space now known as the Dark Imperium. The resultant Warp Storm activity caused all long-ranged astro-communications and interstellar travel to become virtually impossible. This period came to be known as the Noctis Aeterna, "the Blackness." Throughout several Imperial star systems located in the southern reaches of the Ultima Segmentum. It is unknown whether the [[Plague Planet]] is considered as the capitol of the Scourge Stars seeing as how unlike [[Sortiarius]], it is still trapped in the [[Warp|Immaterium]].

Although due to the strategic and religious importance of the Plague Planet, it probably is. When the [[Chaos God]] [[Nurgle]] discovered the Dark Imperium's creation, he decided to enact his long held plan of annexing the prosperous worlds of the Realm of Ultramar, into his Garden and began what became known to the Imperium, as the Plague Wars. These series of fierce battles, between the forces of Nurgle and the Imperium, first occurred within Ultramar, but soon spread to the areas surrounding it.

A [[WAAAGH|WAAAGH!]] was sighted during the formation of the Scourge Stars, in which [[Warlords|Warlord]] Badsmak led a headlong charge against the Death Guard to the Galactic West of the Scourge Stars. It would have gone off swimmingly for the [[Orks]] if the opponent they faced did not possess a fucking daemon Primarch, especially one such as [[Mortarion]] who is not only an accomplished infantry commander before his heresy, but also quite adept at biological and chemical warfare after. [[Rape|As you can guess from the likely outcome,]] Warlord Badsmak got proper krumped before fleeing like a pussy. Hmmmm.....[[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka|An Ork Warlord that flees when the situation goes dire?]] [[Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter|I wonder where I heard that before?]]

The three systems that became the Scourge Stars, were one such area and after they fell to the forces of Nurgle, they became an empire from where the Plague Father could continue to launch attacks against the nearby Realm of Ultramar. The plague forces located within the Scourge Stars are commanded by three of Nurgle's greatest commanders, who are charged with the single goal of adding the worlds of Ultramar to the Chaos God's Garden.

With the conclusion of the Plague Wars, its future is currently unclear. The forces of Nurgle seemed to withdraw from Ultramar to protect the Scourge Stars which had come under threat from other followers of Chaos. The resultant conflict is known as the "War in the Rift". It also appears as if Guilliman intends to launch a campaign against the 3 systems in the near future.

{{40k-Planets}}
{{Template:40k-Governments}}
[[Category:Chaos]]

Extra Heresy

2021-07-05T23:45:06Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Things that are considered Extra Heresy (With reasons why it classifies as such) */

{{heresy}}
[[Category:Heresy]]

[[Image:1232316384477.jpg|thumb|right|D:< !!]]

[[Extra Heresy]], also known as '''Double Heresy''', is a form of [[Heresy]] so Heretical that it causes everyone in the room to drop everything and stare in awe of how Heretical it is. The term was coined by [[Commissar Fuklaw]].

Some ways to define Extra Heresy:
# An extremely intense variety of normal heresy
# Something that's heretical even for Chaos (i.e. a pacifist [[Bloodletter]])
# [[Matt Ward|Something that tampers with the lore of an established franchise]]
# Something that just makes you [[RAGE]] with the intensity of a thousand supernovas (not always interchangeable with the term [[cancer]], which implies disgust rather than outrage)
# Something that the mere mention of which violates you to your core

Extra Heresy is punishable by [[Exterminatus]] of the heretic and their kind.

...Followed by revivification, followed by further Exterminatus.

==Things that are considered Extra Heresy (With reasons why it classifies as such)==

* [[Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position|6th Edition]]
* [[Daemonette]]s
* [[Matthew Ward|Matt Ward]]: Enough said.
* [[C.S. Goto]]
* [[Ian Watson]]
* [[Khornate Knights]]
* [[Female Space Marines]]
* [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3264868/ Sonic the Hedgehog]
* [[My Little Pony|Ponies]] who aren't in [[Board-tans/mlp|their containment board]].
* [[Matthew Ward|Matt Ward]]: (Read reason above)
* ALL of the Grey Knights for [[Kaldor Draigo|some reaso-]]{{BLAM}}
* [[Furries]]: Human traitors that choose to become xeno scum.
**[[Chakats]]: Somehow even ''worse''.
* [[Brony|Furry-Bronies]], even in their containment board.
* [[Eldar]] [[Space Marines]]
* [[Chaos Spawn]] since just mentioning it causes to you t-AAUGHBLACIFTHFG {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Mercy kill.}}
* [[FATAL]]
* [[Squad Broken]] (We're struggling to figure out if there's a level above Extra Heresy to describe it)
* Fanboys, Fangirls, or [[Meme|Fan Attack Helicopt-]]{{BLAM}} {{BLAM|NO.}}
* [[Matthew Ward|Matt Ward]]
*[[Cultist-Chan]]
*[[Heresy]] is extra heresy.
* Xenos love (as per [[Commissar Fuklaw]] stated, <s>but i'm willing to try i-</s>{{BLAM}}
*<s>Skub</s>
* [[Matthew Ward|Matt Ward]]
* Anything in relation to half-breeds, the actual names of which is not worth mentioning.{{BLAM|if only all anons were like this one}}
* Winx Club, especially the later seasons. But, Greta likes the later sea-{{BLAM}}
* <s>The concept of Taco Fridays. (It’s Freedom Friday anyway)</s> {{BLAM|HERESY!!!}} {{*BLAM*}} Taco Friday was the invention of the [[TTS|Man-Emperor of Mankind]]!
* Saying that Taco Tuesday is on Friday. ([[Magnus The Red| the powers of chaos prevail]]) {{BLAM|DAMMIT MAGNUS}}
* Mentioning the name of the traitor of the Imperium, Kasey Boon. I would say tha- {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|SHIPPING KASEMERALD IS HERESY!!!!!}}
* This trash: https://1d4chan.org/images/5/50/Temperus_maximus.png because
* Oh and did we mention [[Matthew Ward|Matt Ward]]

Magnus the Red

2021-07-05T23:30:58Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Horus Heresy */

{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-Warhammer-40000-фэндомы-4995855 (1).jpeg|400px|thumb|right|Handsome bastard...]]
{{Topquote|For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.|Ecclesiastes 1:18}}
{{Topquote|If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.|Woody Allen}}
{{Topquote|I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen?|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmuF-0P4tk William Foster]}}
'''Magnus the Red''', '''"Master of Prospero"''' (a.k.a '''The Crimson King''', the '''Sorcerer-King''', '''Cyclopean Magnus''', the '''Red Cyclops''', '''The One Who did <s>Nothing</s> Wrong''', [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|'''My Special Magny Magic, The Saucy Spice Boy, Wide Ahriman, and Rudolf the red nosed Primarch''']]) is the primarch of the [[Thousand Sons]] and rules over the Planet of the Sorcerers, and formerly Prospero. He is directly after the [[Emperor]] as the mightiest Psyker/Sorcerer in the whole Warhammer 40k Universe. He is notable for having an enormously variable physical form with a few common themes he keeps to most of the time (red skin and hair, one eye, etc) and [[Eldrad|being enormously, staggeringly, almost unbelievably arrogant,]] and with his shifting physical form and his hubris he's a real chip off the old block. Because of this there is debate over if he had a big ol' red eye in the middle of his forehead, or had normal eyes but one socket was empty. Either way he was a cyclops (The colour of his single eye is also described as constantly changing). He is also the Primarch of the [[Blood Ravens]] (maybe), which would explain their color scheme, high percentage of psykers, their Chapter Badge, their name, their beliefs, and that they steal everything that isn’t nailed down (who are we kidding, including what's nailed down as well, and the nails with that). Of all the Primarchs, with the exception of [[Vulkan]], [[Sanguinius]] and [[Jaghatai Khan]], Magnus was one of the most open minded and compassionate to the discriminated, being a psyker and all.

He, along with old [[Mortarion|Morty]], are among the few traitor Primarchs who actually hate/despise their respective Chaos Gods. Mortarion for his general disdain for all things psychic in nature, and Magnus for being humiliated and played like a [[Metal Gear|damn fiddle]] by [[Tzeentch]]. Then again, being a Daemon Prince does make even the idea of doing so impossible by definition, so instead he's chosen to blame the Imperium for pushing him to the side of the traitors.

==The Great Crusade==
[[File:Past-Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-.jpeg||300px|right|thumb|Magnus nerdin out in his private astrology room.]]
Magnus landed on the planet of [[Prospero]], a planet whose ancient civilization was composed predominantly of psykers, who had fled there because they were persecuted by humanity at large for being psykers. As Magnus was himself such a being, he formed a kinship with the people of Prospero in short order. Taken in by Prospero's people, he absorbed knowledge like a sponge, and became crazy powerful, and in time far exceeded the power and control of all of his teachers. After a while, he became the single most powerful ''thing'' on the fucking planet, and he led a campaign to eradicate a race of predators on Prospero known as the ''Psychneuein'', which had overrun many of Prospero's early cities, and had an unhealthy fondness for laying their eggs in unsuspecting psykers' brains. Which was probably why the beasts had destroyed the entire population of Prospero, save for its capital city, Tizca. One by one, bit by bit, Magnus' forces retook the planet, putting the Psychneuein to the sword, and within a year, [[Awesome|Magnus had mostly reclaimed the entire world]] (except for the Desolation of Prospero, which was everything except for Tizca).

Once the campaign on the Psychneuein was complete, Magnus became the planetary leader by popular demand. Magnus decided to be fucking awesome, and rebuilt the cities (or mostly just Tizca). Like a somehow perfectly stable fortress lasting some 50 years in [[Dwarf Fortress]], Tizca became arguably the most beautiful city in Imperial space, with crystalline spires and pyramids, long marble roads, and psychically-resonant crystals in key locations; designed to calm the turbulent minds of younger psykers and help them control their burgeoning psionic potential. The city quickly became known as a shining jewel of humanity, and one that showed proudly how far its citizens had come from the brink of near-extinction. Prospero also had one of the most technically advanced defensive networks in the Imperium, all of which was hilariously wasted except for the shields when Magnus, in a fit of Primarch-scale angst over his "I screwed everything Dad was doing and failed my purpose entirely in the process" whoopsy-daisy, decided that the [[Space Wolves]] should get the rabbit punch.

All this time, Magnus continued to codify and systematize everything he could about the 'Great Ocean' - the name the Prosperans had given the [[Warp]]. Huge libraries filled with knowledge about psychic powers and the warp were established, and Magnus himself used his powers to peer into the Empyrean itself, claiming many of its secrets, though at terrible risk to himself. While this was exceptionally dangerous, much of what the Imperium's [[Inquisition]] currently knows about the Warp came directly from several of his manuscripts that survived.

With such a powerful mind heading into the warp, it was inevitable that the [[Emprah]] (who happened to be out and about the galaxy looking for his lost sons) would eventually take notice. So he eventually came to Prospero, and he and Magnus psychically brofisted before talking for several days. The Emperor taught him even more about psychic powers, but cautioned Magnus to be ''slow and purposeful''. The Emperor was well-aware foul horrors lurked in the Warp and liked nothing better than [[Anal Circumference|forcibly sodomizing an unprepared Psyker's soul]], but Magnus didn't care, especially since his forays into the Warp to save his Legion from the flesh-change had already come at a price neither of them realized - Magnus believed he'd only given up on his right eye, sacrificed ala Odin when he had consorted with [[Tzeentch|Warp-entities whose nature he did not understand]]. To Magnus, one eye was was an acceptable price and he didn't heed the Emperor's warnings as he believed he'd come out on top of the bargain.

Magnus was put in charge of the [[Thousand Sons]], but would not immediately embark on the Great Crusade - since many of his Legion were psykers, and there had been so many small mutations that a number of them couldn't survive the gene-seeding process. Even worse, during combat, psykers ran the risk of losing control of their powers and underwent "Flesh Change", where their body mutated rampantly out of control at all the Warp energy running through them (we call them something else, but won't speak its name as... wait, I didn't say it's [[Chaos Spawn|naSHHTLSUROHSONTOOLS!]])

Magnus was aware of the mutations his Astartes were suffering, and entered the Warp to seek answers about the cause of this and if a cure existed, though he didn't know that he had consorted with [[Tzeentch]] by doing so, and the god of [[Just as planned]] saw a ''lot'' of potential in this one. In return for knowledge and a way to stop the flesh-change, Magnus lost his eye so hard that he '''never saw it coming''' [[Cegorach|(ah-ha-ha-ha!!)]].

In any case, because of the setbacks that had befallen the Thousand Sons, the selfless efforts of Magnus to save them, their shared psychic talents, and the continuing distrust and persecution of many Imperial agencies and other Space Marine Legions towards the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities and the rampant mutations present in their gene-seed, the Primarch and his Astartes developed an extremely close emotional and psychic bond. One of the strongest among all Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions, exceeding even the [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves]]' dedication to [[Horus]].

Finally, about midway into the Great Crusade (100 Terran years after it had begun), the now "stable" Thousand Sons Legion (although numbering only 10,000 soldiers), with Magnus leading them on the field, were permitted to take part in the campaign as part of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. And it was ''glorious''. When they were deployed, the Sons were a sight to behold, flinging psychic storms to consume their enemies and striking bolts with precision and prescience, using their abilities to ascertain enemies' weak-points. Magnus was unique among the Primarchs in that he would always try diplomatic routes first, however - in this way, the Thousand Sons won many battles without so much as a shot fired. This did not sit well with [[Rogal Dorn]] or [[Roboute Guilliman|Girlyman]], who viewed this approach "unmanly". Likewise, Magnus drew constant distrust from [[Mortarion]] and [[Leman Russ]], who distrusted the Sons' sorcerous ways and were somewhat concerned of a trait the Sons had picked up: [[lootas|after conquering or annexing a world, they would take huge amounts of knowledge: books, scrolls about forgotten /forbidden lore, and ancient artifacts, back to Prospero for study, analysis and codification]]. ''And this doesn't sound like the Blood Ravens, you say? Nicking everything shiny that's not nailed down?'' Point is: nobody looted so prolifically as The Thousand Sons. The White Scars and Blood Angels aligned themselves with them to rig the Librarium. What that did was to actually impose some restraint on psykers, that made everyone a bit more accepting towards them. Their worries only intensified when it was discovered that the Sons had little warp critters (familiars) called "tutelaries" buzzing around them and acting as warp power-packs. This Elegan/tg/entleman believes Magnus’ tutelary was an ADORABLE WARP KITTEN!

When diplomacy didn't work, The Sons were known to fuck entire armies with lightning, fireballs, mass mind-control, precognition of enemy strikes and counter them with precision strikes, dealing so much devastation with only some few squads of Marines. Magnus himself once fought Ork gargants by himself, and despite being able to zap, melt or transmute their hulls with just the power of his mind, he instead [[Awesome|scaled himself to the size of a Warlord-class Titan, and beat the shit out of them with his bare hands]].

A very important event called "Council of Nikaea" or "The Trial of Magnus the Red", took place about 50 years before the Horus Heresy, where Magnus was called by his brothers and the Emperor to answer for abusing his powers and to install some form of control of psykers used in battle across the galaxy. The fact that the Sons obsessed with preserving valuable knowledge (whatever the source), was another factor that pissed a bunch of Primarchs off. The Thousand Sons' political opponents among other Astartes Legions found hoarding xenos' artifacts useless and counter-productive to the goals of the Great Crusade (which actually more or less sought to eradicate all alien life in the galaxy). Finally, the Emperor stepped in, bitch-slapped everyone for acting like a [[Derp|fucking child]], and pointed out that whilst dangerous, psychic powers were still necessary to the Imperium as a whole.
So psykers were now to abstain from using their powers in battle. The ever fabulous Jaghatai Khan facepalmed his high forehead, whilst groaning, that this is exactly what he'd warned Magnus about. Magnus was ticked off, but calmed down a bit a little later and continued the Crusade with the new restrictions in place (actually, they carried out their arcane ways in secret).

==Horus Heresy==
[[File:DaemonMagnus.jpg|right|thumb|He doesn't get much press-time because of how bad he and his Legion got dicked by Tzeentch, but when he DOES, watch your fucking [[FATAL|ass]]!]]
When Magnus learned that Horus intended to betray the Emperor and slaughter like half the galaxy, he resolved to use any method possible to warn the Emperor. With few other options, he made a deal with Tzeentch again, to combine their powers and smash the psychic seal The Emperor had installed to protect the Webway from the warp (Magnus simply did not bother to walk around the wall through one of the entrances that the Webway has) and enter the Imperial Palace all the way from Prospero. Unfortunately, this deed majorily fucked up the Webway project the Emperor had been working on for over 9000 years, which would have made the dangerous warp-travel obsolete and would [[Awesome|unify the Imperium of Man using a human-engineered version of the Eldar Webway gate]]. Big-E called Magnus out and banished him back for breaking it and using sorcery to get through the Webway. [[Eldrad|The dick]] didn't even listen to Magnus about Horus's betrayal and declared Magnus a [[Extra Heresy|DOUBLE HERETIC]]. Magnus realized that the Imperium is comprehensively fucked and that he needed to do all he could to protect it and Prospero. Emps should probably have told his super-psychic son about his psychically-sensitive all-important project [[derp|THAT MAGNUS WAS DESTINED TO OPERATE]], but that would make [[Grimdark|nobody happy]], wouldn't it?

When Horus learned of this, he was quietly amused. The Emperor ordered Horus to have Russ bring Magnus back to Terra to stand trial for what he had done, and Horus being a [[Eldrad|dick]], quietly altered Russ' orders to lay waste to Prospero instead and slaughter the Thousand Sons. As Magnus was already officially a (slightly tolerated) heretic, Russ stoically accepted the order to bring a third of his brothers down. (Seriously, [[Companion|Constantin Valdor]] is way more out for Magnus' blood than Russ himself is.) Russ took his whole Legion to the party, and accompanying the Space Wolves were a full contingent of Adeptus Custodes (led by aforementioned Valdor), millions of [[Imperial Army]] troops and an elite anti-psyker unit: the Sisters of Silence (think a unit of [[Culexus|Culexus Assassin]]s and you get the general idea). Barring a last-ditch attempt to Skype Magnus through Kasper Hawser, an agent that had been brainwashed to visit Fenris and spy on the wolves that Magnus was not connected to(because [[Tzeentch|reasons]]).

Interestingly Russ actually attempted to contact Magnus and his legion several times in an attempt to get them to explain their actions, and even when he was directly above the planet he kept sending Magnus calls to try and get him to just talk to him, but Magnus had put the planet on lockdown and kept denying any contact with the fleet, which royally pissed off Russ. A shame too, if he said fucking anything he probably could have stopped his people from getting fucked.

Magnus, sensing this and realising that this had been [[Just as planned]] by Tzeentch and that it has done this to completely destroy both the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves, decided to counter-dick-move the Lord of All Fate. Instead of calling Russ back and peacefully working out what had happened (which would have solved everything), he decided to accept the destruction of everything that he had worked for, so that [[not as planned|Tzeentch's ultimate goal would only be half-fulfilled]], [[derp|because letting your enemy accomplish half of what they want and making the Imperium far more vulnerable to Horus is better than making them fail and giving your traitor brother a harder time]]. Tzeentch was richly amused by this. As Prospero burned, Tzeentch and Magnus engaged in act after act of dickery and counter-dickery; with Magnus finally pushed into a towering rage and taking to the battlefield at his capital: crushing his enemies with volleys of MIND BULLETS (forgetting the whole reason he refused to talk to Russ), before he engaged Leman Russ himself in close-combat. The two fought fiercely and [[Awesome|Magnus managed to Falcon pawnch Russ so hard, his breastplate shattered ''and one of his hearts punctured''. ]] Russ was going to die until HIS TWO WOLF PETS INTERFERED IN THE FIGHT and allowed him to take out Magnus' second eye, and then performed a back-breaker on him that ended the fight (Russ would have died had his wolves stayed out of the fight). Tzeentch was greatly amused by all of this because it's rare for anyone, let alone a mortal, to predict and out-manipulate the plans of the Architect of Fate himself. He thus made Magnus an offer: Become Tzeentch's servant and preserve what was left of his Legion and homeworld or watch it all burn in a pool of his own blood.

Pussying out, Magnus agreed because the thought of actually dying to atone for his mistakes only seemed like a good idea until he had to put it into practice. As a result, Magnus' cowardice ruined everything he'd been working towards and explicitly doing the one thing he'd been trying to prevent. The response of Magnus' new patron was immediate: for once, Tzeentch was true to his word. The City of Light was transported into the Eye of Terror onto a Daemon World. Prospero was destroyed that day, but Magnus and his Legion survived. It is unclear ''when'' they ended up on the Planet of the Sorcerers; before or after the Siege of Terra, but Magnus the Red had been so damaged by his battle with Russ and the psychic effort of teleporting to Sortiarius that his soul had fragmented across time and space. The shards represented different aspects of Magnus's personality, all tied to various places and people in the galaxy (one existed in the past many decades before the Heresy) and all had different motives. One shard helped the Salamanders resurrect Vulkan, whilst another had gone full daemon and tried to kill as many knight-errants as possible. Ahriman and co gathered several of the more powerful shards back together and managed to perform a Rubric to bond them back together into a stable form called the Crimson King. Magnus was saved from fading away but effectively become a daemon prince and the most powerful of all Tzeentch's servants. One of the shards, representing Magnus's good side was bound into the dying Revuel Arvida, becoming Janus. Magnus originally planned to join the assault on Terra purely to get this part of his soul back but seeing as Janus appeared later in The Beast Arises series, we can assume this didn't go to plan. (Though Magnus shows that Perpetuals can be permanently killed by Psyker Powers/Chaos Sorcery when he perma-kill REDACTED)

[[Just as planned|Magnus had never served Tzeentch willingly, but now had no choice - exactly as Tzeentch HAD PLANNED from the very beginning (we might think), and now he was committed to the very cause he had tried to foil]].

Some head-scratching does arise ae to why Magnus didn't: a) simply tell his Legion to lay down their weapons and try and talk Russ out of obliterating the entire world, (especially since Russ was willing to listen), b) take the hara-kiri option, which would have at least brought everything to an end a little earlier or c) try to confront Russ elsewhere where there wouldn't be a large amount of civilian/auxilia deaths and the vast repository of knowledge the Thousand Sons had wouldn't be lost, or d) just go to the Space Wolves himself, since that way he wouldn't take his entire Legion and planet down with him. The common consensus is that Magnus was too proud to consider the idea of explaining himself and resolving things peacefully (especially with the brother he had always considered to be an ignorant savage), but this falls flat when you remember that he also could've talked to the Custodes if he thought Russ wasn't willing to talk (and seeing as how Russ kept calling him like a needy girlfriend, he obviously was). There's also no reason presented anywhere for why he didn't take any other option presented here, and once you examine the event, it becomes clear this is one of those odd writing issues where the Burning of Prospero was written into the lore so far in advance as something that happened, that when they actually got to detailing it they forgot to adequately justify it from the side of Magnus and his Legion.

==Post-Heresy==
[[File:Cl9SiZhXIAADyip.jpg|left|thumb|300px|An exceptionally skilled depiction of Magnus during the Horus Heresy.]]
And so, the Horus Heresy came and went. The Siege of Terra occurred, Horus had fought the Emperor and (SPOILER WARNING) failed, and the Traitor Legions were driven to the [[Eye of Terror]]. However, the Thousand Sons now had to deal with more immediate problems: with their serving of Tzeentch, the Flesh Change returned with a vengeance. Magnus made efforts to stop this, but being a servant of the God of Mutation has its drawbacks and before long Magnus seemed to have given up. Growing desperate, [[Ahzek Ahriman]], the Chief Librarian and First Captain, took matters into his own hands. Having lost his brother to the Flesh Change before they found Prospero, Ahriman gathered a cabal of other sorcerers, the Book of Magnus, and performed the Rubric of Ahriman in an attempt to stop the Flesh Change.

The results were not what Ahriman expected: while it stopped the Flesh Change and further empowered all psychic Thousand Sons, all non-psyker Thousand Sons had their bodies turned to dust and sealed within their Power Armour, becoming little more than robots needing guidance from a Thousand Son sorcerer.

Confronting Ahriman, once his most favored son, Magnus angrily demanded an explanation. Ahriman basically telling him to shut it [[rage|did not help]] and Magnus was about to kill Ahriman when Tzeentch spoke to him: ''"Magnus, why do you seek to kill my pawn?"'' (which is strange since of all the chaos gods, Tzeentch cares about his followers the least) Once again, Magnus realized [[just as planned|he'd had been used]]. Disgusted, broken (and still really angry but unable to do anything about it) Magnus simply exiled Ahriman from the Planet of Sorcerers. For the last ten thousand years, Magnus and Ahriman both have labored to restore the Sons' bodies to their original forms, [[troll|with Tzeentch ensuring they fail all the while]]. Though, it is really weird the God of ''Mutation'' and ''Change'' would be preventing change and keeping some of his strongest minions in a form that cannot be mutated (well, I mean he probably could because Warp but we've never heard about it).

===Fragments of Magnus===
Unknown to everyone save perhaps Tzeentch himself and Magnus' inner circle, the teleportation of Magnus to the Planet of the Sorcerers at Prospero had the side effect of splitting the Primarch's soul into a large number of lesser fragments, many of which might not have even been aware of the split and believed that they truly were Magnus the Red.
The actual number of fragments is not known exactly, but an allegorical representation of them showed a broken statue of a bird, with some fragments being as small as grains of dirt though the largest piece was definitely recognisable as parts of a bird.

*The fragment that traveled to the Planet of Sorcerers was the greatest shard of Magnus' soul, although upon its arrival it was nothing like the Primarch or the daemon-prince Magnus that are well known to the 40k universe. Although it appeared to be Magnus the Red, it has the mindset of a senile old man who was dying. This Magnus barely knew where or when he was at the best of times and was constantly forgetting who his companions were or what Leman Russ had done to him or his Legion. This shard of Magnus spent centuries ''(of warptime, so practically no time at all in realspace)'' fleeing his memories through the warp while being chased by his equerry [[Amon]] who was trying to bring him back. In a moment of lucidity he was the first to reveal that his soul had been shattered, but only by reliving the battle of Prospero did the Thousand Sons have an idea of where the largest shards went to, so Ahriman led a quest to reclaim them and restore his Primarch, gathering enough to amalgamate the Crimson King.
**'''The Crimson King''', the Daemon-Primarch of Tzeentch as he exists in the present, was the recombination of several shards as the Horus Heresy went on and by far the most powerful of the Magnus-fragments. His first act was to declare that he would join Horus' rebellion and lay siege to Terra to reclaim his greatest fragment ''(Janus)''. He would exile Ahriman for the first failed Rubric, would later instigate the Battle of the Fang and then spend the next ten thousand years being a dick, eventually fouling up Ahriman's second Rubric but achieving near-complete unification of all the shards. Unsurprisingly, the only parts that weren't reunited with The Crimson King were all the ones which embodied Magnus' noblest, most selfless qualities.
*'''"Magnus"''' (as the father of the Thousand Sons and '''author of the Book of Magnus''') was the portion of Magnus that seemed to care the most about his legionaries and of his son Ahriman in particular. Much diminished, he remained behind the scenes for centuries attempting to subvert the Daemon-Primarch and guide his son Ahriman ''(and by extension the Legion)'' back to greatness and presumably ''(at a push)'' back onto the path the Emperor intended for them. It was he who inspired Ahriman to attempt the original Rubric in the first instance since it was actually his own spell. "Magnus" (the father) knew that it would fail, but the flesh-change was overcoming the legion anyway, and the failed attempt would provide Ahriman with both the time and the conviction to eventually complete his great work and attempt a second rubric by pooling his own resources with knowledge gleaned from various other fragments, including the Athenaeum of Kallimakus. It was also he who infuenced Amon's dreams to seek out Ahriman to kill him and undo the Rubric and end their brothers' agony. While this shard of Magnus admitted he sacrificed Amon to re-motivate Ahriman to do the second Rubric, he believed it was the proper course of action to save their legion and make Magnus whole without the Crimson King's infuence. The end result may have actually cured his legion & father by reuniting the broken primarch and reversing the flesh-change, and allow the personality of "Magnus" (the father) to assert control over the united fragments and redeem himself. However, even if it had worked the interference of the Crimson King would have caused it to destroy the fragments instead. Ultimately, it faded into oblivion rather than allow the Crimson King to reabsorb it.
*The great library of knowledge: the '''Athenaeum of Kallimakus''' actually was a fragment of sorts, but not able to act independently, only providing a link to the stream of consciousness of the original Magnus the Red. However the Athenaeum was corrupted after being discovered by the Crimson King, who attempted to insinuate his own mind into the thought-stream and attempt to assert control over Ahriman's second rubric result. His dipping in and out of the stream introduced flaws into the spell which would still have allowed the Thousand Sons to regain their flesh but would have destroyed all the fragments of Magnus in the process.
**A separate lesser shard was hidden within the ashes of '''Mahavastus Kallimakus''' himself, that was carried around in an urn for years yet was completely oblivious to the [[Sisters of Silence]], the [[Thousand Sons]] and one of the [[Knights-Errant]], beneath whom the urn had passed almost completely unnoticed. It was only when proximity to the shard of Aghoru that it awakened, although its motivations are largely unknown because it seemed to be operating under the orders of the other shard until it fused with it.
*One fragment remained on Prospero, representing his acceptance of the Emperor's judgement against him, this Magnus was stuck in limbo and meditation for a while, until [[Jaghatai Khan]] rocked up to Prospero to find out what had happened. This fragment served up a nice big info-dump and urged him to pick a side in the war, and in return Jaghatai banished him from Prospero.
*Another became a daemon of vengeance that was unwittingly passed from host to host ''(It was thought to be a normal daemon, no-one realised it was a actually a shard of Magnus)''. It eventually came to inhabit the body of a renegade space marine called Astraeos. This shard saw the Crimson King as a usurper but was eventually consumed after a very quick battle with the Crimson King following the failed second Rubric.
*One returned to Nikaea and represented the part inside of Magnus that died when the Emperor made his pronouncement against him. This shard was literally a corpse being clawed at by daemonic hands.
*One represented his warrior aspect and was found on the planet Aghoru seemingly waiting to duel whoever showed up. It held off a [[Knights-Errant|Knight-Errant]], a Rune Priest, a small squad of space wolves, a bunch of cyber automata and a freaking Samurai at the same time without any overt use of psychic power until it was bound into the body of a mortal. Interestingly, this shard had no intention of reuniting with the greater because Magnus was not actually known for his battle-prowess, so this fragment would rather have remained and made a name for himself equal to Angron or the Lion, nonetheless it later absorbed the shard of Kallimakus into itself and was absorbed in turn into the Crimson King anyway.
*Another fragment representing Magnus' desire to seek knowledge for the sake of its acquisition. It was thrust into Terra's past and inhabited the body of King Kadmus, one of the Emperor's enemies, requiring Ahriman to time-travel in order to reclaim it.
*One fragment remained on Terra and was fused by [[Malcador]] to '''Revuel Arvida''', inadvertently creating an entity known as '''Ianius''' ''(Janus)''. Yes, the same Janus that would become the first Supreme Grand Master of the [[Grey Knights]]. It is believed that this fragment embodied Magnus's nobility and connection to the Emperor.
*From the Prologue and Epilogue there may very well have been a second fragment of Magnus that resided on Terra and was known to Malcador and Rogal Dorn. But where Revuel Arvida housed a shard in his flesh and became Ianius who remained ostensibly Astartes, this shard was fully formed ''(an oversized giant with crimson skin)'' and housed within a villa hidden deep beneath the crust of Terra from where he narrates the novel ''Crimson King''. This fragment took upon himself the role of archivist of the Horus Heresy, and pinned his hopes for the future on some all-seeing device in the warp called ''The Orrery''. Perhaps building it with the help of his equerry Amon while he was chasing a different shard of his emotional father through time and space via the warp, or by completing his own orrery separately, or simply referring to the one the Crimson King made. It could then be this shard of Magnus who rescued the ship carrying the body of Vulkan and guided it back to Nocturne so his brother could be resurrected.
**It may also yet be Janus speaking from an earlier time period before his binding, who knows? The warp is confusing enough without it being inhabited by multiple aspects of the same guy over different time periods.
**Regardless of whether it is Janus or an entirely separate fragment, one of the Terran shards was believed by the Crimson King to be the first and greatest fragment of the Soul of Magnus and so he was willing to lay siege to Terra to reclaim it, even going so far as name it his sole reason for joining Horus's side of the war.

By the novel Ahriman Unchanged, Ahriman would complete his second Rubric and attempt to cast it on [[Sortiarius]]. Unfortunately the Rubric was not completed as Ahriman was interrupted by a member of the Thousand Sons who knew that the outcome would result in Magnus's annihilation and wanted to avoid it, so he seized control of the magical energy before Ahriman could finish the spell and obliterate their father. This resulted in several of the fragments reuniting into the Daemon Primarch Crimson King and increasing his share of power to a state indistinguishable from that which he possessed as a complete being. The aspect of vengeance: Astraeos would be the Crimson King's first victim and be absorbed almost immediately, while Magnus (the father) would fade away into nothing after having hung on for so many centuries only to fail in his objectives to lay claim to the soul of Magnus or heal his Legion- all it could do was deny the Crimson King what little power it still possessed.
*Although he [[Just as Planned|might have actually succeeded]], in by failing to complete the second Rubric, as a side effect Ahriman was uncoupled from his destiny and now "free" from divine manipulations, something that Magnus ''(the Father)'' had wished for all of his sons. But even then Ahriman ultimately continued to serve Tzeentch of his own will, so how much of a victory this may have been is up for debate.

This means that while Daemon-Primarch Magnus at the turn of the 41st millennium is in his most complete state and the various schemes of the separated fragments have been put to rest, Magnus is still not "whole" and likely will never return to his original state due to the loss of significant fragments; in particular, the evaporated essence of the compassionate father figure who set the rubric in motion, and probably the missing nobility of Janus, who died centuries earlier in service to the [[Grey Knights]]. At this point it can be assumed that Tzeentch filled in the remaining parts with himself, cementing Magnus's state as a Daemon Prince and eliminating any chance of his redemption.

===Post Rubric===
[[File:Magnus vs Robboute.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Magnymagick and [[Roboute Guilliman|Papa Smurf]] having a calm and brotherly conversation over at Luna in the 41st Millennium. [[TTS|And I, Cato Sicarius, will prevent anyone from interrupting this conversation!]]]]

'''Battle for The Fang:'''
The unified Magnus the Red: The Crimson King, later showed up on [[Fenris|FENRIS]] ITSELF and became the second Daemon Primarch after [[Angron]] to get shit done, rampaging through imperial lines and laying waste to everything in his path with MIND BULLETS and RAW PHYSICAL POWER until the Space Wolves responded and after an extremely hard fight Magnus phased himself out and teleported all his marines out of the Fang after having his back broken once again, this time by Bjorn. While he succeeded in sabotaging an experimental (seemingly successful) Space Wolf geneseed mutation cure and killing an entire Great Company HQ, The Great Wolf (turns out wolfing a Wolf Lord's wolf means warping your hands inside him and ''ripping his hearts out'') and almost killing Bjorn the Fell-Handed himself, he did not finish the Space Wolves once and for all. Of course, Magnus claimed it was not his goal in the first place.

Funny how two out of two Daemon Primarchs to have gotten shit done ended up being repelled by the actions of the Space Wolves. On the other hand, the Wolfies were pushed to their very limits trying to repel the chosen of Tzeentch, and they only got off easy once he fucked off after his main objective was finished.

'''Warzone Fenris:'''

Of all the Daemon Primarchs so far seen in the fluff, he seems to be the most [[Reasonable Marines|collected and coherent]], as far as Chaos goes; in the trailer of Wrath of Magnus he actually sounded quite composed and at odds with Angron's "BLUDFUTEBLUDGUD!" or Mortarion's "IHAVESPESSASHMA"; he told the Thousand Sons in a strong but civilized way to put their differences aside to focus on the goal of destroying the Space Puppies, and remarked how [[Awesome|all of them were his sons, even Ahriman or any other wayward sorcerer who had gone his own way through the ages and that despite the millennia long pass, he still holds Prospero in high regards and consistently fights for his homeworld's memory and people;]] [[Kharn|what a cool guy.]]

During the campaign, Magnus' goal was never to destroy Fenris (though it would have been a satisfying bonus), but instead to make the Wolves suffer as he and his sons did during the Burning of Prospero: with the Wulfen and their genetic flaw revealed, they would be regarded with suspicion and mistrust. Because the people of Fenris have seen first-hand the horrors of the Warp, the Inquisition ordered a massive purge that saw most of the population of Fenris exterminated. Midgardia basically got destroyed, Fenris became a partly irradiated wasteland, and Magnus pulled Sortiarius into the materium (as the whole invasion of Fenris also turned out to be a massive ritual for which the Grey Knights killing the populace helped a lot, yes Grey Knights dun fucked up). Interestingly, while Magnus is lauded for his vast intellect he seems to have neglected the insignificant detail of *knowing* that the Space Wolves were tricked by Horus into annihilating the Thousand Sons instead of detaining them in order to take them to Terra as the Emperor had decreed. This order was slightly "re-interpreted" by Horus and then passed on to Leman Russ with the known consequences (the traitor legions refer to them as "the betrayed" for that very reason). There goes split personality for ya!

Notably, during the above campaign, Magnus got Mortarion's aid in exchange for the latter taking over Midgardia and transforming it into a plague infested planet. However, Magnus proceeded to back-stab Mortarion by arranging Midgardia to undergo exterminatus before the latter succeeded in claiming it. Magnus likely did this out of vengeance because he's still salty over Mortarion's role during that little Council of Nikaea thing, something something best served cold...

'''Gathering Storm Book III:'''

Magnus and the Thousand Sons are found to be lurking in the webway after the resurrected [[Roboute Guilliman]] and his allies have escaped from the Red Corsairs. Guilliman, realizing that Magnus is hoping to use him to sneak into the Imperial Palace via the webway gate, instead detours to a dormant gate on Luna. A huge battle between Guilliman's forces and the Thousand Sons ensues, whilst the two Primarchs go mano-a-mano. In a rare example of the [[Ultramarine|blue bastards]] not getting their way and the whole "Daemon Primarch" thing actually making a difference, Magnus' super-psyker abilities bring the G-man within a gnat's testicle of actually getting killed before the loyalist cavalry arrives in the form of the Imperial Fists, the Adeptus Custodes, and the Sisters of Silence. The Sisters nullify Magnus' powers long enough for Guilliman to turn him into a kebab. This somehow causes Magnus to unleash a psychic shockwave that blows him back through the gate, after which some Harlequins who'd tagged along with Guilliman seal it off, stranding him in the webway.
Since then, Magnus has been involved in many other major attacks on the Imperium at the behest of Tzeentch, such as the invasion of the Stygius Sector and building [[New Kingdom|an empire for psykers]].

==On the tabletop==
===As a son of the Emperor===
[[File:FWMagnusTheRed.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Magnus, back before he was a red giant. Well, a redder giant.]]
{| class=wikitable
! Points || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| 495 || 7 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 4 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}
With his decent statline, Magnus has the Primarch rule in all of its goodness, '''Arch Sorcerer''' (ML 5 psyker that harnesses on a 3+, needs three 6's to roll perils and re-rolls 1's if he does) plus he randomly generates his powers from any of the 5 main disciplines plus Sanctic (E.G. 2 biomancy, 2 telepathy, 1 divination). now think about rolling all 5 on biomancy! with '''The Eye of the Crimson King''', which gives him line of sight to anything in range while also giving his powers Ignores Cover. '''Phantasmal Aura''' makes him [[Jaghatai Khan|harder to hit]] by forcing anyone in melee or shooting at him (and the ''infantry'' unit he joined) -1 to hit while also forcing Barrage weapons aimed at him to add +1 Scatter. He's also a decent army buffer, boosting his legions leadership, making his attached unit Fearless ([[Forgeworld|even though the Primarch rule already did that]]), allowing Sehkmet Terminators as troops and letting you re-roll reserves.

*'''The Horned Raiment''' is your standard 2+ 4++ armour made of warp energy that lowers the number of wounds taken from the D by 1
*'''Psyfire Serpenta''' is an S8 AP2 Assault d3 gun with Soulblaze(that could be argued to be a plasma weapon and thus weakened by the sallies)
*'''The Blade of Ahn-Nunura''' is an S+2 AP1 two handed '''force''' blade.

The February 2019 FAQ <s>nerfed</s> balanced Magnus heavily. Making '''Mind Wrath''' a power he has to buy separately along with '''Infernal Bargain'''. This increases his cost by 175 points, bringing his total to 670 and making him the most expensive of the Primarchs. Mind Wrath lets him double the range of any witchfire and add a single d6 strength to a maximum of 10 at a penalty of his powers needing +2 Warp Charges to cast. His witchfires still do not need line of sight and ''Ignore Cover''. His ''Infernal Bargain'' rule allows his army to cancel out a single Perils of the Warp anywhere on the table once per game, which is a safety net in the event a low level Psyker fluffs his casting roll and subjects the entire army to a potential pinning check. Magnus is still powerful and he is clearly still the best psyker in the game, but not quite the Destroyer [[Cheese]] of his first incarnation.

[[File:RussMagnusDiorama.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Magnus and Russ having a civilized chat on the philosophy of the Warp. Also, Magnus doesn't have his nipple horns anymore. Maybe Magnus got tired of losing another eye every time he sneezes.]]
''Biomancy'' so far seems to be the most powerful for him to roll on, as Iron Arm makes him an unkillable juggernaut of S10 T9, Warp Speed let him out-dance Fulgrim and out-rape Angron at 7 attacks on I9, with both combined allowing him to take on Horus or even Russ in a challenge, Enfeeble and Endurance being generally great powers in any situations. Haemorrage sadly continues to be useless, though, and five times out of six you'd roll it instead of some useful power.

Hilariously Biomancy-powered Strawberry can mindbullet most Primarchs from distance in just 2 or 3 turns. Angron, Fulgrim and Corax could even go down in one turn with some luck. Although Lorgar's superior deny and Horus's armor of "fuck your psychic powers on a 3+" may pose a problem, and them hiding in a transport or a unit (probably both) counters this tactic completely - then again forcing your enemy's Primarch to hide just by deploying yours is a victory on it's own (unless it's Alpharius, who's straight up ''designed'' to hide in a unit).

You can go for support monster with ''Divination'' or supercheese with ''Telepathy'', but those disciplines lack boostable witchfires (Psychic Scream while awesome on its own don't have strength value). ''Pyromancy'' is on the other end of the spectrum, with all the witchfires all the time everywhere, potentially with re-rolls to wound from fiery form, but it can't increase his survivability or close combat prowess.

Magnus is THE straight-up best Primarch for his points. The reason for this is his sheer flexibility. While you may not be able to [[Lorgar|choose your psychic powers,]] you can tailor him to different roles at the start of any game just by picking a discipline. Up against a melee Legion and need a buffer for your gunline? Divination, motherfucker. Enemy brought a Warhound/Spartan/Primarch who isn't Horus or Russ? Biomancy to fly up and smash it. Up against Admech with those 4+ armor MCs? Say hi to Pyromancy. If there were only a few psychic powers that Magnus' rules could turn into OP nastiness it'd be okay, but with Biomancy in particular, there are an absurd number of such powers. Pray to the Emprah Forgeworld nerfs him.

Just keep him away from sisters of silence... even they might struggle though. Especially since, Psyker or not, this is still a Primarch designed to tear apart anything and everything. A Culexus Assassin hiding behind a unit will also royally fuck him over.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying. With that in mind this section is all about how Magnus fares against other Primarchs mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities, with the exception of Blind, are taken into account (Blind is ignored because it is just too random and unreliable to come into play) and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. As with Lorgar, psychic powers are not accounted for, which is a slightly false choice given that if you're sending Magnus in for a Primarch duel you probably will buff him but a necessary one if this is to be doable and fair.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

*Magnus vs Angron
** Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
** Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which FNP and IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Unsurprisingly Magnus loses this one pretty badly

*Magnus vs Fulgrim
** Fulgrim (Fireblade): hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times and 1.167 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.834 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Again unsurprisingly Fulgrim wins comfortably even without taking into account Child of Terra or Mastercrafted

*Magnus vs Mortarion
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.278 at the start of next turn
** Mortarion: hits 1.667 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Magnus actually out-endures Mortarion as his negative modifier to hit balances out Mortarion's superior regen and extra wound. Not that it matters because it will take several lifetimes before either of them actually die.

*Magnus vs Ferrus Manus
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 time and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Ferrus: hits 1.333 times with Forgbreaker and 0.333 times with his Servo Arm, wounds 1.111 times and 0.278 respectively which after saves becomes a total of 0.695 wounds after saves which IWND will take down to 0.362 wounds at the start of next turn
** Another ridiculously long fight but Ferrus' Servo Arm and better invulnerable save just tip the fight in his favour

*Magnus vs Konrad Curze
** Konrad: hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times and 1.125 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.792 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Konrad wins this one without having to use his hit and run + HOW combo which turns this into a bloodbath

*Magnus vs Vulkan
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan: hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan wins because Magnus can't hurt him

*Magnus vs Lorgar
** Magnus (round 1): hits 2.222 times, wounds 1.728 times and 0.576 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.242 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times and 0.741 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.407 wounds at the start of next turn
** Lorgar: hits 2 times (Master-crafted and +1A for pistol), wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** In spite of WS6 and 5 wounds, Lorgar's save is increased to 3++ against attacks from Force Weapons, giving him a mutual kill or narrowly win if he concusses Magnus in the penultimate round.
*** '''Happy psychic fun:'''
*** Magnus with Iron Arm and Warp Speed: hits 4.667 times, wounds 3.889 times, [[FAIL|0.432 after saves]] and IWND will take down to 0.099 wounds at the start of next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog: hits 2.778 times, wounds 1.543 times, 0.772 times after saves and IWND will take down to 0.439 wounds at the start of the next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog crushes Magnus (after a long time), the rerolls to hit and wound more than makes up for Magnus' aura and boosted Toughness, and [[Shield-Captain|rerollable 3++]] completely neuters Magnus' damage. Magnus needs Iron Arm, Warp Speed ''and'' Endurance to outlast him. Or roll Precognition himself with any Bio-blessing.

*Magnus vs Perturabo
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus (Blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.37 after saves which IWND takes down 0.037 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo: hits 1.333 times with both, wounds 0.889 times with his hands and 1.111 times with Forgebreaker and 0.444 and 0.556 times after saves respectively, which becomes 0.111/0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo (with Magnus Blinded): hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 times after saves
** Another victory for Magnus comes when Perturabo doesn't have Forgebreaker. When he does this becomes a walkover in the other direction as Magnus won't kill him before he becomes blinded and then he becomes essentially unable to hurt Perturabo

*Magnus vs Alpharius
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Alpharius: hits 1.944 times, wounds 1.512 times and 0.756 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.423 at the start of next turn
** As usual, Alpharius loses

*Magnus vs Rogal Dorn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.33 times (Dorn cannot be wounded on more than 3+ thanks to his armour) and 0.67 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.44 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Dorn: hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times and 0.75 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Magnus loses this one

*Magnus vs Corvus Corax
** Corax: hits 2.667 times (Scourge)/ 2 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.5 times (Shadow-walk) and once or 0.75 times respectively after saves which IWND will take down to 0.667/0.417 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.333 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 1.667 times (Scourge)/ 1.111 times (Shadow-walk) and 1.111/0.741 times after saves which IWND will take down to 0.778/0.408 wounds at the start of next turn
** Corax's superior initiative means that if he uses Shadow-walk he can kill Magnus just before he can strike on turn 15. If he uses Scourge he loses, however. As usual Blind and Hit and Run could turn the fight more in his favour

* Magnus VS Jaghatai Khan.
**Jaghatai: hits 2.666 times, wounds 1.333 times, 0.666 wound after saves with IWND bringing this down to 0.333
**Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 times after sames with IWND bringing this down to 0.222
**Magnus loses this one too

</div></div>

===As a Daemon Primarch===
[[File:Magnus-revealed.PNG|right|thumb|300px|Exactly as planned!]]

{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 7 || 7 || 8|| 7 || 7 || 7 || 6|| 10 || 4+R1/4++R1
|}

Rules-wise, he's a beast with 7s across the board barring strength (8) attacks (6) and ld (10). He rocks a 4++ and can re-roll ones (so yeah, throw in the grimoire of names to have a 2++ re-rollable and guy becomes unkillable when combined with the fact that he's an FMC with EW), as well as Daemon of Tzeentch, Deep Strike, VotLW, Fearless, Fleet, IWND, and the WT Lord of Flux: Enemy units within 12″ of your Warlord treat all terrain, even open ground, as difficult terrain; any enemy units that run, turbo-boost, move flat out, or charge within that radius must take dangerous terrain tests. He has what is by far the best psychic output in the game: Mastery level '''5''', AW (so he DTWs on 3+ against everyone), manifests his WCs on a 2+, has LoS to all units on the table for the purposes of using his powers, and '''''never''''' suffers Perils of the Warp. He knows every spell in the Tzeentch and Change disciplines. With the expansions brought in the new rulebook, this means Magnus can bring to the table 2 D attacks (One of which is an 18" Beam?!) per psychic phase with relative ease, all while still being able to murderize anything that he comes across, and in melee he uses a sword that uses his strength, AP2, Soulblaze, Force, and Transmogrify (a 6 to wound causes Instant death and turns the slain model into a [[Chaos Spawn|Chaos Sp... you know this stupid gaOHGODWHYBLAGRABAH]]). He's 650pts, so use him wisely.

Model-wise, he appears to take minor inspiration from his EPIC monkey form (which is a good thing.) He has multiple head options, including a cyclops head, which is incredibly fluffy as his face has been described as constantly changing. His armor appears to be to have changed from golden to silver (but it still has its nipple horns. Sexy, sexy nipple horns), and the motif of a bird skull appears everywhere. He has bird wings, and is posed on a Space Wolf Dreadnought arm. Ah, and he's so FUCKHUEG that he rivals an Imperial Knight.

====8th Edition====

{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 445 || 2+ || 2+ || 8 || 7 || 18 || 7 || 10 || 3+
|}

Naturally, Magnus was some of the small slither of cheese that Chaos had access to in 7th, so GW casually nerfed him to ensure their precious space marines didn't have too hard a time (if this was hard to see, don't look at what has become of poor Ahriman). Don't let this hit fool you too much though as Magnus is still a force to be reckoned with. Gone is the all seeing eye, immunity to perils and ease of power casting. In its place we still get the best psyker (still significantly weaker than before as he has now forgotten most of his spells and how to give people the big old D). With 18 wounds, he can take more hits than a Land Raider and Bloodthirster and with 7 strength 8 attacks (*16 with his X2 S blade*), he can still bend over most things in the game with his fancy blade. His new force multiplier effects make him a more balanced command unit but unless you want him to sit at the back as a big fire magnet and hope his measly 3 powers can make up for his enormous cost over his combat hitting power, a Thousand Sons army isn't going to benefit from these too much. Apparently, Magnus has changed his devotion to Khorne judging by the obvious strategy GW have currently geared him to.

Oh, and don't let Thunder Hammer/Stormshield Terminators charge him. They obliterate him, even with Weaver of Fates up to give him a 3++R1; besides, you easily have the maneuverability to ensure they virtually never manage to pull this off.

*In all truth while his insane strength and 7 attacks are brutal, especially when adding prescience you probably want to stay away from anything with an invulnerable save higher than a 4, use him with warptime for mass hit and run and bolstering or intimidating important areas. Smite anything rocking Stormshields or other intimidating saves, and hope he rolls an overall 10, for a juicy 2d6 mortal wounds.

* Obviously Mortarion was not better enough when compared to Big Red, so GW fixed that by nerfing the cyclops (and boy did they hit him hard). No more invul rerolls, 2D6 mortal wound Smite only goes off on 12+ now, transmogrify from his blade is still not free, if you manage to even pull it off (funnily most characters hide from Magnus) all for 30 MORE points. On the plus side he allows rerolls of 1 for both him and his sons within 9" when making a psychic test, he adds his psychic phase bonus to DtW tests now, he also gets full access to 3 psychic disciplines for a total of 18 spells to chose from and he ignores any mortal wounds caused by perils on a 2+. He's less tanky than he used to be, but he is much more psychically focused than before.

====Magnus' Terrible Weakness====
Unfortunately not everything is awesome for the Daemon Prince, aside from getting his ass kicked by the Space Wolves and Grey Knights [[Angron|(though he's hardly alone in that regard)]], Magnus has a terrible weakness in the form of three completely normal humans carrying Thunder Hammers. This is all 7th edition only, but check it out anyway:

Seriously, three Inquisitors (all of which have 3's and 4's where Magnus has 7's and 8's) can kick his ass. One of them just needs to be carrying a Null Rod and Thunder Hammer, another carries the Grimoire of True Names, Empyrean Brain Mines, and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer, while the third also carries Empyrean Brain Mines and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer. All of this makes for a combination that Magnus simply cannot win against. He is incapable of ''targeting'' the unit with his sorcery; while he can and should hit the unit with Wrath of Magnus on the approach if possible, as Beams do not target, this won't help him in melee, where he is reduced to using '''Boon of Flame''' to summon support (which will not be able to charge on summon turn) and '''Boon of Mutation''', which is extremely unlikely to help in any meaningful way. If they charged him, the Psyk-Out grenades mean he's I1 for testing against the Mines; if they didn't, why didn't Magnus just get the hell out of there instead of getting into close combat with these guys? On subsequent Inquisitor turns, the bearer of the Grimoire will challenge him; Brain Mines and Challenges happen at the same time, so per the sequencing rules, the Inquisitors can choose to use the Mines second. Magnus must now take an I test on I2 (typically two tests, of course), so with odds ''at best'' 1/3 (at worst, 1/9) he can still swing - otherwise, he can't swing at all. If he ''does'' swing, it's at WS 2 (so he hits on 5s and is hit on 3s). Mathwise the three Inquisitors beat him to death in 3 rounds (another Triumvirate of the Imperium?). Even if it wasn't for dropping his Leadership down to 5 for Daemonbane tests, the second the Inquisitors Wound him he's Concussed, meaning it's even easier for them to paralyze him with the Mines and spend the second round wailing on him. If you really wanted to fuck him over then you could also ally in a Culexus Assassin, as they (simply by standing near him and not actually getting into the fistfight) combine with the Grimoire to drop his Leadership to 2, making him incredibly likely to die if a Nemesis Daemon Hammer rolls a 6 to wound. That all said, remember that Magnus ''does not'' have the Daemonic Instability special rule, so he's not going to take a bajillion extra wounds after losing combat with nerfed Leadership. You could also add to the hilarity with an Inquisitor with Rad and Psychotroke grenades (the Psychotroke grenades especially have a 1/3 chance of either reducing Magnus to I1 or LD 2 for the phase, which will make all of the other effects in the unit even worse for him).

Of course this relies on them actually getting into combat with Magnus, and so long as the player's smart (and your opponent doesn't load up his Inquisitors in something ridiculous like a Corvus Blackstar) you should be able to get around the board without having them ever get into combat with him. The Lord of Flux WT helps in this respect by messing up charges.

Funnily enough too his 30k incarnation is incredibly weak against Sisters of Battle, mainly because they can load up on combi-crossbows and two squads armed with these things will kill him in a single shooting phase while being either more annoying to kill thanks to Adamantium Will, or impossible to hurt with his Psychic powers if they're joined by a Hereticus Inquisitor carrying a Null rod (as they should be). Obviously the solution here is just to make him invisible and take them on in combat, but there's still the rare chance you won't get it (especially if you want other powers for bigger threats).

==Trivia==
*If you translate his name into Latin, you get Magnus Rubricatus, meaning, "Great Red [Man]" (or, "Big Red" if you're feeling lulzy). Also it has "rubric" in it. Sly GW strikes again!
*The god Thor had a daughter named Thrudr (Strength) and two sons, Modi (Wrath) and '''Magni''' (Mighty). They embody their's Sire's essential characteristics (much like the Primarchs vis-à-vis of the Emperor). This may well be coincidental though; albeit since it is modern B.L. Fluff that Leman (who is often compared with Odin for various obvious reasons) was the leader of the Censure army sent to capture / slay Magnus and burn Prospero, it is not entirely excluded that this piece of fluff represents an obscure and far-fetched "prophetic" and artistic rendering.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Magnus.jpg
Image:1476133187098.png|Damn, Aghoru has FUCKING bright sun!
Image:Magnus Tiddy Comic.png|''Super'' canon.
File:1544321391807.jpg|''"Look at this cookie I found"''.
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[https://youtu.be/bjBmT8y9PAU?t=6m56s A video chronicling Magnus' fall to Chaos. It is less conniving than originally imagined.]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6adES3Z0Qag Daddy (not the Emperor, Magnus) addressing his children for the visit to the pet shop.]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[Category:Chaos]]
[[Category:Thousand Sons]]

Magnus the Red

2021-07-05T23:30:07Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Horus Heresy */

{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-Warhammer-40000-фэндомы-4995855 (1).jpeg|400px|thumb|right|Handsome bastard...]]
{{Topquote|For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.|Ecclesiastes 1:18}}
{{Topquote|If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.|Woody Allen}}
{{Topquote|I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen?|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmuF-0P4tk William Foster]}}
'''Magnus the Red''', '''"Master of Prospero"''' (a.k.a '''The Crimson King''', the '''Sorcerer-King''', '''Cyclopean Magnus''', the '''Red Cyclops''', '''The One Who did <s>Nothing</s> Wrong''', [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|'''My Special Magny Magic, The Saucy Spice Boy, Wide Ahriman, and Rudolf the red nosed Primarch''']]) is the primarch of the [[Thousand Sons]] and rules over the Planet of the Sorcerers, and formerly Prospero. He is directly after the [[Emperor]] as the mightiest Psyker/Sorcerer in the whole Warhammer 40k Universe. He is notable for having an enormously variable physical form with a few common themes he keeps to most of the time (red skin and hair, one eye, etc) and [[Eldrad|being enormously, staggeringly, almost unbelievably arrogant,]] and with his shifting physical form and his hubris he's a real chip off the old block. Because of this there is debate over if he had a big ol' red eye in the middle of his forehead, or had normal eyes but one socket was empty. Either way he was a cyclops (The colour of his single eye is also described as constantly changing). He is also the Primarch of the [[Blood Ravens]] (maybe), which would explain their color scheme, high percentage of psykers, their Chapter Badge, their name, their beliefs, and that they steal everything that isn’t nailed down (who are we kidding, including what's nailed down as well, and the nails with that). Of all the Primarchs, with the exception of [[Vulkan]], [[Sanguinius]] and [[Jaghatai Khan]], Magnus was one of the most open minded and compassionate to the discriminated, being a psyker and all.

He, along with old [[Mortarion|Morty]], are among the few traitor Primarchs who actually hate/despise their respective Chaos Gods. Mortarion for his general disdain for all things psychic in nature, and Magnus for being humiliated and played like a [[Metal Gear|damn fiddle]] by [[Tzeentch]]. Then again, being a Daemon Prince does make even the idea of doing so impossible by definition, so instead he's chosen to blame the Imperium for pushing him to the side of the traitors.

==The Great Crusade==
[[File:Past-Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-.jpeg||300px|right|thumb|Magnus nerdin out in his private astrology room.]]
Magnus landed on the planet of [[Prospero]], a planet whose ancient civilization was composed predominantly of psykers, who had fled there because they were persecuted by humanity at large for being psykers. As Magnus was himself such a being, he formed a kinship with the people of Prospero in short order. Taken in by Prospero's people, he absorbed knowledge like a sponge, and became crazy powerful, and in time far exceeded the power and control of all of his teachers. After a while, he became the single most powerful ''thing'' on the fucking planet, and he led a campaign to eradicate a race of predators on Prospero known as the ''Psychneuein'', which had overrun many of Prospero's early cities, and had an unhealthy fondness for laying their eggs in unsuspecting psykers' brains. Which was probably why the beasts had destroyed the entire population of Prospero, save for its capital city, Tizca. One by one, bit by bit, Magnus' forces retook the planet, putting the Psychneuein to the sword, and within a year, [[Awesome|Magnus had mostly reclaimed the entire world]] (except for the Desolation of Prospero, which was everything except for Tizca).

Once the campaign on the Psychneuein was complete, Magnus became the planetary leader by popular demand. Magnus decided to be fucking awesome, and rebuilt the cities (or mostly just Tizca). Like a somehow perfectly stable fortress lasting some 50 years in [[Dwarf Fortress]], Tizca became arguably the most beautiful city in Imperial space, with crystalline spires and pyramids, long marble roads, and psychically-resonant crystals in key locations; designed to calm the turbulent minds of younger psykers and help them control their burgeoning psionic potential. The city quickly became known as a shining jewel of humanity, and one that showed proudly how far its citizens had come from the brink of near-extinction. Prospero also had one of the most technically advanced defensive networks in the Imperium, all of which was hilariously wasted except for the shields when Magnus, in a fit of Primarch-scale angst over his "I screwed everything Dad was doing and failed my purpose entirely in the process" whoopsy-daisy, decided that the [[Space Wolves]] should get the rabbit punch.

All this time, Magnus continued to codify and systematize everything he could about the 'Great Ocean' - the name the Prosperans had given the [[Warp]]. Huge libraries filled with knowledge about psychic powers and the warp were established, and Magnus himself used his powers to peer into the Empyrean itself, claiming many of its secrets, though at terrible risk to himself. While this was exceptionally dangerous, much of what the Imperium's [[Inquisition]] currently knows about the Warp came directly from several of his manuscripts that survived.

With such a powerful mind heading into the warp, it was inevitable that the [[Emprah]] (who happened to be out and about the galaxy looking for his lost sons) would eventually take notice. So he eventually came to Prospero, and he and Magnus psychically brofisted before talking for several days. The Emperor taught him even more about psychic powers, but cautioned Magnus to be ''slow and purposeful''. The Emperor was well-aware foul horrors lurked in the Warp and liked nothing better than [[Anal Circumference|forcibly sodomizing an unprepared Psyker's soul]], but Magnus didn't care, especially since his forays into the Warp to save his Legion from the flesh-change had already come at a price neither of them realized - Magnus believed he'd only given up on his right eye, sacrificed ala Odin when he had consorted with [[Tzeentch|Warp-entities whose nature he did not understand]]. To Magnus, one eye was was an acceptable price and he didn't heed the Emperor's warnings as he believed he'd come out on top of the bargain.

Magnus was put in charge of the [[Thousand Sons]], but would not immediately embark on the Great Crusade - since many of his Legion were psykers, and there had been so many small mutations that a number of them couldn't survive the gene-seeding process. Even worse, during combat, psykers ran the risk of losing control of their powers and underwent "Flesh Change", where their body mutated rampantly out of control at all the Warp energy running through them (we call them something else, but won't speak its name as... wait, I didn't say it's [[Chaos Spawn|naSHHTLSUROHSONTOOLS!]])

Magnus was aware of the mutations his Astartes were suffering, and entered the Warp to seek answers about the cause of this and if a cure existed, though he didn't know that he had consorted with [[Tzeentch]] by doing so, and the god of [[Just as planned]] saw a ''lot'' of potential in this one. In return for knowledge and a way to stop the flesh-change, Magnus lost his eye so hard that he '''never saw it coming''' [[Cegorach|(ah-ha-ha-ha!!)]].

In any case, because of the setbacks that had befallen the Thousand Sons, the selfless efforts of Magnus to save them, their shared psychic talents, and the continuing distrust and persecution of many Imperial agencies and other Space Marine Legions towards the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities and the rampant mutations present in their gene-seed, the Primarch and his Astartes developed an extremely close emotional and psychic bond. One of the strongest among all Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions, exceeding even the [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves]]' dedication to [[Horus]].

Finally, about midway into the Great Crusade (100 Terran years after it had begun), the now "stable" Thousand Sons Legion (although numbering only 10,000 soldiers), with Magnus leading them on the field, were permitted to take part in the campaign as part of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. And it was ''glorious''. When they were deployed, the Sons were a sight to behold, flinging psychic storms to consume their enemies and striking bolts with precision and prescience, using their abilities to ascertain enemies' weak-points. Magnus was unique among the Primarchs in that he would always try diplomatic routes first, however - in this way, the Thousand Sons won many battles without so much as a shot fired. This did not sit well with [[Rogal Dorn]] or [[Roboute Guilliman|Girlyman]], who viewed this approach "unmanly". Likewise, Magnus drew constant distrust from [[Mortarion]] and [[Leman Russ]], who distrusted the Sons' sorcerous ways and were somewhat concerned of a trait the Sons had picked up: [[lootas|after conquering or annexing a world, they would take huge amounts of knowledge: books, scrolls about forgotten /forbidden lore, and ancient artifacts, back to Prospero for study, analysis and codification]]. ''And this doesn't sound like the Blood Ravens, you say? Nicking everything shiny that's not nailed down?'' Point is: nobody looted so prolifically as The Thousand Sons. The White Scars and Blood Angels aligned themselves with them to rig the Librarium. What that did was to actually impose some restraint on psykers, that made everyone a bit more accepting towards them. Their worries only intensified when it was discovered that the Sons had little warp critters (familiars) called "tutelaries" buzzing around them and acting as warp power-packs. This Elegan/tg/entleman believes Magnus’ tutelary was an ADORABLE WARP KITTEN!

When diplomacy didn't work, The Sons were known to fuck entire armies with lightning, fireballs, mass mind-control, precognition of enemy strikes and counter them with precision strikes, dealing so much devastation with only some few squads of Marines. Magnus himself once fought Ork gargants by himself, and despite being able to zap, melt or transmute their hulls with just the power of his mind, he instead [[Awesome|scaled himself to the size of a Warlord-class Titan, and beat the shit out of them with his bare hands]].

A very important event called "Council of Nikaea" or "The Trial of Magnus the Red", took place about 50 years before the Horus Heresy, where Magnus was called by his brothers and the Emperor to answer for abusing his powers and to install some form of control of psykers used in battle across the galaxy. The fact that the Sons obsessed with preserving valuable knowledge (whatever the source), was another factor that pissed a bunch of Primarchs off. The Thousand Sons' political opponents among other Astartes Legions found hoarding xenos' artifacts useless and counter-productive to the goals of the Great Crusade (which actually more or less sought to eradicate all alien life in the galaxy). Finally, the Emperor stepped in, bitch-slapped everyone for acting like a [[Derp|fucking child]], and pointed out that whilst dangerous, psychic powers were still necessary to the Imperium as a whole.
So psykers were now to abstain from using their powers in battle. The ever fabulous Jaghatai Khan facepalmed his high forehead, whilst groaning, that this is exactly what he'd warned Magnus about. Magnus was ticked off, but calmed down a bit a little later and continued the Crusade with the new restrictions in place (actually, they carried out their arcane ways in secret).

==Horus Heresy==
[[File:DaemonMagnus.jpg|right|thumb|He doesn't get much press-time because of how bad he and his Legion got dicked by Tzeentch, but when he DOES, watch your fucking [[FATAL|ass]]!]]
When Magnus learned that Horus intended to betray the Emperor and slaughter like half the galaxy, he resolved to use any method possible to warn the Emperor. With few other options, he made a deal with Tzeentch again, to combine their powers and smash the psychic seal The Emperor had installed to protect the Webway from the warp (Magnus simply did not bother to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U walk around the Wall] through one of the entrances that the Webway has) and enter the Imperial Palace all the way from Prospero. Unfortunately, this deed majorily fucked up the Webway project the Emperor had been working on for over 9000 years, which would have made the dangerous warp-travel obsolete and would [[Awesome|unify the Imperium of Man using a human-engineered version of the Eldar Webway gate]]. Big-E called Magnus out and banished him back for breaking it and using sorcery to get through the Webway. [[Eldrad|The dick]] didn't even listen to Magnus about Horus's betrayal and declared Magnus a [[Extra Heresy|DOUBLE HERETIC]]. Magnus realized that the Imperium is comprehensively fucked and that he needed to do all he could to protect it and Prospero. Emps should probably have told his super-psychic son about his psychically-sensitive all-important project [[derp|THAT MAGNUS WAS DESTINED TO OPERATE]], but that would make [[Grimdark|nobody happy]], wouldn't it?

When Horus learned of this, he was quietly amused. The Emperor ordered Horus to have Russ bring Magnus back to Terra to stand trial for what he had done, and Horus being a [[Eldrad|dick]], quietly altered Russ' orders to lay waste to Prospero instead and slaughter the Thousand Sons. As Magnus was already officially a (slightly tolerated) heretic, Russ stoically accepted the order to bring a third of his brothers down. (Seriously, [[Companion|Constantin Valdor]] is way more out for Magnus' blood than Russ himself is.) Russ took his whole Legion to the party, and accompanying the Space Wolves were a full contingent of Adeptus Custodes (led by aforementioned Valdor), millions of [[Imperial Army]] troops and an elite anti-psyker unit: the Sisters of Silence (think a unit of [[Culexus|Culexus Assassin]]s and you get the general idea). Barring a last-ditch attempt to Skype Magnus through Kasper Hawser, an agent that had been brainwashed to visit Fenris and spy on the wolves that Magnus was not connected to(because [[Tzeentch|reasons]]).

Interestingly Russ actually attempted to contact Magnus and his legion several times in an attempt to get them to explain their actions, and even when he was directly above the planet he kept sending Magnus calls to try and get him to just talk to him, but Magnus had put the planet on lockdown and kept denying any contact with the fleet, which royally pissed off Russ. A shame too, if he said fucking anything he probably could have stopped his people from getting fucked.

Magnus, sensing this and realising that this had been [[Just as planned]] by Tzeentch and that it has done this to completely destroy both the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves, decided to counter-dick-move the Lord of All Fate. Instead of calling Russ back and peacefully working out what had happened (which would have solved everything), he decided to accept the destruction of everything that he had worked for, so that [[not as planned|Tzeentch's ultimate goal would only be half-fulfilled]], [[derp|because letting your enemy accomplish half of what they want and making the Imperium far more vulnerable to Horus is better than making them fail and giving your traitor brother a harder time]]. Tzeentch was richly amused by this. As Prospero burned, Tzeentch and Magnus engaged in act after act of dickery and counter-dickery; with Magnus finally pushed into a towering rage and taking to the battlefield at his capital: crushing his enemies with volleys of MIND BULLETS (forgetting the whole reason he refused to talk to Russ), before he engaged Leman Russ himself in close-combat. The two fought fiercely and [[Awesome|Magnus managed to Falcon pawnch Russ so hard, his breastplate shattered ''and one of his hearts punctured''. ]] Russ was going to die until HIS TWO WOLF PETS INTERFERED IN THE FIGHT and allowed him to take out Magnus' second eye, and then performed a back-breaker on him that ended the fight (Russ would have died had his wolves stayed out of the fight). Tzeentch was greatly amused by all of this because it's rare for anyone, let alone a mortal, to predict and out-manipulate the plans of the Architect of Fate himself. He thus made Magnus an offer: Become Tzeentch's servant and preserve what was left of his Legion and homeworld or watch it all burn in a pool of his own blood.

Pussying out, Magnus agreed because the thought of actually dying to atone for his mistakes only seemed like a good idea until he had to put it into practice. As a result, Magnus' cowardice ruined everything he'd been working towards and explicitly doing the one thing he'd been trying to prevent. The response of Magnus' new patron was immediate: for once, Tzeentch was true to his word. The City of Light was transported into the Eye of Terror onto a Daemon World. Prospero was destroyed that day, but Magnus and his Legion survived. It is unclear ''when'' they ended up on the Planet of the Sorcerers; before or after the Siege of Terra, but Magnus the Red had been so damaged by his battle with Russ and the psychic effort of teleporting to Sortiarius that his soul had fragmented across time and space. The shards represented different aspects of Magnus's personality, all tied to various places and people in the galaxy (one existed in the past many decades before the Heresy) and all had different motives. One shard helped the Salamanders resurrect Vulkan, whilst another had gone full daemon and tried to kill as many knight-errants as possible. Ahriman and co gathered several of the more powerful shards back together and managed to perform a Rubric to bond them back together into a stable form called the Crimson King. Magnus was saved from fading away but effectively become a daemon prince and the most powerful of all Tzeentch's servants. One of the shards, representing Magnus's good side was bound into the dying Revuel Arvida, becoming Janus. Magnus originally planned to join the assault on Terra purely to get this part of his soul back but seeing as Janus appeared later in The Beast Arises series, we can assume this didn't go to plan. (Though Magnus shows that Perpetuals can be permanently killed by Psyker Powers/Chaos Sorcery when he perma-kill REDACTED)

[[Just as planned|Magnus had never served Tzeentch willingly, but now had no choice - exactly as Tzeentch HAD PLANNED from the very beginning (we might think), and now he was committed to the very cause he had tried to foil]].

Some head-scratching does arise ae to why Magnus didn't: a) simply tell his Legion to lay down their weapons and try and talk Russ out of obliterating the entire world, (especially since Russ was willing to listen), b) take the hara-kiri option, which would have at least brought everything to an end a little earlier or c) try to confront Russ elsewhere where there wouldn't be a large amount of civilian/auxilia deaths and the vast repository of knowledge the Thousand Sons had wouldn't be lost, or d) just go to the Space Wolves himself, since that way he wouldn't take his entire Legion and planet down with him. The common consensus is that Magnus was too proud to consider the idea of explaining himself and resolving things peacefully (especially with the brother he had always considered to be an ignorant savage), but this falls flat when you remember that he also could've talked to the Custodes if he thought Russ wasn't willing to talk (and seeing as how Russ kept calling him like a needy girlfriend, he obviously was). There's also no reason presented anywhere for why he didn't take any other option presented here, and once you examine the event, it becomes clear this is one of those odd writing issues where the Burning of Prospero was written into the lore so far in advance as something that happened, that when they actually got to detailing it they forgot to adequately justify it from the side of Magnus and his Legion.

==Post-Heresy==
[[File:Cl9SiZhXIAADyip.jpg|left|thumb|300px|An exceptionally skilled depiction of Magnus during the Horus Heresy.]]
And so, the Horus Heresy came and went. The Siege of Terra occurred, Horus had fought the Emperor and (SPOILER WARNING) failed, and the Traitor Legions were driven to the [[Eye of Terror]]. However, the Thousand Sons now had to deal with more immediate problems: with their serving of Tzeentch, the Flesh Change returned with a vengeance. Magnus made efforts to stop this, but being a servant of the God of Mutation has its drawbacks and before long Magnus seemed to have given up. Growing desperate, [[Ahzek Ahriman]], the Chief Librarian and First Captain, took matters into his own hands. Having lost his brother to the Flesh Change before they found Prospero, Ahriman gathered a cabal of other sorcerers, the Book of Magnus, and performed the Rubric of Ahriman in an attempt to stop the Flesh Change.

The results were not what Ahriman expected: while it stopped the Flesh Change and further empowered all psychic Thousand Sons, all non-psyker Thousand Sons had their bodies turned to dust and sealed within their Power Armour, becoming little more than robots needing guidance from a Thousand Son sorcerer.

Confronting Ahriman, once his most favored son, Magnus angrily demanded an explanation. Ahriman basically telling him to shut it [[rage|did not help]] and Magnus was about to kill Ahriman when Tzeentch spoke to him: ''"Magnus, why do you seek to kill my pawn?"'' (which is strange since of all the chaos gods, Tzeentch cares about his followers the least) Once again, Magnus realized [[just as planned|he'd had been used]]. Disgusted, broken (and still really angry but unable to do anything about it) Magnus simply exiled Ahriman from the Planet of Sorcerers. For the last ten thousand years, Magnus and Ahriman both have labored to restore the Sons' bodies to their original forms, [[troll|with Tzeentch ensuring they fail all the while]]. Though, it is really weird the God of ''Mutation'' and ''Change'' would be preventing change and keeping some of his strongest minions in a form that cannot be mutated (well, I mean he probably could because Warp but we've never heard about it).

===Fragments of Magnus===
Unknown to everyone save perhaps Tzeentch himself and Magnus' inner circle, the teleportation of Magnus to the Planet of the Sorcerers at Prospero had the side effect of splitting the Primarch's soul into a large number of lesser fragments, many of which might not have even been aware of the split and believed that they truly were Magnus the Red.
The actual number of fragments is not known exactly, but an allegorical representation of them showed a broken statue of a bird, with some fragments being as small as grains of dirt though the largest piece was definitely recognisable as parts of a bird.

*The fragment that traveled to the Planet of Sorcerers was the greatest shard of Magnus' soul, although upon its arrival it was nothing like the Primarch or the daemon-prince Magnus that are well known to the 40k universe. Although it appeared to be Magnus the Red, it has the mindset of a senile old man who was dying. This Magnus barely knew where or when he was at the best of times and was constantly forgetting who his companions were or what Leman Russ had done to him or his Legion. This shard of Magnus spent centuries ''(of warptime, so practically no time at all in realspace)'' fleeing his memories through the warp while being chased by his equerry [[Amon]] who was trying to bring him back. In a moment of lucidity he was the first to reveal that his soul had been shattered, but only by reliving the battle of Prospero did the Thousand Sons have an idea of where the largest shards went to, so Ahriman led a quest to reclaim them and restore his Primarch, gathering enough to amalgamate the Crimson King.
**'''The Crimson King''', the Daemon-Primarch of Tzeentch as he exists in the present, was the recombination of several shards as the Horus Heresy went on and by far the most powerful of the Magnus-fragments. His first act was to declare that he would join Horus' rebellion and lay siege to Terra to reclaim his greatest fragment ''(Janus)''. He would exile Ahriman for the first failed Rubric, would later instigate the Battle of the Fang and then spend the next ten thousand years being a dick, eventually fouling up Ahriman's second Rubric but achieving near-complete unification of all the shards. Unsurprisingly, the only parts that weren't reunited with The Crimson King were all the ones which embodied Magnus' noblest, most selfless qualities.
*'''"Magnus"''' (as the father of the Thousand Sons and '''author of the Book of Magnus''') was the portion of Magnus that seemed to care the most about his legionaries and of his son Ahriman in particular. Much diminished, he remained behind the scenes for centuries attempting to subvert the Daemon-Primarch and guide his son Ahriman ''(and by extension the Legion)'' back to greatness and presumably ''(at a push)'' back onto the path the Emperor intended for them. It was he who inspired Ahriman to attempt the original Rubric in the first instance since it was actually his own spell. "Magnus" (the father) knew that it would fail, but the flesh-change was overcoming the legion anyway, and the failed attempt would provide Ahriman with both the time and the conviction to eventually complete his great work and attempt a second rubric by pooling his own resources with knowledge gleaned from various other fragments, including the Athenaeum of Kallimakus. It was also he who infuenced Amon's dreams to seek out Ahriman to kill him and undo the Rubric and end their brothers' agony. While this shard of Magnus admitted he sacrificed Amon to re-motivate Ahriman to do the second Rubric, he believed it was the proper course of action to save their legion and make Magnus whole without the Crimson King's infuence. The end result may have actually cured his legion & father by reuniting the broken primarch and reversing the flesh-change, and allow the personality of "Magnus" (the father) to assert control over the united fragments and redeem himself. However, even if it had worked the interference of the Crimson King would have caused it to destroy the fragments instead. Ultimately, it faded into oblivion rather than allow the Crimson King to reabsorb it.
*The great library of knowledge: the '''Athenaeum of Kallimakus''' actually was a fragment of sorts, but not able to act independently, only providing a link to the stream of consciousness of the original Magnus the Red. However the Athenaeum was corrupted after being discovered by the Crimson King, who attempted to insinuate his own mind into the thought-stream and attempt to assert control over Ahriman's second rubric result. His dipping in and out of the stream introduced flaws into the spell which would still have allowed the Thousand Sons to regain their flesh but would have destroyed all the fragments of Magnus in the process.
**A separate lesser shard was hidden within the ashes of '''Mahavastus Kallimakus''' himself, that was carried around in an urn for years yet was completely oblivious to the [[Sisters of Silence]], the [[Thousand Sons]] and one of the [[Knights-Errant]], beneath whom the urn had passed almost completely unnoticed. It was only when proximity to the shard of Aghoru that it awakened, although its motivations are largely unknown because it seemed to be operating under the orders of the other shard until it fused with it.
*One fragment remained on Prospero, representing his acceptance of the Emperor's judgement against him, this Magnus was stuck in limbo and meditation for a while, until [[Jaghatai Khan]] rocked up to Prospero to find out what had happened. This fragment served up a nice big info-dump and urged him to pick a side in the war, and in return Jaghatai banished him from Prospero.
*Another became a daemon of vengeance that was unwittingly passed from host to host ''(It was thought to be a normal daemon, no-one realised it was a actually a shard of Magnus)''. It eventually came to inhabit the body of a renegade space marine called Astraeos. This shard saw the Crimson King as a usurper but was eventually consumed after a very quick battle with the Crimson King following the failed second Rubric.
*One returned to Nikaea and represented the part inside of Magnus that died when the Emperor made his pronouncement against him. This shard was literally a corpse being clawed at by daemonic hands.
*One represented his warrior aspect and was found on the planet Aghoru seemingly waiting to duel whoever showed up. It held off a [[Knights-Errant|Knight-Errant]], a Rune Priest, a small squad of space wolves, a bunch of cyber automata and a freaking Samurai at the same time without any overt use of psychic power until it was bound into the body of a mortal. Interestingly, this shard had no intention of reuniting with the greater because Magnus was not actually known for his battle-prowess, so this fragment would rather have remained and made a name for himself equal to Angron or the Lion, nonetheless it later absorbed the shard of Kallimakus into itself and was absorbed in turn into the Crimson King anyway.
*Another fragment representing Magnus' desire to seek knowledge for the sake of its acquisition. It was thrust into Terra's past and inhabited the body of King Kadmus, one of the Emperor's enemies, requiring Ahriman to time-travel in order to reclaim it.
*One fragment remained on Terra and was fused by [[Malcador]] to '''Revuel Arvida''', inadvertently creating an entity known as '''Ianius''' ''(Janus)''. Yes, the same Janus that would become the first Supreme Grand Master of the [[Grey Knights]]. It is believed that this fragment embodied Magnus's nobility and connection to the Emperor.
*From the Prologue and Epilogue there may very well have been a second fragment of Magnus that resided on Terra and was known to Malcador and Rogal Dorn. But where Revuel Arvida housed a shard in his flesh and became Ianius who remained ostensibly Astartes, this shard was fully formed ''(an oversized giant with crimson skin)'' and housed within a villa hidden deep beneath the crust of Terra from where he narrates the novel ''Crimson King''. This fragment took upon himself the role of archivist of the Horus Heresy, and pinned his hopes for the future on some all-seeing device in the warp called ''The Orrery''. Perhaps building it with the help of his equerry Amon while he was chasing a different shard of his emotional father through time and space via the warp, or by completing his own orrery separately, or simply referring to the one the Crimson King made. It could then be this shard of Magnus who rescued the ship carrying the body of Vulkan and guided it back to Nocturne so his brother could be resurrected.
**It may also yet be Janus speaking from an earlier time period before his binding, who knows? The warp is confusing enough without it being inhabited by multiple aspects of the same guy over different time periods.
**Regardless of whether it is Janus or an entirely separate fragment, one of the Terran shards was believed by the Crimson King to be the first and greatest fragment of the Soul of Magnus and so he was willing to lay siege to Terra to reclaim it, even going so far as name it his sole reason for joining Horus's side of the war.

By the novel Ahriman Unchanged, Ahriman would complete his second Rubric and attempt to cast it on [[Sortiarius]]. Unfortunately the Rubric was not completed as Ahriman was interrupted by a member of the Thousand Sons who knew that the outcome would result in Magnus's annihilation and wanted to avoid it, so he seized control of the magical energy before Ahriman could finish the spell and obliterate their father. This resulted in several of the fragments reuniting into the Daemon Primarch Crimson King and increasing his share of power to a state indistinguishable from that which he possessed as a complete being. The aspect of vengeance: Astraeos would be the Crimson King's first victim and be absorbed almost immediately, while Magnus (the father) would fade away into nothing after having hung on for so many centuries only to fail in his objectives to lay claim to the soul of Magnus or heal his Legion- all it could do was deny the Crimson King what little power it still possessed.
*Although he [[Just as Planned|might have actually succeeded]], in by failing to complete the second Rubric, as a side effect Ahriman was uncoupled from his destiny and now "free" from divine manipulations, something that Magnus ''(the Father)'' had wished for all of his sons. But even then Ahriman ultimately continued to serve Tzeentch of his own will, so how much of a victory this may have been is up for debate.

This means that while Daemon-Primarch Magnus at the turn of the 41st millennium is in his most complete state and the various schemes of the separated fragments have been put to rest, Magnus is still not "whole" and likely will never return to his original state due to the loss of significant fragments; in particular, the evaporated essence of the compassionate father figure who set the rubric in motion, and probably the missing nobility of Janus, who died centuries earlier in service to the [[Grey Knights]]. At this point it can be assumed that Tzeentch filled in the remaining parts with himself, cementing Magnus's state as a Daemon Prince and eliminating any chance of his redemption.

===Post Rubric===
[[File:Magnus vs Robboute.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Magnymagick and [[Roboute Guilliman|Papa Smurf]] having a calm and brotherly conversation over at Luna in the 41st Millennium. [[TTS|And I, Cato Sicarius, will prevent anyone from interrupting this conversation!]]]]

'''Battle for The Fang:'''
The unified Magnus the Red: The Crimson King, later showed up on [[Fenris|FENRIS]] ITSELF and became the second Daemon Primarch after [[Angron]] to get shit done, rampaging through imperial lines and laying waste to everything in his path with MIND BULLETS and RAW PHYSICAL POWER until the Space Wolves responded and after an extremely hard fight Magnus phased himself out and teleported all his marines out of the Fang after having his back broken once again, this time by Bjorn. While he succeeded in sabotaging an experimental (seemingly successful) Space Wolf geneseed mutation cure and killing an entire Great Company HQ, The Great Wolf (turns out wolfing a Wolf Lord's wolf means warping your hands inside him and ''ripping his hearts out'') and almost killing Bjorn the Fell-Handed himself, he did not finish the Space Wolves once and for all. Of course, Magnus claimed it was not his goal in the first place.

Funny how two out of two Daemon Primarchs to have gotten shit done ended up being repelled by the actions of the Space Wolves. On the other hand, the Wolfies were pushed to their very limits trying to repel the chosen of Tzeentch, and they only got off easy once he fucked off after his main objective was finished.

'''Warzone Fenris:'''

Of all the Daemon Primarchs so far seen in the fluff, he seems to be the most [[Reasonable Marines|collected and coherent]], as far as Chaos goes; in the trailer of Wrath of Magnus he actually sounded quite composed and at odds with Angron's "BLUDFUTEBLUDGUD!" or Mortarion's "IHAVESPESSASHMA"; he told the Thousand Sons in a strong but civilized way to put their differences aside to focus on the goal of destroying the Space Puppies, and remarked how [[Awesome|all of them were his sons, even Ahriman or any other wayward sorcerer who had gone his own way through the ages and that despite the millennia long pass, he still holds Prospero in high regards and consistently fights for his homeworld's memory and people;]] [[Kharn|what a cool guy.]]

During the campaign, Magnus' goal was never to destroy Fenris (though it would have been a satisfying bonus), but instead to make the Wolves suffer as he and his sons did during the Burning of Prospero: with the Wulfen and their genetic flaw revealed, they would be regarded with suspicion and mistrust. Because the people of Fenris have seen first-hand the horrors of the Warp, the Inquisition ordered a massive purge that saw most of the population of Fenris exterminated. Midgardia basically got destroyed, Fenris became a partly irradiated wasteland, and Magnus pulled Sortiarius into the materium (as the whole invasion of Fenris also turned out to be a massive ritual for which the Grey Knights killing the populace helped a lot, yes Grey Knights dun fucked up). Interestingly, while Magnus is lauded for his vast intellect he seems to have neglected the insignificant detail of *knowing* that the Space Wolves were tricked by Horus into annihilating the Thousand Sons instead of detaining them in order to take them to Terra as the Emperor had decreed. This order was slightly "re-interpreted" by Horus and then passed on to Leman Russ with the known consequences (the traitor legions refer to them as "the betrayed" for that very reason). There goes split personality for ya!

Notably, during the above campaign, Magnus got Mortarion's aid in exchange for the latter taking over Midgardia and transforming it into a plague infested planet. However, Magnus proceeded to back-stab Mortarion by arranging Midgardia to undergo exterminatus before the latter succeeded in claiming it. Magnus likely did this out of vengeance because he's still salty over Mortarion's role during that little Council of Nikaea thing, something something best served cold...

'''Gathering Storm Book III:'''

Magnus and the Thousand Sons are found to be lurking in the webway after the resurrected [[Roboute Guilliman]] and his allies have escaped from the Red Corsairs. Guilliman, realizing that Magnus is hoping to use him to sneak into the Imperial Palace via the webway gate, instead detours to a dormant gate on Luna. A huge battle between Guilliman's forces and the Thousand Sons ensues, whilst the two Primarchs go mano-a-mano. In a rare example of the [[Ultramarine|blue bastards]] not getting their way and the whole "Daemon Primarch" thing actually making a difference, Magnus' super-psyker abilities bring the G-man within a gnat's testicle of actually getting killed before the loyalist cavalry arrives in the form of the Imperial Fists, the Adeptus Custodes, and the Sisters of Silence. The Sisters nullify Magnus' powers long enough for Guilliman to turn him into a kebab. This somehow causes Magnus to unleash a psychic shockwave that blows him back through the gate, after which some Harlequins who'd tagged along with Guilliman seal it off, stranding him in the webway.
Since then, Magnus has been involved in many other major attacks on the Imperium at the behest of Tzeentch, such as the invasion of the Stygius Sector and building [[New Kingdom|an empire for psykers]].

==On the tabletop==
===As a son of the Emperor===
[[File:FWMagnusTheRed.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Magnus, back before he was a red giant. Well, a redder giant.]]
{| class=wikitable
! Points || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| 495 || 7 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 4 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}
With his decent statline, Magnus has the Primarch rule in all of its goodness, '''Arch Sorcerer''' (ML 5 psyker that harnesses on a 3+, needs three 6's to roll perils and re-rolls 1's if he does) plus he randomly generates his powers from any of the 5 main disciplines plus Sanctic (E.G. 2 biomancy, 2 telepathy, 1 divination). now think about rolling all 5 on biomancy! with '''The Eye of the Crimson King''', which gives him line of sight to anything in range while also giving his powers Ignores Cover. '''Phantasmal Aura''' makes him [[Jaghatai Khan|harder to hit]] by forcing anyone in melee or shooting at him (and the ''infantry'' unit he joined) -1 to hit while also forcing Barrage weapons aimed at him to add +1 Scatter. He's also a decent army buffer, boosting his legions leadership, making his attached unit Fearless ([[Forgeworld|even though the Primarch rule already did that]]), allowing Sehkmet Terminators as troops and letting you re-roll reserves.

*'''The Horned Raiment''' is your standard 2+ 4++ armour made of warp energy that lowers the number of wounds taken from the D by 1
*'''Psyfire Serpenta''' is an S8 AP2 Assault d3 gun with Soulblaze(that could be argued to be a plasma weapon and thus weakened by the sallies)
*'''The Blade of Ahn-Nunura''' is an S+2 AP1 two handed '''force''' blade.

The February 2019 FAQ <s>nerfed</s> balanced Magnus heavily. Making '''Mind Wrath''' a power he has to buy separately along with '''Infernal Bargain'''. This increases his cost by 175 points, bringing his total to 670 and making him the most expensive of the Primarchs. Mind Wrath lets him double the range of any witchfire and add a single d6 strength to a maximum of 10 at a penalty of his powers needing +2 Warp Charges to cast. His witchfires still do not need line of sight and ''Ignore Cover''. His ''Infernal Bargain'' rule allows his army to cancel out a single Perils of the Warp anywhere on the table once per game, which is a safety net in the event a low level Psyker fluffs his casting roll and subjects the entire army to a potential pinning check. Magnus is still powerful and he is clearly still the best psyker in the game, but not quite the Destroyer [[Cheese]] of his first incarnation.

[[File:RussMagnusDiorama.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Magnus and Russ having a civilized chat on the philosophy of the Warp. Also, Magnus doesn't have his nipple horns anymore. Maybe Magnus got tired of losing another eye every time he sneezes.]]
''Biomancy'' so far seems to be the most powerful for him to roll on, as Iron Arm makes him an unkillable juggernaut of S10 T9, Warp Speed let him out-dance Fulgrim and out-rape Angron at 7 attacks on I9, with both combined allowing him to take on Horus or even Russ in a challenge, Enfeeble and Endurance being generally great powers in any situations. Haemorrage sadly continues to be useless, though, and five times out of six you'd roll it instead of some useful power.

Hilariously Biomancy-powered Strawberry can mindbullet most Primarchs from distance in just 2 or 3 turns. Angron, Fulgrim and Corax could even go down in one turn with some luck. Although Lorgar's superior deny and Horus's armor of "fuck your psychic powers on a 3+" may pose a problem, and them hiding in a transport or a unit (probably both) counters this tactic completely - then again forcing your enemy's Primarch to hide just by deploying yours is a victory on it's own (unless it's Alpharius, who's straight up ''designed'' to hide in a unit).

You can go for support monster with ''Divination'' or supercheese with ''Telepathy'', but those disciplines lack boostable witchfires (Psychic Scream while awesome on its own don't have strength value). ''Pyromancy'' is on the other end of the spectrum, with all the witchfires all the time everywhere, potentially with re-rolls to wound from fiery form, but it can't increase his survivability or close combat prowess.

Magnus is THE straight-up best Primarch for his points. The reason for this is his sheer flexibility. While you may not be able to [[Lorgar|choose your psychic powers,]] you can tailor him to different roles at the start of any game just by picking a discipline. Up against a melee Legion and need a buffer for your gunline? Divination, motherfucker. Enemy brought a Warhound/Spartan/Primarch who isn't Horus or Russ? Biomancy to fly up and smash it. Up against Admech with those 4+ armor MCs? Say hi to Pyromancy. If there were only a few psychic powers that Magnus' rules could turn into OP nastiness it'd be okay, but with Biomancy in particular, there are an absurd number of such powers. Pray to the Emprah Forgeworld nerfs him.

Just keep him away from sisters of silence... even they might struggle though. Especially since, Psyker or not, this is still a Primarch designed to tear apart anything and everything. A Culexus Assassin hiding behind a unit will also royally fuck him over.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying. With that in mind this section is all about how Magnus fares against other Primarchs mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities, with the exception of Blind, are taken into account (Blind is ignored because it is just too random and unreliable to come into play) and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. As with Lorgar, psychic powers are not accounted for, which is a slightly false choice given that if you're sending Magnus in for a Primarch duel you probably will buff him but a necessary one if this is to be doable and fair.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

*Magnus vs Angron
** Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
** Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which FNP and IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Unsurprisingly Magnus loses this one pretty badly

*Magnus vs Fulgrim
** Fulgrim (Fireblade): hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times and 1.167 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.834 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Again unsurprisingly Fulgrim wins comfortably even without taking into account Child of Terra or Mastercrafted

*Magnus vs Mortarion
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.278 at the start of next turn
** Mortarion: hits 1.667 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Magnus actually out-endures Mortarion as his negative modifier to hit balances out Mortarion's superior regen and extra wound. Not that it matters because it will take several lifetimes before either of them actually die.

*Magnus vs Ferrus Manus
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 time and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Ferrus: hits 1.333 times with Forgbreaker and 0.333 times with his Servo Arm, wounds 1.111 times and 0.278 respectively which after saves becomes a total of 0.695 wounds after saves which IWND will take down to 0.362 wounds at the start of next turn
** Another ridiculously long fight but Ferrus' Servo Arm and better invulnerable save just tip the fight in his favour

*Magnus vs Konrad Curze
** Konrad: hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times and 1.125 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.792 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Konrad wins this one without having to use his hit and run + HOW combo which turns this into a bloodbath

*Magnus vs Vulkan
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan: hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan wins because Magnus can't hurt him

*Magnus vs Lorgar
** Magnus (round 1): hits 2.222 times, wounds 1.728 times and 0.576 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.242 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times and 0.741 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.407 wounds at the start of next turn
** Lorgar: hits 2 times (Master-crafted and +1A for pistol), wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** In spite of WS6 and 5 wounds, Lorgar's save is increased to 3++ against attacks from Force Weapons, giving him a mutual kill or narrowly win if he concusses Magnus in the penultimate round.
*** '''Happy psychic fun:'''
*** Magnus with Iron Arm and Warp Speed: hits 4.667 times, wounds 3.889 times, [[FAIL|0.432 after saves]] and IWND will take down to 0.099 wounds at the start of next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog: hits 2.778 times, wounds 1.543 times, 0.772 times after saves and IWND will take down to 0.439 wounds at the start of the next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog crushes Magnus (after a long time), the rerolls to hit and wound more than makes up for Magnus' aura and boosted Toughness, and [[Shield-Captain|rerollable 3++]] completely neuters Magnus' damage. Magnus needs Iron Arm, Warp Speed ''and'' Endurance to outlast him. Or roll Precognition himself with any Bio-blessing.

*Magnus vs Perturabo
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus (Blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.37 after saves which IWND takes down 0.037 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo: hits 1.333 times with both, wounds 0.889 times with his hands and 1.111 times with Forgebreaker and 0.444 and 0.556 times after saves respectively, which becomes 0.111/0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo (with Magnus Blinded): hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 times after saves
** Another victory for Magnus comes when Perturabo doesn't have Forgebreaker. When he does this becomes a walkover in the other direction as Magnus won't kill him before he becomes blinded and then he becomes essentially unable to hurt Perturabo

*Magnus vs Alpharius
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Alpharius: hits 1.944 times, wounds 1.512 times and 0.756 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.423 at the start of next turn
** As usual, Alpharius loses

*Magnus vs Rogal Dorn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.33 times (Dorn cannot be wounded on more than 3+ thanks to his armour) and 0.67 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.44 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Dorn: hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times and 0.75 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Magnus loses this one

*Magnus vs Corvus Corax
** Corax: hits 2.667 times (Scourge)/ 2 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.5 times (Shadow-walk) and once or 0.75 times respectively after saves which IWND will take down to 0.667/0.417 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.333 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 1.667 times (Scourge)/ 1.111 times (Shadow-walk) and 1.111/0.741 times after saves which IWND will take down to 0.778/0.408 wounds at the start of next turn
** Corax's superior initiative means that if he uses Shadow-walk he can kill Magnus just before he can strike on turn 15. If he uses Scourge he loses, however. As usual Blind and Hit and Run could turn the fight more in his favour

* Magnus VS Jaghatai Khan.
**Jaghatai: hits 2.666 times, wounds 1.333 times, 0.666 wound after saves with IWND bringing this down to 0.333
**Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 times after sames with IWND bringing this down to 0.222
**Magnus loses this one too

</div></div>

===As a Daemon Primarch===
[[File:Magnus-revealed.PNG|right|thumb|300px|Exactly as planned!]]

{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 7 || 7 || 8|| 7 || 7 || 7 || 6|| 10 || 4+R1/4++R1
|}

Rules-wise, he's a beast with 7s across the board barring strength (8) attacks (6) and ld (10). He rocks a 4++ and can re-roll ones (so yeah, throw in the grimoire of names to have a 2++ re-rollable and guy becomes unkillable when combined with the fact that he's an FMC with EW), as well as Daemon of Tzeentch, Deep Strike, VotLW, Fearless, Fleet, IWND, and the WT Lord of Flux: Enemy units within 12″ of your Warlord treat all terrain, even open ground, as difficult terrain; any enemy units that run, turbo-boost, move flat out, or charge within that radius must take dangerous terrain tests. He has what is by far the best psychic output in the game: Mastery level '''5''', AW (so he DTWs on 3+ against everyone), manifests his WCs on a 2+, has LoS to all units on the table for the purposes of using his powers, and '''''never''''' suffers Perils of the Warp. He knows every spell in the Tzeentch and Change disciplines. With the expansions brought in the new rulebook, this means Magnus can bring to the table 2 D attacks (One of which is an 18" Beam?!) per psychic phase with relative ease, all while still being able to murderize anything that he comes across, and in melee he uses a sword that uses his strength, AP2, Soulblaze, Force, and Transmogrify (a 6 to wound causes Instant death and turns the slain model into a [[Chaos Spawn|Chaos Sp... you know this stupid gaOHGODWHYBLAGRABAH]]). He's 650pts, so use him wisely.

Model-wise, he appears to take minor inspiration from his EPIC monkey form (which is a good thing.) He has multiple head options, including a cyclops head, which is incredibly fluffy as his face has been described as constantly changing. His armor appears to be to have changed from golden to silver (but it still has its nipple horns. Sexy, sexy nipple horns), and the motif of a bird skull appears everywhere. He has bird wings, and is posed on a Space Wolf Dreadnought arm. Ah, and he's so FUCKHUEG that he rivals an Imperial Knight.

====8th Edition====

{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 445 || 2+ || 2+ || 8 || 7 || 18 || 7 || 10 || 3+
|}

Naturally, Magnus was some of the small slither of cheese that Chaos had access to in 7th, so GW casually nerfed him to ensure their precious space marines didn't have too hard a time (if this was hard to see, don't look at what has become of poor Ahriman). Don't let this hit fool you too much though as Magnus is still a force to be reckoned with. Gone is the all seeing eye, immunity to perils and ease of power casting. In its place we still get the best psyker (still significantly weaker than before as he has now forgotten most of his spells and how to give people the big old D). With 18 wounds, he can take more hits than a Land Raider and Bloodthirster and with 7 strength 8 attacks (*16 with his X2 S blade*), he can still bend over most things in the game with his fancy blade. His new force multiplier effects make him a more balanced command unit but unless you want him to sit at the back as a big fire magnet and hope his measly 3 powers can make up for his enormous cost over his combat hitting power, a Thousand Sons army isn't going to benefit from these too much. Apparently, Magnus has changed his devotion to Khorne judging by the obvious strategy GW have currently geared him to.

Oh, and don't let Thunder Hammer/Stormshield Terminators charge him. They obliterate him, even with Weaver of Fates up to give him a 3++R1; besides, you easily have the maneuverability to ensure they virtually never manage to pull this off.

*In all truth while his insane strength and 7 attacks are brutal, especially when adding prescience you probably want to stay away from anything with an invulnerable save higher than a 4, use him with warptime for mass hit and run and bolstering or intimidating important areas. Smite anything rocking Stormshields or other intimidating saves, and hope he rolls an overall 10, for a juicy 2d6 mortal wounds.

* Obviously Mortarion was not better enough when compared to Big Red, so GW fixed that by nerfing the cyclops (and boy did they hit him hard). No more invul rerolls, 2D6 mortal wound Smite only goes off on 12+ now, transmogrify from his blade is still not free, if you manage to even pull it off (funnily most characters hide from Magnus) all for 30 MORE points. On the plus side he allows rerolls of 1 for both him and his sons within 9" when making a psychic test, he adds his psychic phase bonus to DtW tests now, he also gets full access to 3 psychic disciplines for a total of 18 spells to chose from and he ignores any mortal wounds caused by perils on a 2+. He's less tanky than he used to be, but he is much more psychically focused than before.

====Magnus' Terrible Weakness====
Unfortunately not everything is awesome for the Daemon Prince, aside from getting his ass kicked by the Space Wolves and Grey Knights [[Angron|(though he's hardly alone in that regard)]], Magnus has a terrible weakness in the form of three completely normal humans carrying Thunder Hammers. This is all 7th edition only, but check it out anyway:

Seriously, three Inquisitors (all of which have 3's and 4's where Magnus has 7's and 8's) can kick his ass. One of them just needs to be carrying a Null Rod and Thunder Hammer, another carries the Grimoire of True Names, Empyrean Brain Mines, and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer, while the third also carries Empyrean Brain Mines and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer. All of this makes for a combination that Magnus simply cannot win against. He is incapable of ''targeting'' the unit with his sorcery; while he can and should hit the unit with Wrath of Magnus on the approach if possible, as Beams do not target, this won't help him in melee, where he is reduced to using '''Boon of Flame''' to summon support (which will not be able to charge on summon turn) and '''Boon of Mutation''', which is extremely unlikely to help in any meaningful way. If they charged him, the Psyk-Out grenades mean he's I1 for testing against the Mines; if they didn't, why didn't Magnus just get the hell out of there instead of getting into close combat with these guys? On subsequent Inquisitor turns, the bearer of the Grimoire will challenge him; Brain Mines and Challenges happen at the same time, so per the sequencing rules, the Inquisitors can choose to use the Mines second. Magnus must now take an I test on I2 (typically two tests, of course), so with odds ''at best'' 1/3 (at worst, 1/9) he can still swing - otherwise, he can't swing at all. If he ''does'' swing, it's at WS 2 (so he hits on 5s and is hit on 3s). Mathwise the three Inquisitors beat him to death in 3 rounds (another Triumvirate of the Imperium?). Even if it wasn't for dropping his Leadership down to 5 for Daemonbane tests, the second the Inquisitors Wound him he's Concussed, meaning it's even easier for them to paralyze him with the Mines and spend the second round wailing on him. If you really wanted to fuck him over then you could also ally in a Culexus Assassin, as they (simply by standing near him and not actually getting into the fistfight) combine with the Grimoire to drop his Leadership to 2, making him incredibly likely to die if a Nemesis Daemon Hammer rolls a 6 to wound. That all said, remember that Magnus ''does not'' have the Daemonic Instability special rule, so he's not going to take a bajillion extra wounds after losing combat with nerfed Leadership. You could also add to the hilarity with an Inquisitor with Rad and Psychotroke grenades (the Psychotroke grenades especially have a 1/3 chance of either reducing Magnus to I1 or LD 2 for the phase, which will make all of the other effects in the unit even worse for him).

Of course this relies on them actually getting into combat with Magnus, and so long as the player's smart (and your opponent doesn't load up his Inquisitors in something ridiculous like a Corvus Blackstar) you should be able to get around the board without having them ever get into combat with him. The Lord of Flux WT helps in this respect by messing up charges.

Funnily enough too his 30k incarnation is incredibly weak against Sisters of Battle, mainly because they can load up on combi-crossbows and two squads armed with these things will kill him in a single shooting phase while being either more annoying to kill thanks to Adamantium Will, or impossible to hurt with his Psychic powers if they're joined by a Hereticus Inquisitor carrying a Null rod (as they should be). Obviously the solution here is just to make him invisible and take them on in combat, but there's still the rare chance you won't get it (especially if you want other powers for bigger threats).

==Trivia==
*If you translate his name into Latin, you get Magnus Rubricatus, meaning, "Great Red [Man]" (or, "Big Red" if you're feeling lulzy). Also it has "rubric" in it. Sly GW strikes again!
*The god Thor had a daughter named Thrudr (Strength) and two sons, Modi (Wrath) and '''Magni''' (Mighty). They embody their's Sire's essential characteristics (much like the Primarchs vis-à-vis of the Emperor). This may well be coincidental though; albeit since it is modern B.L. Fluff that Leman (who is often compared with Odin for various obvious reasons) was the leader of the Censure army sent to capture / slay Magnus and burn Prospero, it is not entirely excluded that this piece of fluff represents an obscure and far-fetched "prophetic" and artistic rendering.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Magnus.jpg
Image:1476133187098.png|Damn, Aghoru has FUCKING bright sun!
Image:Magnus Tiddy Comic.png|''Super'' canon.
File:1544321391807.jpg|''"Look at this cookie I found"''.
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[https://youtu.be/bjBmT8y9PAU?t=6m56s A video chronicling Magnus' fall to Chaos. It is less conniving than originally imagined.]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6adES3Z0Qag Daddy (not the Emperor, Magnus) addressing his children for the visit to the pet shop.]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[Category:Chaos]]
[[Category:Thousand Sons]]

Magnus the Red

2021-07-05T23:26:41Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The Great Crusade */

{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-Warhammer-40000-фэндомы-4995855 (1).jpeg|400px|thumb|right|Handsome bastard...]]
{{Topquote|For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.|Ecclesiastes 1:18}}
{{Topquote|If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.|Woody Allen}}
{{Topquote|I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen?|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmuF-0P4tk William Foster]}}
'''Magnus the Red''', '''"Master of Prospero"''' (a.k.a '''The Crimson King''', the '''Sorcerer-King''', '''Cyclopean Magnus''', the '''Red Cyclops''', '''The One Who did <s>Nothing</s> Wrong''', [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|'''My Special Magny Magic, The Saucy Spice Boy, Wide Ahriman, and Rudolf the red nosed Primarch''']]) is the primarch of the [[Thousand Sons]] and rules over the Planet of the Sorcerers, and formerly Prospero. He is directly after the [[Emperor]] as the mightiest Psyker/Sorcerer in the whole Warhammer 40k Universe. He is notable for having an enormously variable physical form with a few common themes he keeps to most of the time (red skin and hair, one eye, etc) and [[Eldrad|being enormously, staggeringly, almost unbelievably arrogant,]] and with his shifting physical form and his hubris he's a real chip off the old block. Because of this there is debate over if he had a big ol' red eye in the middle of his forehead, or had normal eyes but one socket was empty. Either way he was a cyclops (The colour of his single eye is also described as constantly changing). He is also the Primarch of the [[Blood Ravens]] (maybe), which would explain their color scheme, high percentage of psykers, their Chapter Badge, their name, their beliefs, and that they steal everything that isn’t nailed down (who are we kidding, including what's nailed down as well, and the nails with that). Of all the Primarchs, with the exception of [[Vulkan]], [[Sanguinius]] and [[Jaghatai Khan]], Magnus was one of the most open minded and compassionate to the discriminated, being a psyker and all.

He, along with old [[Mortarion|Morty]], are among the few traitor Primarchs who actually hate/despise their respective Chaos Gods. Mortarion for his general disdain for all things psychic in nature, and Magnus for being humiliated and played like a [[Metal Gear|damn fiddle]] by [[Tzeentch]]. Then again, being a Daemon Prince does make even the idea of doing so impossible by definition, so instead he's chosen to blame the Imperium for pushing him to the side of the traitors.

==The Great Crusade==
[[File:Past-Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-.jpeg||300px|right|thumb|Magnus nerdin out in his private astrology room.]]
Magnus landed on the planet of [[Prospero]], a planet whose ancient civilization was composed predominantly of psykers, who had fled there because they were persecuted by humanity at large for being psykers. As Magnus was himself such a being, he formed a kinship with the people of Prospero in short order. Taken in by Prospero's people, he absorbed knowledge like a sponge, and became crazy powerful, and in time far exceeded the power and control of all of his teachers. After a while, he became the single most powerful ''thing'' on the fucking planet, and he led a campaign to eradicate a race of predators on Prospero known as the ''Psychneuein'', which had overrun many of Prospero's early cities, and had an unhealthy fondness for laying their eggs in unsuspecting psykers' brains. Which was probably why the beasts had destroyed the entire population of Prospero, save for its capital city, Tizca. One by one, bit by bit, Magnus' forces retook the planet, putting the Psychneuein to the sword, and within a year, [[Awesome|Magnus had mostly reclaimed the entire world]] (except for the Desolation of Prospero, which was everything except for Tizca).

Once the campaign on the Psychneuein was complete, Magnus became the planetary leader by popular demand. Magnus decided to be fucking awesome, and rebuilt the cities (or mostly just Tizca). Like a somehow perfectly stable fortress lasting some 50 years in [[Dwarf Fortress]], Tizca became arguably the most beautiful city in Imperial space, with crystalline spires and pyramids, long marble roads, and psychically-resonant crystals in key locations; designed to calm the turbulent minds of younger psykers and help them control their burgeoning psionic potential. The city quickly became known as a shining jewel of humanity, and one that showed proudly how far its citizens had come from the brink of near-extinction. Prospero also had one of the most technically advanced defensive networks in the Imperium, all of which was hilariously wasted except for the shields when Magnus, in a fit of Primarch-scale angst over his "I screwed everything Dad was doing and failed my purpose entirely in the process" whoopsy-daisy, decided that the [[Space Wolves]] should get the rabbit punch.

All this time, Magnus continued to codify and systematize everything he could about the 'Great Ocean' - the name the Prosperans had given the [[Warp]]. Huge libraries filled with knowledge about psychic powers and the warp were established, and Magnus himself used his powers to peer into the Empyrean itself, claiming many of its secrets, though at terrible risk to himself. While this was exceptionally dangerous, much of what the Imperium's [[Inquisition]] currently knows about the Warp came directly from several of his manuscripts that survived.

With such a powerful mind heading into the warp, it was inevitable that the [[Emprah]] (who happened to be out and about the galaxy looking for his lost sons) would eventually take notice. So he eventually came to Prospero, and he and Magnus psychically brofisted before talking for several days. The Emperor taught him even more about psychic powers, but cautioned Magnus to be ''slow and purposeful''. The Emperor was well-aware foul horrors lurked in the Warp and liked nothing better than [[Anal Circumference|forcibly sodomizing an unprepared Psyker's soul]], but Magnus didn't care, especially since his forays into the Warp to save his Legion from the flesh-change had already come at a price neither of them realized - Magnus believed he'd only given up on his right eye, sacrificed ala Odin when he had consorted with [[Tzeentch|Warp-entities whose nature he did not understand]]. To Magnus, one eye was was an acceptable price and he didn't heed the Emperor's warnings as he believed he'd come out on top of the bargain.

Magnus was put in charge of the [[Thousand Sons]], but would not immediately embark on the Great Crusade - since many of his Legion were psykers, and there had been so many small mutations that a number of them couldn't survive the gene-seeding process. Even worse, during combat, psykers ran the risk of losing control of their powers and underwent "Flesh Change", where their body mutated rampantly out of control at all the Warp energy running through them (we call them something else, but won't speak its name as... wait, I didn't say it's [[Chaos Spawn|naSHHTLSUROHSONTOOLS!]])

Magnus was aware of the mutations his Astartes were suffering, and entered the Warp to seek answers about the cause of this and if a cure existed, though he didn't know that he had consorted with [[Tzeentch]] by doing so, and the god of [[Just as planned]] saw a ''lot'' of potential in this one. In return for knowledge and a way to stop the flesh-change, Magnus lost his eye so hard that he '''never saw it coming''' [[Cegorach|(ah-ha-ha-ha!!)]].

In any case, because of the setbacks that had befallen the Thousand Sons, the selfless efforts of Magnus to save them, their shared psychic talents, and the continuing distrust and persecution of many Imperial agencies and other Space Marine Legions towards the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities and the rampant mutations present in their gene-seed, the Primarch and his Astartes developed an extremely close emotional and psychic bond. One of the strongest among all Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions, exceeding even the [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves]]' dedication to [[Horus]].

Finally, about midway into the Great Crusade (100 Terran years after it had begun), the now "stable" Thousand Sons Legion (although numbering only 10,000 soldiers), with Magnus leading them on the field, were permitted to take part in the campaign as part of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. And it was ''glorious''. When they were deployed, the Sons were a sight to behold, flinging psychic storms to consume their enemies and striking bolts with precision and prescience, using their abilities to ascertain enemies' weak-points. Magnus was unique among the Primarchs in that he would always try diplomatic routes first, however - in this way, the Thousand Sons won many battles without so much as a shot fired. This did not sit well with [[Rogal Dorn]] or [[Roboute Guilliman|Girlyman]], who viewed this approach "unmanly". Likewise, Magnus drew constant distrust from [[Mortarion]] and [[Leman Russ]], who distrusted the Sons' sorcerous ways and were somewhat concerned of a trait the Sons had picked up: [[lootas|after conquering or annexing a world, they would take huge amounts of knowledge: books, scrolls about forgotten /forbidden lore, and ancient artifacts, back to Prospero for study, analysis and codification]]. ''And this doesn't sound like the Blood Ravens, you say? Nicking everything shiny that's not nailed down?'' Point is: nobody looted so prolifically as The Thousand Sons. The White Scars and Blood Angels aligned themselves with them to rig the Librarium. What that did was to actually impose some restraint on psykers, that made everyone a bit more accepting towards them. Their worries only intensified when it was discovered that the Sons had little warp critters (familiars) called "tutelaries" buzzing around them and acting as warp power-packs. This Elegan/tg/entleman believes Magnus’ tutelary was an ADORABLE WARP KITTEN!

When diplomacy didn't work, The Sons were known to fuck entire armies with lightning, fireballs, mass mind-control, precognition of enemy strikes and counter them with precision strikes, dealing so much devastation with only some few squads of Marines. Magnus himself once fought Ork gargants by himself, and despite being able to zap, melt or transmute their hulls with just the power of his mind, he instead [[Awesome|scaled himself to the size of a Warlord-class Titan, and beat the shit out of them with his bare hands]].

A very important event called "Council of Nikaea" or "The Trial of Magnus the Red", took place about 50 years before the Horus Heresy, where Magnus was called by his brothers and the Emperor to answer for abusing his powers and to install some form of control of psykers used in battle across the galaxy. The fact that the Sons obsessed with preserving valuable knowledge (whatever the source), was another factor that pissed a bunch of Primarchs off. The Thousand Sons' political opponents among other Astartes Legions found hoarding xenos' artifacts useless and counter-productive to the goals of the Great Crusade (which actually more or less sought to eradicate all alien life in the galaxy). Finally, the Emperor stepped in, bitch-slapped everyone for acting like a [[Derp|fucking child]], and pointed out that whilst dangerous, psychic powers were still necessary to the Imperium as a whole.
So psykers were now to abstain from using their powers in battle. The ever fabulous Jaghatai Khan facepalmed his high forehead, whilst groaning, that this is exactly what he'd warned Magnus about. Magnus was ticked off, but calmed down a bit a little later and continued the Crusade with the new restrictions in place (actually, they carried out their arcane ways in secret).

==Horus Heresy==
[[File:DaemonMagnus.jpg|right|thumb|He doesn't get much press-time because of how bad he and his Legion got dicked by Tzeentch, but when he DOES, watch your fucking [[FATAL|ass]]!]]
When Magnus learned that Horus intended to betray the Emperor and slaughter like half the galaxy, he resolved to use any method possible to warn the Emperor. With few other options, he made a deal with Tzeentch again, to combine their powers and smash the psychic seal The Emperor had installed to protect the Webway from the warp (Magnus simply did not bother to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U walk around the Wall] through one of the entrances that the Webway has) and enter the Imperial Palace all the way from Prospero. Unfortunately, this deed majorily fucked up the Webway project the Emperor had been working on for over 9000 years, which would have made the dangerous warp-travel obsolete and would [[Heresy|unify the Imperium of Man using a human-engineered version of the Eldar Webway gate]]. Big E called Magnus out and banished him back for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jOqOlETcRU&t=0m30s| breaking the law] and using sorcery to get through the Webway. [[Eldrad|The dick]] didn't even listen to Magnus about Horus's betrayal and declared Magnus a [[Extra Heresy|DOUBLE HERETIC]]. Magnus realized that the Imperium is comprehensively fucked and that he needed to do all he could to protect it and Prospero. Emps should probably have told his super-psychic son about his psychically-sensitive all-important project [[derp|THAT MAGNUS WAS DESTINED TO OPERATE]], but that would make [[Grimdark|nobody happy]], wouldn't it?

When Horus learned of this, he was quietly amused. The Emperor ordered Horus to have Russ bring Magnus back to Terra to stand trial for what he had done, and Horus being a [[Eldrad|dick]], quietly altered Russ' orders to lay waste to Prospero instead and slaughter the Thousand Sons. As Magnus was already officially a (slightly tolerated) heretic, Russ stoically accepted the order to bring a third of his brothers down. (Seriously, [[Companion|Constantin Valdor]] is way more out for Magnus' blood than Russ himself is.) Russ took his whole Legion to the party, and accompanying the Space Wolves were a full contingent of Adeptus Custodes (led by aforementioned Valdor), millions of [[Imperial Army]] troops and an elite anti-psyker unit: the Sisters of Silence (think a unit of [[Culexus|Culexus Assassin]]s and you get the general idea). Barring a last-ditch attempt to Skype Magnus through Kasper Hawser, an agent that had been brainwashed to visit Fenris and spy on the wolves that Magnus was not connected to(because [[Tzeentch|reasons]]).

Interestingly Russ actually attempted to contact Magnus and his legion several times in an attempt to get them to explain their actions, and even when he was directly above the planet he kept sending Magnus calls to try and get him to just talk to him, but Magnus had put the planet on lockdown and kept denying any contact with the fleet, which royally pissed off Russ. A shame too, if he said fucking anything he probably could have stopped his people from getting fucked.

Magnus, sensing this and realising that this had been [[Just as planned]] by Tzeentch and that it has done this to completely destroy both the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves, decided to counter-dick-move the Lord of All Fate. Instead of calling Russ back and peacefully working out what had happened (which would have solved everything), he decided to accept the destruction of everything that he had worked for, so that [[not as planned|Tzeentch's ultimate goal would only be half-fulfilled]], [[derp|because letting your enemy accomplish half of what they want and making the Imperium far more vulnerable to Horus is better than making them fail and giving your traitor brother a harder time]]. Tzeentch was richly amused by this. As Prospero burned, Tzeentch and Magnus engaged in act after act of dickery and counter-dickery; with Magnus finally pushed into a towering rage and taking to the battlefield at his capital: crushing his enemies with volleys of MIND BULLETS (forgetting the whole reason he refused to talk to Russ), before he engaged Leman Russ himself in close-combat. The two fought fiercely and [[Awesome|Magnus managed to Falcon pawnch Russ so hard, his breastplate shattered ''and one of his hearts punctured''. ]] Russ was going to die until HIS TWO WOLF PETS INTERFERED IN THE FIGHT and allowed him to take out Magnus' second eye, and then performed a back-breaker on him that ended the fight (Russ would have died had his wolves stayed out of the fight). Tzeentch was greatly amused by all of this because it's rare for anyone, let alone a mortal, to predict and out-manipulate the plans of the Architect of Fate himself. He thus made Magnus an offer: Become Tzeentch's servant and preserve what was left of his Legion and homeworld or watch it all burn in a pool of his own blood.

Pussying out, Magnus agreed because the thought of actually dying to atone for his mistakes only seemed like a good idea until he had to put it into practice. As a result, Magnus' cowardice ruined everything he'd been working towards and explicitly doing the one thing he'd been trying to prevent. The response of Magnus' new patron was immediate: for once, Tzeentch was true to his word. The City of Light was transported into the Eye of Terror onto a Daemon World. Prospero was destroyed that day, but Magnus and his Legion survived. It is unclear ''when'' they ended up on the Planet of the Sorcerers; before or after the Siege of Terra, but Magnus the Red had been so damaged by his battle with Russ and the psychic effort of teleporting to Sortiarius that his soul had fragmented across time and space. The shards represented different aspects of Magnus's personality, all tied to various places and people in the galaxy (one existed in the past many decades before the Heresy) and all had different motives. One shard helped the Salamanders resurrect Vulkan, whilst another had gone full daemon and tried to kill as many knight-errants as possible. Ahriman and co gathered several of the more powerful shards back together and managed to perform a Rubric to bond them back together into a stable form called the Crimson King. Magnus was saved from fading away but effectively become a daemon prince and the most powerful of all Tzeentch's servants. One of the shards, representing Magnus's good side was bound into the dying Revuel Arvida, becoming Janus. Magnus originally planned to join the assault on Terra purely to get this part of his soul back but seeing as Janus appeared later in The Beast Arises series, we can assume this didn't go to plan. (Though Magnus shows that Perpetuals can be permanently killed by Psyker Powers/Chaos Sorcery when he perma-kill REDACTED)

[[Just as planned|Magnus had never served Tzeentch willingly, but now had no choice - exactly as Tzeentch HAD PLANNED from the very beginning (we might think), and now he was committed to the very cause he had tried to foil]].

Some head-scratching does arise ae to why Magnus didn't: a) simply tell his Legion to lay down their weapons and try and talk Russ out of obliterating the entire world, (especially since Russ was willing to listen), b) take the hara-kiri option, which would have at least brought everything to an end a little earlier or c) try to confront Russ elsewhere where there wouldn't be a large amount of civilian/auxilia deaths and the vast repository of knowledge the Thousand Sons had wouldn't be lost, or d) just go to the Space Wolves himself, since that way he wouldn't take his entire Legion and planet down with him. The common consensus is that Magnus was too proud to consider the idea of explaining himself and resolving things peacefully (especially with the brother he had always considered to be an ignorant savage), but this falls flat when you remember that he also could've talked to the Custodes if he thought Russ wasn't willing to talk (and seeing as how Russ kept calling him like a needy girlfriend, he obviously was). There's also no reason presented anywhere for why he didn't take any other option presented here, and once you examine the event, it becomes clear this is one of those odd writing issues where the Burning of Prospero was written into the lore so far in advance as something that happened, that when they actually got to detailing it they forgot to adequately justify it from the side of Magnus and his Legion.

==Post-Heresy==
[[File:Cl9SiZhXIAADyip.jpg|left|thumb|300px|An exceptionally skilled depiction of Magnus during the Horus Heresy.]]
And so, the Horus Heresy came and went. The Siege of Terra occurred, Horus had fought the Emperor and (SPOILER WARNING) failed, and the Traitor Legions were driven to the [[Eye of Terror]]. However, the Thousand Sons now had to deal with more immediate problems: with their serving of Tzeentch, the Flesh Change returned with a vengeance. Magnus made efforts to stop this, but being a servant of the God of Mutation has its drawbacks and before long Magnus seemed to have given up. Growing desperate, [[Ahzek Ahriman]], the Chief Librarian and First Captain, took matters into his own hands. Having lost his brother to the Flesh Change before they found Prospero, Ahriman gathered a cabal of other sorcerers, the Book of Magnus, and performed the Rubric of Ahriman in an attempt to stop the Flesh Change.

The results were not what Ahriman expected: while it stopped the Flesh Change and further empowered all psychic Thousand Sons, all non-psyker Thousand Sons had their bodies turned to dust and sealed within their Power Armour, becoming little more than robots needing guidance from a Thousand Son sorcerer.

Confronting Ahriman, once his most favored son, Magnus angrily demanded an explanation. Ahriman basically telling him to shut it [[rage|did not help]] and Magnus was about to kill Ahriman when Tzeentch spoke to him: ''"Magnus, why do you seek to kill my pawn?"'' (which is strange since of all the chaos gods, Tzeentch cares about his followers the least) Once again, Magnus realized [[just as planned|he'd had been used]]. Disgusted, broken (and still really angry but unable to do anything about it) Magnus simply exiled Ahriman from the Planet of Sorcerers. For the last ten thousand years, Magnus and Ahriman both have labored to restore the Sons' bodies to their original forms, [[troll|with Tzeentch ensuring they fail all the while]]. Though, it is really weird the God of ''Mutation'' and ''Change'' would be preventing change and keeping some of his strongest minions in a form that cannot be mutated (well, I mean he probably could because Warp but we've never heard about it).

===Fragments of Magnus===
Unknown to everyone save perhaps Tzeentch himself and Magnus' inner circle, the teleportation of Magnus to the Planet of the Sorcerers at Prospero had the side effect of splitting the Primarch's soul into a large number of lesser fragments, many of which might not have even been aware of the split and believed that they truly were Magnus the Red.
The actual number of fragments is not known exactly, but an allegorical representation of them showed a broken statue of a bird, with some fragments being as small as grains of dirt though the largest piece was definitely recognisable as parts of a bird.

*The fragment that traveled to the Planet of Sorcerers was the greatest shard of Magnus' soul, although upon its arrival it was nothing like the Primarch or the daemon-prince Magnus that are well known to the 40k universe. Although it appeared to be Magnus the Red, it has the mindset of a senile old man who was dying. This Magnus barely knew where or when he was at the best of times and was constantly forgetting who his companions were or what Leman Russ had done to him or his Legion. This shard of Magnus spent centuries ''(of warptime, so practically no time at all in realspace)'' fleeing his memories through the warp while being chased by his equerry [[Amon]] who was trying to bring him back. In a moment of lucidity he was the first to reveal that his soul had been shattered, but only by reliving the battle of Prospero did the Thousand Sons have an idea of where the largest shards went to, so Ahriman led a quest to reclaim them and restore his Primarch, gathering enough to amalgamate the Crimson King.
**'''The Crimson King''', the Daemon-Primarch of Tzeentch as he exists in the present, was the recombination of several shards as the Horus Heresy went on and by far the most powerful of the Magnus-fragments. His first act was to declare that he would join Horus' rebellion and lay siege to Terra to reclaim his greatest fragment ''(Janus)''. He would exile Ahriman for the first failed Rubric, would later instigate the Battle of the Fang and then spend the next ten thousand years being a dick, eventually fouling up Ahriman's second Rubric but achieving near-complete unification of all the shards. Unsurprisingly, the only parts that weren't reunited with The Crimson King were all the ones which embodied Magnus' noblest, most selfless qualities.
*'''"Magnus"''' (as the father of the Thousand Sons and '''author of the Book of Magnus''') was the portion of Magnus that seemed to care the most about his legionaries and of his son Ahriman in particular. Much diminished, he remained behind the scenes for centuries attempting to subvert the Daemon-Primarch and guide his son Ahriman ''(and by extension the Legion)'' back to greatness and presumably ''(at a push)'' back onto the path the Emperor intended for them. It was he who inspired Ahriman to attempt the original Rubric in the first instance since it was actually his own spell. "Magnus" (the father) knew that it would fail, but the flesh-change was overcoming the legion anyway, and the failed attempt would provide Ahriman with both the time and the conviction to eventually complete his great work and attempt a second rubric by pooling his own resources with knowledge gleaned from various other fragments, including the Athenaeum of Kallimakus. It was also he who infuenced Amon's dreams to seek out Ahriman to kill him and undo the Rubric and end their brothers' agony. While this shard of Magnus admitted he sacrificed Amon to re-motivate Ahriman to do the second Rubric, he believed it was the proper course of action to save their legion and make Magnus whole without the Crimson King's infuence. The end result may have actually cured his legion & father by reuniting the broken primarch and reversing the flesh-change, and allow the personality of "Magnus" (the father) to assert control over the united fragments and redeem himself. However, even if it had worked the interference of the Crimson King would have caused it to destroy the fragments instead. Ultimately, it faded into oblivion rather than allow the Crimson King to reabsorb it.
*The great library of knowledge: the '''Athenaeum of Kallimakus''' actually was a fragment of sorts, but not able to act independently, only providing a link to the stream of consciousness of the original Magnus the Red. However the Athenaeum was corrupted after being discovered by the Crimson King, who attempted to insinuate his own mind into the thought-stream and attempt to assert control over Ahriman's second rubric result. His dipping in and out of the stream introduced flaws into the spell which would still have allowed the Thousand Sons to regain their flesh but would have destroyed all the fragments of Magnus in the process.
**A separate lesser shard was hidden within the ashes of '''Mahavastus Kallimakus''' himself, that was carried around in an urn for years yet was completely oblivious to the [[Sisters of Silence]], the [[Thousand Sons]] and one of the [[Knights-Errant]], beneath whom the urn had passed almost completely unnoticed. It was only when proximity to the shard of Aghoru that it awakened, although its motivations are largely unknown because it seemed to be operating under the orders of the other shard until it fused with it.
*One fragment remained on Prospero, representing his acceptance of the Emperor's judgement against him, this Magnus was stuck in limbo and meditation for a while, until [[Jaghatai Khan]] rocked up to Prospero to find out what had happened. This fragment served up a nice big info-dump and urged him to pick a side in the war, and in return Jaghatai banished him from Prospero.
*Another became a daemon of vengeance that was unwittingly passed from host to host ''(It was thought to be a normal daemon, no-one realised it was a actually a shard of Magnus)''. It eventually came to inhabit the body of a renegade space marine called Astraeos. This shard saw the Crimson King as a usurper but was eventually consumed after a very quick battle with the Crimson King following the failed second Rubric.
*One returned to Nikaea and represented the part inside of Magnus that died when the Emperor made his pronouncement against him. This shard was literally a corpse being clawed at by daemonic hands.
*One represented his warrior aspect and was found on the planet Aghoru seemingly waiting to duel whoever showed up. It held off a [[Knights-Errant|Knight-Errant]], a Rune Priest, a small squad of space wolves, a bunch of cyber automata and a freaking Samurai at the same time without any overt use of psychic power until it was bound into the body of a mortal. Interestingly, this shard had no intention of reuniting with the greater because Magnus was not actually known for his battle-prowess, so this fragment would rather have remained and made a name for himself equal to Angron or the Lion, nonetheless it later absorbed the shard of Kallimakus into itself and was absorbed in turn into the Crimson King anyway.
*Another fragment representing Magnus' desire to seek knowledge for the sake of its acquisition. It was thrust into Terra's past and inhabited the body of King Kadmus, one of the Emperor's enemies, requiring Ahriman to time-travel in order to reclaim it.
*One fragment remained on Terra and was fused by [[Malcador]] to '''Revuel Arvida''', inadvertently creating an entity known as '''Ianius''' ''(Janus)''. Yes, the same Janus that would become the first Supreme Grand Master of the [[Grey Knights]]. It is believed that this fragment embodied Magnus's nobility and connection to the Emperor.
*From the Prologue and Epilogue there may very well have been a second fragment of Magnus that resided on Terra and was known to Malcador and Rogal Dorn. But where Revuel Arvida housed a shard in his flesh and became Ianius who remained ostensibly Astartes, this shard was fully formed ''(an oversized giant with crimson skin)'' and housed within a villa hidden deep beneath the crust of Terra from where he narrates the novel ''Crimson King''. This fragment took upon himself the role of archivist of the Horus Heresy, and pinned his hopes for the future on some all-seeing device in the warp called ''The Orrery''. Perhaps building it with the help of his equerry Amon while he was chasing a different shard of his emotional father through time and space via the warp, or by completing his own orrery separately, or simply referring to the one the Crimson King made. It could then be this shard of Magnus who rescued the ship carrying the body of Vulkan and guided it back to Nocturne so his brother could be resurrected.
**It may also yet be Janus speaking from an earlier time period before his binding, who knows? The warp is confusing enough without it being inhabited by multiple aspects of the same guy over different time periods.
**Regardless of whether it is Janus or an entirely separate fragment, one of the Terran shards was believed by the Crimson King to be the first and greatest fragment of the Soul of Magnus and so he was willing to lay siege to Terra to reclaim it, even going so far as name it his sole reason for joining Horus's side of the war.

By the novel Ahriman Unchanged, Ahriman would complete his second Rubric and attempt to cast it on [[Sortiarius]]. Unfortunately the Rubric was not completed as Ahriman was interrupted by a member of the Thousand Sons who knew that the outcome would result in Magnus's annihilation and wanted to avoid it, so he seized control of the magical energy before Ahriman could finish the spell and obliterate their father. This resulted in several of the fragments reuniting into the Daemon Primarch Crimson King and increasing his share of power to a state indistinguishable from that which he possessed as a complete being. The aspect of vengeance: Astraeos would be the Crimson King's first victim and be absorbed almost immediately, while Magnus (the father) would fade away into nothing after having hung on for so many centuries only to fail in his objectives to lay claim to the soul of Magnus or heal his Legion- all it could do was deny the Crimson King what little power it still possessed.
*Although he [[Just as Planned|might have actually succeeded]], in by failing to complete the second Rubric, as a side effect Ahriman was uncoupled from his destiny and now "free" from divine manipulations, something that Magnus ''(the Father)'' had wished for all of his sons. But even then Ahriman ultimately continued to serve Tzeentch of his own will, so how much of a victory this may have been is up for debate.

This means that while Daemon-Primarch Magnus at the turn of the 41st millennium is in his most complete state and the various schemes of the separated fragments have been put to rest, Magnus is still not "whole" and likely will never return to his original state due to the loss of significant fragments; in particular, the evaporated essence of the compassionate father figure who set the rubric in motion, and probably the missing nobility of Janus, who died centuries earlier in service to the [[Grey Knights]]. At this point it can be assumed that Tzeentch filled in the remaining parts with himself, cementing Magnus's state as a Daemon Prince and eliminating any chance of his redemption.

===Post Rubric===
[[File:Magnus vs Robboute.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Magnymagick and [[Roboute Guilliman|Papa Smurf]] having a calm and brotherly conversation over at Luna in the 41st Millennium. [[TTS|And I, Cato Sicarius, will prevent anyone from interrupting this conversation!]]]]

'''Battle for The Fang:'''
The unified Magnus the Red: The Crimson King, later showed up on [[Fenris|FENRIS]] ITSELF and became the second Daemon Primarch after [[Angron]] to get shit done, rampaging through imperial lines and laying waste to everything in his path with MIND BULLETS and RAW PHYSICAL POWER until the Space Wolves responded and after an extremely hard fight Magnus phased himself out and teleported all his marines out of the Fang after having his back broken once again, this time by Bjorn. While he succeeded in sabotaging an experimental (seemingly successful) Space Wolf geneseed mutation cure and killing an entire Great Company HQ, The Great Wolf (turns out wolfing a Wolf Lord's wolf means warping your hands inside him and ''ripping his hearts out'') and almost killing Bjorn the Fell-Handed himself, he did not finish the Space Wolves once and for all. Of course, Magnus claimed it was not his goal in the first place.

Funny how two out of two Daemon Primarchs to have gotten shit done ended up being repelled by the actions of the Space Wolves. On the other hand, the Wolfies were pushed to their very limits trying to repel the chosen of Tzeentch, and they only got off easy once he fucked off after his main objective was finished.

'''Warzone Fenris:'''

Of all the Daemon Primarchs so far seen in the fluff, he seems to be the most [[Reasonable Marines|collected and coherent]], as far as Chaos goes; in the trailer of Wrath of Magnus he actually sounded quite composed and at odds with Angron's "BLUDFUTEBLUDGUD!" or Mortarion's "IHAVESPESSASHMA"; he told the Thousand Sons in a strong but civilized way to put their differences aside to focus on the goal of destroying the Space Puppies, and remarked how [[Awesome|all of them were his sons, even Ahriman or any other wayward sorcerer who had gone his own way through the ages and that despite the millennia long pass, he still holds Prospero in high regards and consistently fights for his homeworld's memory and people;]] [[Kharn|what a cool guy.]]

During the campaign, Magnus' goal was never to destroy Fenris (though it would have been a satisfying bonus), but instead to make the Wolves suffer as he and his sons did during the Burning of Prospero: with the Wulfen and their genetic flaw revealed, they would be regarded with suspicion and mistrust. Because the people of Fenris have seen first-hand the horrors of the Warp, the Inquisition ordered a massive purge that saw most of the population of Fenris exterminated. Midgardia basically got destroyed, Fenris became a partly irradiated wasteland, and Magnus pulled Sortiarius into the materium (as the whole invasion of Fenris also turned out to be a massive ritual for which the Grey Knights killing the populace helped a lot, yes Grey Knights dun fucked up). Interestingly, while Magnus is lauded for his vast intellect he seems to have neglected the insignificant detail of *knowing* that the Space Wolves were tricked by Horus into annihilating the Thousand Sons instead of detaining them in order to take them to Terra as the Emperor had decreed. This order was slightly "re-interpreted" by Horus and then passed on to Leman Russ with the known consequences (the traitor legions refer to them as "the betrayed" for that very reason). There goes split personality for ya!

Notably, during the above campaign, Magnus got Mortarion's aid in exchange for the latter taking over Midgardia and transforming it into a plague infested planet. However, Magnus proceeded to back-stab Mortarion by arranging Midgardia to undergo exterminatus before the latter succeeded in claiming it. Magnus likely did this out of vengeance because he's still salty over Mortarion's role during that little Council of Nikaea thing, something something best served cold...

'''Gathering Storm Book III:'''

Magnus and the Thousand Sons are found to be lurking in the webway after the resurrected [[Roboute Guilliman]] and his allies have escaped from the Red Corsairs. Guilliman, realizing that Magnus is hoping to use him to sneak into the Imperial Palace via the webway gate, instead detours to a dormant gate on Luna. A huge battle between Guilliman's forces and the Thousand Sons ensues, whilst the two Primarchs go mano-a-mano. In a rare example of the [[Ultramarine|blue bastards]] not getting their way and the whole "Daemon Primarch" thing actually making a difference, Magnus' super-psyker abilities bring the G-man within a gnat's testicle of actually getting killed before the loyalist cavalry arrives in the form of the Imperial Fists, the Adeptus Custodes, and the Sisters of Silence. The Sisters nullify Magnus' powers long enough for Guilliman to turn him into a kebab. This somehow causes Magnus to unleash a psychic shockwave that blows him back through the gate, after which some Harlequins who'd tagged along with Guilliman seal it off, stranding him in the webway.
Since then, Magnus has been involved in many other major attacks on the Imperium at the behest of Tzeentch, such as the invasion of the Stygius Sector and building [[New Kingdom|an empire for psykers]].

==On the tabletop==
===As a son of the Emperor===
[[File:FWMagnusTheRed.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Magnus, back before he was a red giant. Well, a redder giant.]]
{| class=wikitable
! Points || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| 495 || 7 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 4 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}
With his decent statline, Magnus has the Primarch rule in all of its goodness, '''Arch Sorcerer''' (ML 5 psyker that harnesses on a 3+, needs three 6's to roll perils and re-rolls 1's if he does) plus he randomly generates his powers from any of the 5 main disciplines plus Sanctic (E.G. 2 biomancy, 2 telepathy, 1 divination). now think about rolling all 5 on biomancy! with '''The Eye of the Crimson King''', which gives him line of sight to anything in range while also giving his powers Ignores Cover. '''Phantasmal Aura''' makes him [[Jaghatai Khan|harder to hit]] by forcing anyone in melee or shooting at him (and the ''infantry'' unit he joined) -1 to hit while also forcing Barrage weapons aimed at him to add +1 Scatter. He's also a decent army buffer, boosting his legions leadership, making his attached unit Fearless ([[Forgeworld|even though the Primarch rule already did that]]), allowing Sehkmet Terminators as troops and letting you re-roll reserves.

*'''The Horned Raiment''' is your standard 2+ 4++ armour made of warp energy that lowers the number of wounds taken from the D by 1
*'''Psyfire Serpenta''' is an S8 AP2 Assault d3 gun with Soulblaze(that could be argued to be a plasma weapon and thus weakened by the sallies)
*'''The Blade of Ahn-Nunura''' is an S+2 AP1 two handed '''force''' blade.

The February 2019 FAQ <s>nerfed</s> balanced Magnus heavily. Making '''Mind Wrath''' a power he has to buy separately along with '''Infernal Bargain'''. This increases his cost by 175 points, bringing his total to 670 and making him the most expensive of the Primarchs. Mind Wrath lets him double the range of any witchfire and add a single d6 strength to a maximum of 10 at a penalty of his powers needing +2 Warp Charges to cast. His witchfires still do not need line of sight and ''Ignore Cover''. His ''Infernal Bargain'' rule allows his army to cancel out a single Perils of the Warp anywhere on the table once per game, which is a safety net in the event a low level Psyker fluffs his casting roll and subjects the entire army to a potential pinning check. Magnus is still powerful and he is clearly still the best psyker in the game, but not quite the Destroyer [[Cheese]] of his first incarnation.

[[File:RussMagnusDiorama.jpg|left|thumb|300px|Magnus and Russ having a civilized chat on the philosophy of the Warp. Also, Magnus doesn't have his nipple horns anymore. Maybe Magnus got tired of losing another eye every time he sneezes.]]
''Biomancy'' so far seems to be the most powerful for him to roll on, as Iron Arm makes him an unkillable juggernaut of S10 T9, Warp Speed let him out-dance Fulgrim and out-rape Angron at 7 attacks on I9, with both combined allowing him to take on Horus or even Russ in a challenge, Enfeeble and Endurance being generally great powers in any situations. Haemorrage sadly continues to be useless, though, and five times out of six you'd roll it instead of some useful power.

Hilariously Biomancy-powered Strawberry can mindbullet most Primarchs from distance in just 2 or 3 turns. Angron, Fulgrim and Corax could even go down in one turn with some luck. Although Lorgar's superior deny and Horus's armor of "fuck your psychic powers on a 3+" may pose a problem, and them hiding in a transport or a unit (probably both) counters this tactic completely - then again forcing your enemy's Primarch to hide just by deploying yours is a victory on it's own (unless it's Alpharius, who's straight up ''designed'' to hide in a unit).

You can go for support monster with ''Divination'' or supercheese with ''Telepathy'', but those disciplines lack boostable witchfires (Psychic Scream while awesome on its own don't have strength value). ''Pyromancy'' is on the other end of the spectrum, with all the witchfires all the time everywhere, potentially with re-rolls to wound from fiery form, but it can't increase his survivability or close combat prowess.

Magnus is THE straight-up best Primarch for his points. The reason for this is his sheer flexibility. While you may not be able to [[Lorgar|choose your psychic powers,]] you can tailor him to different roles at the start of any game just by picking a discipline. Up against a melee Legion and need a buffer for your gunline? Divination, motherfucker. Enemy brought a Warhound/Spartan/Primarch who isn't Horus or Russ? Biomancy to fly up and smash it. Up against Admech with those 4+ armor MCs? Say hi to Pyromancy. If there were only a few psychic powers that Magnus' rules could turn into OP nastiness it'd be okay, but with Biomancy in particular, there are an absurd number of such powers. Pray to the Emprah Forgeworld nerfs him.

Just keep him away from sisters of silence... even they might struggle though. Especially since, Psyker or not, this is still a Primarch designed to tear apart anything and everything. A Culexus Assassin hiding behind a unit will also royally fuck him over.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying. With that in mind this section is all about how Magnus fares against other Primarchs mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities, with the exception of Blind, are taken into account (Blind is ignored because it is just too random and unreliable to come into play) and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. As with Lorgar, psychic powers are not accounted for, which is a slightly false choice given that if you're sending Magnus in for a Primarch duel you probably will buff him but a necessary one if this is to be doable and fair.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

*Magnus vs Angron
** Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
** Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which FNP and IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Unsurprisingly Magnus loses this one pretty badly

*Magnus vs Fulgrim
** Fulgrim (Fireblade): hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times and 1.167 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.834 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Again unsurprisingly Fulgrim wins comfortably even without taking into account Child of Terra or Mastercrafted

*Magnus vs Mortarion
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.278 at the start of next turn
** Mortarion: hits 1.667 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Magnus actually out-endures Mortarion as his negative modifier to hit balances out Mortarion's superior regen and extra wound. Not that it matters because it will take several lifetimes before either of them actually die.

*Magnus vs Ferrus Manus
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 time and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
** Ferrus: hits 1.333 times with Forgbreaker and 0.333 times with his Servo Arm, wounds 1.111 times and 0.278 respectively which after saves becomes a total of 0.695 wounds after saves which IWND will take down to 0.362 wounds at the start of next turn
** Another ridiculously long fight but Ferrus' Servo Arm and better invulnerable save just tip the fight in his favour

*Magnus vs Konrad Curze
** Konrad: hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times and 1.125 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.792 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 at the start of next turn
** Konrad wins this one without having to use his hit and run + HOW combo which turns this into a bloodbath

*Magnus vs Vulkan
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan: hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Vulkan wins because Magnus can't hurt him

*Magnus vs Lorgar
** Magnus (round 1): hits 2.222 times, wounds 1.728 times and 0.576 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.242 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times and 0.741 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.407 wounds at the start of next turn
** Lorgar: hits 2 times (Master-crafted and +1A for pistol), wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** In spite of WS6 and 5 wounds, Lorgar's save is increased to 3++ against attacks from Force Weapons, giving him a mutual kill or narrowly win if he concusses Magnus in the penultimate round.
*** '''Happy psychic fun:'''
*** Magnus with Iron Arm and Warp Speed: hits 4.667 times, wounds 3.889 times, [[FAIL|0.432 after saves]] and IWND will take down to 0.099 wounds at the start of next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog: hits 2.778 times, wounds 1.543 times, 0.772 times after saves and IWND will take down to 0.439 wounds at the start of the next turn
*** Lorgar with Precog crushes Magnus (after a long time), the rerolls to hit and wound more than makes up for Magnus' aura and boosted Toughness, and [[Shield-Captain|rerollable 3++]] completely neuters Magnus' damage. Magnus needs Iron Arm, Warp Speed ''and'' Endurance to outlast him. Or roll Precognition himself with any Bio-blessing.

*Magnus vs Perturabo
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.556 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Magnus (Blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times and 0.37 after saves which IWND takes down 0.037 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo: hits 1.333 times with both, wounds 0.889 times with his hands and 1.111 times with Forgebreaker and 0.444 and 0.556 times after saves respectively, which becomes 0.111/0.222 wounds at the start of next turn
** Perturabo (with Magnus Blinded): hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 times after saves
** Another victory for Magnus comes when Perturabo doesn't have Forgebreaker. When he does this becomes a walkover in the other direction as Magnus won't kill him before he becomes blinded and then he becomes essentially unable to hurt Perturabo

*Magnus vs Alpharius
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times and 0.833 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Alpharius: hits 1.944 times, wounds 1.512 times and 0.756 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.423 at the start of next turn
** As usual, Alpharius loses

*Magnus vs Rogal Dorn
** Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.33 times (Dorn cannot be wounded on more than 3+ thanks to his armour) and 0.67 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.44 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Dorn: hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times and 0.75 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn
** Magnus loses this one

*Magnus vs Corvus Corax
** Corax: hits 2.667 times (Scourge)/ 2 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.5 times (Shadow-walk) and once or 0.75 times respectively after saves which IWND will take down to 0.667/0.417 at the start of next turn
** Magnus: hits 2 times (Scourge)/ 1.333 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 1.667 times (Scourge)/ 1.111 times (Shadow-walk) and 1.111/0.741 times after saves which IWND will take down to 0.778/0.408 wounds at the start of next turn
** Corax's superior initiative means that if he uses Shadow-walk he can kill Magnus just before he can strike on turn 15. If he uses Scourge he loses, however. As usual Blind and Hit and Run could turn the fight more in his favour

* Magnus VS Jaghatai Khan.
**Jaghatai: hits 2.666 times, wounds 1.333 times, 0.666 wound after saves with IWND bringing this down to 0.333
**Magnus: hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 times after sames with IWND bringing this down to 0.222
**Magnus loses this one too

</div></div>

===As a Daemon Primarch===
[[File:Magnus-revealed.PNG|right|thumb|300px|Exactly as planned!]]

{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 7 || 7 || 8|| 7 || 7 || 7 || 6|| 10 || 4+R1/4++R1
|}

Rules-wise, he's a beast with 7s across the board barring strength (8) attacks (6) and ld (10). He rocks a 4++ and can re-roll ones (so yeah, throw in the grimoire of names to have a 2++ re-rollable and guy becomes unkillable when combined with the fact that he's an FMC with EW), as well as Daemon of Tzeentch, Deep Strike, VotLW, Fearless, Fleet, IWND, and the WT Lord of Flux: Enemy units within 12″ of your Warlord treat all terrain, even open ground, as difficult terrain; any enemy units that run, turbo-boost, move flat out, or charge within that radius must take dangerous terrain tests. He has what is by far the best psychic output in the game: Mastery level '''5''', AW (so he DTWs on 3+ against everyone), manifests his WCs on a 2+, has LoS to all units on the table for the purposes of using his powers, and '''''never''''' suffers Perils of the Warp. He knows every spell in the Tzeentch and Change disciplines. With the expansions brought in the new rulebook, this means Magnus can bring to the table 2 D attacks (One of which is an 18" Beam?!) per psychic phase with relative ease, all while still being able to murderize anything that he comes across, and in melee he uses a sword that uses his strength, AP2, Soulblaze, Force, and Transmogrify (a 6 to wound causes Instant death and turns the slain model into a [[Chaos Spawn|Chaos Sp... you know this stupid gaOHGODWHYBLAGRABAH]]). He's 650pts, so use him wisely.

Model-wise, he appears to take minor inspiration from his EPIC monkey form (which is a good thing.) He has multiple head options, including a cyclops head, which is incredibly fluffy as his face has been described as constantly changing. His armor appears to be to have changed from golden to silver (but it still has its nipple horns. Sexy, sexy nipple horns), and the motif of a bird skull appears everywhere. He has bird wings, and is posed on a Space Wolf Dreadnought arm. Ah, and he's so FUCKHUEG that he rivals an Imperial Knight.

====8th Edition====

{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Magnus''' || 445 || 2+ || 2+ || 8 || 7 || 18 || 7 || 10 || 3+
|}

Naturally, Magnus was some of the small slither of cheese that Chaos had access to in 7th, so GW casually nerfed him to ensure their precious space marines didn't have too hard a time (if this was hard to see, don't look at what has become of poor Ahriman). Don't let this hit fool you too much though as Magnus is still a force to be reckoned with. Gone is the all seeing eye, immunity to perils and ease of power casting. In its place we still get the best psyker (still significantly weaker than before as he has now forgotten most of his spells and how to give people the big old D). With 18 wounds, he can take more hits than a Land Raider and Bloodthirster and with 7 strength 8 attacks (*16 with his X2 S blade*), he can still bend over most things in the game with his fancy blade. His new force multiplier effects make him a more balanced command unit but unless you want him to sit at the back as a big fire magnet and hope his measly 3 powers can make up for his enormous cost over his combat hitting power, a Thousand Sons army isn't going to benefit from these too much. Apparently, Magnus has changed his devotion to Khorne judging by the obvious strategy GW have currently geared him to.

Oh, and don't let Thunder Hammer/Stormshield Terminators charge him. They obliterate him, even with Weaver of Fates up to give him a 3++R1; besides, you easily have the maneuverability to ensure they virtually never manage to pull this off.

*In all truth while his insane strength and 7 attacks are brutal, especially when adding prescience you probably want to stay away from anything with an invulnerable save higher than a 4, use him with warptime for mass hit and run and bolstering or intimidating important areas. Smite anything rocking Stormshields or other intimidating saves, and hope he rolls an overall 10, for a juicy 2d6 mortal wounds.

* Obviously Mortarion was not better enough when compared to Big Red, so GW fixed that by nerfing the cyclops (and boy did they hit him hard). No more invul rerolls, 2D6 mortal wound Smite only goes off on 12+ now, transmogrify from his blade is still not free, if you manage to even pull it off (funnily most characters hide from Magnus) all for 30 MORE points. On the plus side he allows rerolls of 1 for both him and his sons within 9" when making a psychic test, he adds his psychic phase bonus to DtW tests now, he also gets full access to 3 psychic disciplines for a total of 18 spells to chose from and he ignores any mortal wounds caused by perils on a 2+. He's less tanky than he used to be, but he is much more psychically focused than before.

====Magnus' Terrible Weakness====
Unfortunately not everything is awesome for the Daemon Prince, aside from getting his ass kicked by the Space Wolves and Grey Knights [[Angron|(though he's hardly alone in that regard)]], Magnus has a terrible weakness in the form of three completely normal humans carrying Thunder Hammers. This is all 7th edition only, but check it out anyway:

Seriously, three Inquisitors (all of which have 3's and 4's where Magnus has 7's and 8's) can kick his ass. One of them just needs to be carrying a Null Rod and Thunder Hammer, another carries the Grimoire of True Names, Empyrean Brain Mines, and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer, while the third also carries Empyrean Brain Mines and a Nemesis Daemon Hammer. All of this makes for a combination that Magnus simply cannot win against. He is incapable of ''targeting'' the unit with his sorcery; while he can and should hit the unit with Wrath of Magnus on the approach if possible, as Beams do not target, this won't help him in melee, where he is reduced to using '''Boon of Flame''' to summon support (which will not be able to charge on summon turn) and '''Boon of Mutation''', which is extremely unlikely to help in any meaningful way. If they charged him, the Psyk-Out grenades mean he's I1 for testing against the Mines; if they didn't, why didn't Magnus just get the hell out of there instead of getting into close combat with these guys? On subsequent Inquisitor turns, the bearer of the Grimoire will challenge him; Brain Mines and Challenges happen at the same time, so per the sequencing rules, the Inquisitors can choose to use the Mines second. Magnus must now take an I test on I2 (typically two tests, of course), so with odds ''at best'' 1/3 (at worst, 1/9) he can still swing - otherwise, he can't swing at all. If he ''does'' swing, it's at WS 2 (so he hits on 5s and is hit on 3s). Mathwise the three Inquisitors beat him to death in 3 rounds (another Triumvirate of the Imperium?). Even if it wasn't for dropping his Leadership down to 5 for Daemonbane tests, the second the Inquisitors Wound him he's Concussed, meaning it's even easier for them to paralyze him with the Mines and spend the second round wailing on him. If you really wanted to fuck him over then you could also ally in a Culexus Assassin, as they (simply by standing near him and not actually getting into the fistfight) combine with the Grimoire to drop his Leadership to 2, making him incredibly likely to die if a Nemesis Daemon Hammer rolls a 6 to wound. That all said, remember that Magnus ''does not'' have the Daemonic Instability special rule, so he's not going to take a bajillion extra wounds after losing combat with nerfed Leadership. You could also add to the hilarity with an Inquisitor with Rad and Psychotroke grenades (the Psychotroke grenades especially have a 1/3 chance of either reducing Magnus to I1 or LD 2 for the phase, which will make all of the other effects in the unit even worse for him).

Of course this relies on them actually getting into combat with Magnus, and so long as the player's smart (and your opponent doesn't load up his Inquisitors in something ridiculous like a Corvus Blackstar) you should be able to get around the board without having them ever get into combat with him. The Lord of Flux WT helps in this respect by messing up charges.

Funnily enough too his 30k incarnation is incredibly weak against Sisters of Battle, mainly because they can load up on combi-crossbows and two squads armed with these things will kill him in a single shooting phase while being either more annoying to kill thanks to Adamantium Will, or impossible to hurt with his Psychic powers if they're joined by a Hereticus Inquisitor carrying a Null rod (as they should be). Obviously the solution here is just to make him invisible and take them on in combat, but there's still the rare chance you won't get it (especially if you want other powers for bigger threats).

==Trivia==
*If you translate his name into Latin, you get Magnus Rubricatus, meaning, "Great Red [Man]" (or, "Big Red" if you're feeling lulzy). Also it has "rubric" in it. Sly GW strikes again!
*The god Thor had a daughter named Thrudr (Strength) and two sons, Modi (Wrath) and '''Magni''' (Mighty). They embody their's Sire's essential characteristics (much like the Primarchs vis-à-vis of the Emperor). This may well be coincidental though; albeit since it is modern B.L. Fluff that Leman (who is often compared with Odin for various obvious reasons) was the leader of the Censure army sent to capture / slay Magnus and burn Prospero, it is not entirely excluded that this piece of fluff represents an obscure and far-fetched "prophetic" and artistic rendering.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Magnus.jpg
Image:1476133187098.png|Damn, Aghoru has FUCKING bright sun!
Image:Magnus Tiddy Comic.png|''Super'' canon.
File:1544321391807.jpg|''"Look at this cookie I found"''.
</gallery>

==See Also==
*[https://youtu.be/bjBmT8y9PAU?t=6m56s A video chronicling Magnus' fall to Chaos. It is less conniving than originally imagined.]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6adES3Z0Qag Daddy (not the Emperor, Magnus) addressing his children for the visit to the pet shop.]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[Category:Chaos]]
[[Category:Thousand Sons]]

Sisters of Silence

2021-06-30T09:40:59Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* History */

[[image:Sisters of Silence art.jpg|right|250px|thumb|They're as bitchin' as they look.]]
{{Topquote|That's their function... Aside from the fact that they fight like bastards. Got the pariah gene in 'em.|[[Leman Russ]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Space Wolves]], on the Sisters of Silence}}

The '''Sisters of Silence''' are an elite all-female order created by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] to man the [[Black Ships]] and round up a planet's renegade [[psyker]]s. They, the [[Adeptus Custodes]], and the Ordo Sinister together form the '''Talons of the Emperor'''.

==History==
[[image:Sisters of silence.jpeg|right|250px|thumb|The Sisters of Silence. NOT ELDAR! It's like reverse eldar, anti psykers that have the near same outfits...]]
Near the onset of the [[Great Crusade]], the Emperor formed them as a counter-measure against untrained psykers, whose numbers had increased at the start of the [[Age of Strife]]. To do this, the Emperor ensured that they were all [[Blank|pariah]]s, human beings with no presence in the [[Warp]]; one has to wonder though whether they had to compete with the [[Officio Assassinorum]] for recruits (probably not, seeing as the Culexus Assassins are primarily males). As such, a psyker's abilities would have no effect on them, being cancelled out when they got close enough to the Sisters. In one of his stranger decisions, the Emperor explicitly had the Sisters take literal vows of silence upon becoming full Sisters. They could communicate via several sign languages (including [[Space Marines|Astartes]] battle-sign) but would not speak a word upon completion of their training. To ensure communication between other branches of the [[Imperium of Man]], Sisters-in-training would serve as communicators.

Given recent revelations about the nature of the Emperor, this [[skub|may or may not]] have been to stop them blabbing [[Neckbeard|what they saw]] under his glamours. It's revealed that what a Sister sees when she looks at a warp entity is not the same as what a regular being will see; Tannau Aleya describes Bloodthirsters for example as being disgusting, contemptible creatures but that's it, rather than as the spooky monsters the masses see. Speaking of daemons, recent fluff from the ''Horus Heresy''/''Siege Of Terra'' novels, as well as in the more current era ''Dark Imperium'' entries have really expanded on just how much the neverborn fear these ladies. Even the likes of Drach'nyen and Ku'Gath (among others), excessively powerful greater daemons both, have outright stated that to be struck down by one of the Sisters will result not in merely getting banished back to the warp, but in a ''true death''.

The Sisters of Silence are also consummate warriors. Actually, that's something of an understatement; don't make the mistake of assuming they're comparable to the Sisters of Battle, who occupy a space somewhere between Guardsman and Astartes. They are not. It's not hyperbole to say that even the most elite of the Sisters of Battle are completely eclipsed by just an "average" Null Maiden. The Sisters of Silence operate alongside The Custodes, and what's more, are able to ''keep up with them'', which probably says more about their prowess than anything else could. The Silent Sisterhood are trained to at least the same levels as the old Space Marine Legions and are more than capable of taking down enemy astartes on their own. Recent fluff even depicted a SoS contingent engaging a larger contingent of goddamned [[Minotaurs]] and '''[[Awesome|WINNING]]'''; though to be fair, in all honesty, the Sisters would likely have suffered significant casualties had the Custodes not then intervened on their side, bringing the engagement to an immediate and definitive conclusion.

Using similar wargear to the Space Marines, such as [[bolter]]s and [[power weapon]]s, they are typically clad in SoB-like power armour, but made of golden Auramite (basically the 40k equivalent of Beskar), a distinction which they share with only The Custodes; theirs typically lacks an armored helmet or other head protection aside from the bevor that hides their mouths, which leads to a lot of deaths from headshots during the burning of [[Prospero]]. As a military force, they are formidable; during the Burning of Prospero, they were deployed to augment the [[Space Wolves]] and the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. While this was more because the pariah gene would neutralize the [[Thousand Sons]]' psyker abilities, they were more than capable of fighting against the Astartes. They would also in turn augment the Custodes, the [[Imperial Fists]], the [[Blood Angels]], and the [[White Scars]] during the [[Siege of Terra]], where the pariah gene became a boon fighting the [[Daemon]]s unleashed by the traitors.

===After the Horus Heresy===
For the longest time, the fate of the Sisters of Silence following the [[Horus Heresy]] had been an object of much speculation in the fandom. It is only recently that what they've been doing has been brought to light, and while some of the theories have been surprisingly spot on (that many Sisters were absorbed into the Inquisition to man their Black Ships), others... didn't quite hit the mark. Thanks to their own mini-codex, as well as the [[War of the Beast]] series and ''Watchers of the Throne'' and ''Dark Imperium'', a somewhat clearer picture of ''what'' happened to the Sisters can be reconstructed.

It turns out that the Sisters were never "officially" disbanded by the [[Administratum]]. However in the wake of the Emperor's internment within the Golden Throne, the surviving Sisters suddenly found themselves without direct support from the Imperial Bureaucracy. This made a lot of the surviving Sisters bitter obviously, but a number of them shrugged, and decided to continue with their Emperor-given mandate anyway... just with less resources than they're used to. In all honesty this is downright unbelievable beyond 40K’s standards. This is the Emperor’s personal witch-hunters and responsible for collecting the Imperium’s psykers as well as part of his revered talons. It’s just as ridiculous and downright IMPOSSIBLE for them to be cut off as it is the freaking CUSTODES. Just ignore this as it is...well it’s genuinely impossible (but perhaps them being the blanks - the creatures who's presence is extremely uncomfortable - is the big factor of it).

As previously mentioned, some Sisters were absorbed into the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] to crew its [[Black Ships]], or served as retinues to important [[Inquisitor]] Lords. Many others, however dispersed, back into the general populace, settling down to have normal lives, and in doing so passed down the Pariah gene down to their descendants. Lastly, some quietly found secret Convents in out-of-way worlds, far from view of the average Imperial citizen. It is one of these Convents that [[Slaughter Koorland]] approached and convinced to aid the Imperium in the [[War of the Beast]].

By M32, the Sisters of Silence refused to recognize the Imperium in its political form, seeing it as a corrupted simulacrum of what the Emperor actually intended, but they still acknowledge the Emperor as the focus of their loyalty. Thus, when their services are required again, they accept the calling and return to Terra, where they are granted an audience with the Emperor in his sanctum, a privilege that not even the High Lords are afforded. [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Just how exactly that would've worked is a mystery, given how the Emperor can presumably only communicate psychically at this point, which probably wouldn't work at all on a group of nulls.]] Of course, blanks/nulls/whatever have been overpowered by strong psykers before, so it wouldn’t take the Emperor any real effort. Or he sent Astropaths to deliver messages via secretaries or something.

Although that particular Convent was wiped out slaying the Beast, many more survived through the millennia, and by the end of the 41st Millennium, the number of Sisters had swelled into the tens of thousands. And it was just as well too, as the Imperium would need their aid really REALLY soon.

===Returning to the Fray: The Rise of the Primarch===
[[image:Sister-of-silence.jpg|right|250px|thumb|You, Psyker. Yeah You. Fuck You.]]

Shortly after the reappearance of [[Magnus the Red]] during the [[Fenris]] campaign, the High Lords of Terra issued a writ that would summon the Sisterhood back to Terra, where they would be used once again. It transpired that [[Trajann Valoris]], Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] had pre-empted this decree and had quietly been collecting disparate Sisters to Terra in advance, knowing that the time may come when they were needed again; the knee-jerk response of the High Lords to Terra simply rendered it legal.

Some of the exiled Sisters resented this greatly, having been ignored for millennia. In the novel ''Watchers of the Throne'', one particular sister, the previously mentinoed Tannau Aleya, spends most of the book (quietly) raging about how her convent was left without support for so long, especially how the Custodes seemed to be "pampered" by comparison, despite being stuck on Terra for nearly ten millennia. Aleya also "talks" a fair bit about the mentality of the Silent Sisters, stating that the Sisters ironically crave human fellowship, as it temporarily fills the void they feel inside due to their nature as blanks. This also leads to extremely strong bonds between the Sisters described as a fierce almost desperate love, due to sharing such a unique bond and having been reviled and hated by most of the people they'd ever come across. The sisters also seem to grow close to the Custodes they fought with during the Great Crusade, to the extent Custodes could tell what a sister was trying to convey without her even having to sign it to him, something that later made one sister immediately realize Drach'nyen was impersonating a Custodes. If Valerian and Aleya are any indication this bond between Custodes and Sisters is likely to reemerge in the 41st millennium. They also never entirely get used to the reaction they cause in others, with every twitch and every appalled expression twisting the knife every time they see that reaction.

Overall they come across as rather tragic, as they spend their lives protecting a species that can't even stand to be in the same room as them, and hates them without even being able to articulate why.

The Sisters' first "official" action was to deploy with the Custodes on Luna to save a recently resurrected Lord Guilliman from being used by Magnus to mop the floor, and they later helped fight back against a [[Khorne]] daemon invasion of Terra directly. When Guilliman returned from his audience with the Emperor, he dissolved the standing order that restricted the Custodians to Terra, and he ordered the Sisterhood to coordinate with them and join the front lines.

Still, no matter how hurt or angry they are, they still answered the call to defend humanity from Chaos again.

==Emperor Worship==

By the 41st Millennium it turns out that some Sisters had converted to the worship of the Emperor, even describing the Emperor as "holy" right in front of Lord Commander [[Roboute Guilliman]], while considering the Primarch to be his divine messenger and demigod son. Though this is not entirely new information, as even during the Horus Heresy, there were some Sisters who had already started to consider the Emperor as a god, and were willing to break their vows of tranquility. Some had even "read the book" ''(the Lectitio Divinitatus)'' according to [[Knights-Errant|Kyril Sinderman]], and allowed the faithful to escape custody from the Somnus Citadel on Luna so that they could continue to spread the word.

Since most of ''Dark Imperium'' was about Guilliman trying to come to terms with what humanity had become since the Heresy, it was all Guilliman could do to not [[Blam|eat his own bolter]] then and there. However, giving the appearance of converting to the faith is the easiest way to integrate themselves with the Imperium without getting grief from the other branches. This is definitely true for at least one convent; Aleya's was said to have had "sham" shrines and it's implied that those Sisters feigned their faith to avoid being persecuted as heretics. There is also a difference between those sisters that manned the [[Black Ships]] versus those that were outside of the Imperium's control, with those that were aboard the black ships having closer ties and a lot more loyalty towards the [[High Lords of Terra|Imperium's leadership]], to the extent that Aleya didn't trust them to do what was needed without waiting for permission. It's possible the Emperor-worshiping Sisters are those that were recruited and controlled by the Imperium for the black ships, while those outside of Imperial control and influence managed to keep their old ways.

==Notable Sisters==
* '''Jenetia Krole:''' AKA the "Soulless Queen of the Imperium" was the Knight Commander of the Sisters of silence and the single most terrifying woman in the entire human race. No, Really. (NOT confirmed to be a redhead.) She could be placed in a staring contest with an entire Convent of [[Sisters of Battle]], [[Inquisitor Greyfax]], A warband of [[Night Lords]] and a FUCKING Dark Eldar [[Haemonculus]] and she would stare them all down until they ran away with their tails between their legs. Her Pariah aura was so strong and distracting she caused members of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] to avert their eyes because it pained them to look at Her. To most beings, her anti-soul aura was so strong that they simply couldn't see her. When Big E needed the [[Thousand Sons]] "disciplined" she challenged the legions most powerful sorcerers to duels and Killed them, and then she Killed a Daemon just for good measure. She then fought in the Webway and survived the retreat to the Imperial Palace losing 3 fingers on the way, not really seeming to care about her lost digits. She used a Zwei-hander sword dubbed "Veracity" that was used by [[The Emperor]] during the unification wars, so yeah, that's cool too. She finally dies while fighting [[Khârn]] during the Siege of Terra, right after she took out a fuckton of named World Eaters.

*'''Amendera Kendel''' - A former Sister of Silence turned ''[[Knights-Errant|Agentia Tercius]]'' to Malcador. She is still a Pariah of course, but she gave up her vow of silence to become one of the first members of Malcador's [[Inquisition|band of merry travellers]]. She is quite possibly the first "True" Inquisitor, by virtue of her background as a Witch-Hunter and the later development of her character which shows her radically using the authority granted to her by the Sigillite to get shit done: Co-opting Space Marines from the survivors of the ''Eisenstein'' into her retinue, and later ordering a battle-barge to enact ''[[Exterminatus]]'' on a planet turned renegade, despite the fact that <u>no-one</u> other than a Primarch or the Emperor himself had ever ordered such an act before her.

* '''Tannau Aleya:''' One of the (previously mentioned) POV characters for ''Watchers of the Throne''. A Sister from the convent located on Araissa, she becomes its sole survivor when it is attacked by the [[Black Legion]] while she was away hunting down cultists on another world. Hot-headed and very opinionated, Aleya spends most of the book bitter at the Imperium for ignoring the Sisters for so long, and infuriated that [[Shield-Captain]] Valerian (the ''other'' POV character of the book) seems impossible to goad into anger, but takes her duties as a Sister very seriously, and was willing to lay down her life at even a chance to cave in some Black Legion heads. Started out using a heavy flamer to do her work, before turning it in for a greatsword once she got picked up by Navradaan on the way to Terra. She is also an absolute badass, winning a firefight that was 5-1 and taking on a Chaos Marine in close quarters alone and WINNING, then removing his helmet and spitting in his face for killing her sisters. The updated rules for the Talons of The Emperor make her not just in fluff but also in-game a battle couple with Valerian, another proof tsunderism and animu is slowly infecting 40k's updated setting.

==Mini-Codex and Moving Forward==

A common rumor is that they will be added into some upcoming [[Sisters of Battle]] relaunch. If so, that would be an interesting revision; on the one hand, the Sisters of Battle, despite being designated witch-hunters, are lacking in the anti-psyker department. On the other hand, the Sisters of Silence, much like the Space Marines, are big believers in the Great Crusade era of the Imperium, and likely won't mesh well with the [[Ecclesiarchy]]. On the other hand, Dark Imperium implies they fully converted to the Imperial Cult over time so their ideology would likely mesh together well. So, in conclusion, the most probable thing that GW can do with the SoS is to say that the Adepta Sororitas in its current form can trace its origins to the M36 '''Daughters of the Emperor''' as well as offshoots of the original [[Sisters of Silence]] and find some way to reconcile them both.

As of 2018, any news on them has been slow and via the Horus Heresy Team at Forge World. They stated that there would at least be some 8th edition rules for Talons (which includes Grey Knights apparently) coming eventually while they're not working on all these other Horus Heresy, Titanicus, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl projects. So far nothing on Sisters but Custodians at least got a handful of new kit.

Why they weren't simply added to the Custodes codex, only GW knows.

As of 2020, during Nurgle's Pandemic, it's been all but confirmed by GW that Sisters of Silence and Custodes will be merged together in the second-to-last chapter of the Psychic Awakening, "War of the Spider", as the Talons of the Emperor. Coupled with the new Black Library models that feature a Shield Captain and SoS in a single unit with that as a faction keyword, there is a lot of evidence that supports this.

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Talons_of_the_Emperor_(30k)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) Horus Heresy Tactics]]
*[[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Talons of the Emperor (9E)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) 40k Tactics]]

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
SoS vs. TS Dred.jpg|Being in a Dreadnought does not make you safe from these chicks.
SoS vs. EC Noise Marines.jpg|Even ''these'' bastards are having a hard time dealing with them.
Sister_of_silence_by_n924.jpg|As scary as they are, they can still be the cutest sweethearts of the Emprah.
Jenetia Krole.jpg|Jenetia Krole, She's not staring into your soul, she's staring through it.
</gallery>
</center>

{{Template:Sisters-of-Silence}}

{{Imperium}}

Signus Campaign

2021-06-27T19:56:35Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The Battle of Signus Prime */

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Signus Cluster Campaign
|image=
|attacker= [[Blood Angels]]
|defender= Chaos
|commander1= [[Primarch]] [[Sanguinius]]
|commander2= Kyriss the Perverse, [[Ka'bandha|Ka'Bandha]], Bloodthirster of [[Khorne]]
|date=005-006.M31
|scale=Intrasolar, planetary
|theatre=The Signus Cluster
|strength1= ~120,000 Blood Angels, Imperial fleet, Space Wolves contingent, Custodes detachment, Mechanicum allies
|strength2= Uncounted daemons and human cultists
|casualties1= Between Mild to Moderate losses among Blood Angels but awoke their dormant Red Thirst. Severe losses among mortal auxiliaries and support elements. All Space Wolves KIA.
|casualties2= All daemons slain or banished to the Warp. All mortal combatants killed. Erebus' face.
|status= Blood Angels victory
|outcome= The Blood Angels win, though at cost. The Red Thirst becomes active in all Blood Angels. The forces of Chaos were denied their stronghold, the whole of the Signus Cluster is scoured, declared ''mortis perdita'', and left to rot for eternity. The Blood Angels seal all records away to be eternally guarded by Crimson Paladins.
}}

The Signus Cluster campaign was the IX Legion's first taste of the galaxy-spanning clusterfuck formally known as the [[Horus Heresy]]. Hilariously, it is also a prime example of Chaos getting in its own way, as nobody on Team Horus could agree on whether they were trying to corrupt Sanguinius or just kill him, and wound up doing neither.

==The Background==

With his big rebellion against the Emperor getting underway, [[Horus]] wanted to take Sanguinius off the board permanently, knowing that he was both one of the Imperium's greatest assets and a potential rival should he be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Unfortunately, no one else on Team Horus could agree on a course of action. The Warmaster wanted his brother dead, but [[Erebus]] and the Chaos gods wanted to bag another primarch for their side. The only thing any of them could agree on was that they wanted the Blood Angels to give in to their innate bloodthirst and fall to Chaos. To this end, Horus decided to lure the Blood Angels to the Signus Cluster, a recently settled system out on the ass-end of the [[Imperium]], with a calculated lie. Years earlier, while the two primarchs were on campaign together against some xenos, Horus had accidentally witnessed Sanguinius mercy-killing one of his sons who had fallen victim to the [[Red Thirst]]. After getting over his initial bout of "WTF did I just see?", Horus had promised to help his brother find a cure.

Remembering all this, Horus sent some [[Word Bearers]] and an astropath to tell Sanguinius that the same dickwad xenos they'd fought together previously had invaded the Cluster. He also mentioned that said dickwads might have some technology that could help with the Blood Angels' little "problem". Sanguinius promptly rounded up the entire IX Legion and took off for Signus, though not before a Space Wolves pack turned up and attached themselves to the fleet because of [[Burning of Prospero|certain events]] that had recently occurred. Unbeknownst to them, Chaos was turning Signus into an immense booby trap for the IX Legion. Led by a Davinite priest, the Warmaster's troops began summoning daemons and transforming the entire cluster into a screaming hellhole with all kinds of horrors lying in wait for the unsuspecting Blood Angels.

==The Opening Stages==

When the Blood Angels’ fleet arrived in Signus, a bizarre veil descended over the Cluster, cutting them off from outside contact. Puzzled, they set off to find out what the hell was going on. Every world they scanned had been scoured of life. Dozens of ships drifted in the vacuum, unresponsive to hails. When the Blood Angels boarded these hulks, they discovered that the crews and passengers had all been reduced to boneless sacks of skin. The first planet they investigated exploded into Chaos runes when they got too close. The second planet turned out to be overrun with giant trash golems that nearly wiped out the squad sent to investigate it, and then started flinging chunks of itself at the legion’s fleet. Sanguinius, who was becoming increasingly irritated by all this unmanly warp fuckery, had his fleet drop an [[Exterminatus]] on that world. They stopped at the next planet, an agri-world called Scoltrum, long enough to look for survivors. They found that the planet was overrun with daemons (which they thought were some kind of aberrant xenos) but were able to recover a few survivors including a lady named Tillyan Niobe, who was a [[blank]], unknown to her. While all this was going on, the Word Bearers had sacrificed their astropath to summon Ka’Bandha the Bloodthirster, whom Horus tasked with killing Sanguinius.

Meanwhile, the non-Astartes in the fleet were going increasingly nutty thanks to all the Chaos bullshit going on around them, and the legion's ex-Librarians were suffering from really intense psychic visions of a screaming angel drenched in blood. When they got close enough to Signus Prime, things went to hell in very short order. Something unleashed a psychic shriek that staggered even the Space Marines and caused every mortal in the fleet to completely lose whatever was left of their shit and start killing themselves and everyone else. A [[Keeper of Secrets]] named Kyriss the Perverse used the frames of some broken servitors to manifest on the bridge of ''Red Tear'', Sanguinius' flagship, and start mocking him, and then a horde of Chaos-corrupted ships popped out of a nearby asteroid belt and began engaging the Blood Angels. This ended with the fleet admiral snapping, murdering her entire bridge crew, and setting the flagship to crash into Signus Prime. All the rest of the Blood Angels on board wanted to GTFO, but Sanguinius ordered them to hold fast and rode his ship down like a boss until it plowed into the corrupted soil of Signus.

==The Battle of Signus Prime==

After their abrupt landing on Signus Prime, the Blood Angels started securing their position on the planet. In short order, they found out where all the hundreds of thousands of missing bones had gone: the daemons had used them to build a gigantic palace known as the Cathedral of the Mark. Sanguinius ordered his sons to tool up and prepare for some ass-kicking. As the legion stormed the Cathedral, they were met with wave after wave of human cultists and lesser daemons led by Ka'Bandha, who taunted Sanguinius by telling him that Horus had betrayed him and that he planned to turn him and his entire legion to the service of the Blood God. Sanguinius responded by kicking Ka'Bandha's ass up and down the battlefield until the daemon got in a lucky shot with his whip that crushed the primarch’s legs. Ka’Bandha then unleashed a psychic mindfucking weapon called the Ragefire that instantly killed five hundred Blood Angels. The psychic backlash sent Sanguinius into a coma and triggered the onset of the Red Thirst in every single Blood Angel still standing. This was precisely the wrong move to make and it resulted in a massive case of [[not as planned]] for Team Chaos, who realized to their horror that they'd bitten off far more than they could chew; a horror that only increased as the Blood Angels became so colossally, jaw-droppingly, batshit [[Rage|ANGRY]] that they proceeded to [[rip and tear]] through literally everything in their way, and even some things not in their way at all, but instead off to the side, as was the case with the poor Space Wolf tagalongs who had the misfortune to run afoul of the future first [[Nassir Amit|chapter master]] of the [[Flesh Tearers]] and his 5th Company. An interesting aside to note here is that though they clearly seem to have lost their capacity (or perhaps just their patience) for higher levels of thought while fully immersed in the Red Thirst, the Blood Angels did not devolve into a dumb, aimless, fuckangry moshpit such as happens to the [[World Eaters]] once the latter is lost to the Butcher's Nails, and perhaps as had been expected by Team Chaos.

First Captain Raldoron and Apothecary [[Meros]] gathered a small team of Blood Angels who'd maintained control of their faculties, grabbed Niobe the blank, and attacked the Cathedral hoping to use her anti-psyker aura to shield themselves from the Ragefire's effects, while several of the legion's former Librarians chucked the Edict of Nikaea out the window and used their psychic abilities to snap their primarch out of his coma. Sanguinius immediately grabbed his sword, took off for the Cathedral, and kicked in the windows just as the Blood Angels assault team arrived. He proceeded to break open a massive can of whoop-ass on Ka'Bandha and Kyriss. Pinning the Slaaneshi daemon to a wall with his sword, he beat the shit out of Ka’Bandha, then tore off one of the Bloodthirster's wings and tossed him into a warp portal, though not before dropping one of the most kickass one-liners in all of Warhammer canon. Before he could finish the job, Kyriss offered him a deal: if Sanguinius were to take the Ragefire into himself and become a servant of Chaos, then the Blood Angels would be cured of the Red Thirst for good. Sanguinius was all set to do it, but Meros refused to let his gene-father make such a sacrifice. Instead, he jumped into the Ragefire after extracting his own gene-seed, becoming a daemonhost known as the Red Angel. Kyriss promptly had a bitchfit about how this was all Not As Planned, whereupon an annoyed Sanguinius shut him/her/it/that up with a quick head-chop.

==Outcome==

The IX Legion had won the Signus campaign, but it wasn't a clean victory. Hundreds of Blood Angels had been killed in the battle, the legion’s fleet had lost a lot of its mortal crews and several of its best ships were heavily damaged, and what's more, the 5th Company had to live with the shame of knowing that they'd murdered some of their fellow loyal brother legionaries in their Thirst-induced rage. Sanguinius was so disgusted by the whole thing that he had his Astartes clean up every last trace of their presence in the system down to the bolter shells, then parked some warning beacons around the Cluster and ordered his fleet to set course for Terra to answer the summons of [[Rogal Dorn]]. They wound up getting lost in a huge warp storm, bigger than anything they had ever seen before. Eventually, their Navigators spied some kind of psychic beacon and made a beeline for it, and thus they stumbled upon [[Imperium Secundus]]...

The loss at Signus was the first major setback of the Heresy for the Traitors. Sanguinius and the IX Legion had been hurt, but they remained uncorrupted and would continue to fight for the Imperium. Horus was pissed, Erebus was pissed, the Chaos gods were pissed, and Ka’Bandha was supremely butthurt about the whole thing; a butthurt that would last forever more. Erebus made the mistake of going to Horus’ flagship and throwing a tantrum at the Warmaster about how he'd fucked up the Chaos gods' plan. Horus reacted about as calmly as a Chaos-corrupted primarch could be expected to: he skinned the douchebag's big, stupid face off with a fuckmothering ATHAME and reminded Erebus that ''he'' was in charge of the Heresy, not some bitch-ass warp gribblies.

{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Signus Campaign

2021-06-27T19:55:56Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The Battle of Signus Prime */

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Signus Cluster Campaign
|image=
|attacker= [[Blood Angels]]
|defender= Chaos
|commander1= [[Primarch]] [[Sanguinius]]
|commander2= Kyriss the Perverse, [[Ka'bandha|Ka'Bandha]], Bloodthirster of [[Khorne]]
|date=005-006.M31
|scale=Intrasolar, planetary
|theatre=The Signus Cluster
|strength1= ~120,000 Blood Angels, Imperial fleet, Space Wolves contingent, Custodes detachment, Mechanicum allies
|strength2= Uncounted daemons and human cultists
|casualties1= Between Mild to Moderate losses among Blood Angels but awoke their dormant Red Thirst. Severe losses among mortal auxiliaries and support elements. All Space Wolves KIA.
|casualties2= All daemons slain or banished to the Warp. All mortal combatants killed. Erebus' face.
|status= Blood Angels victory
|outcome= The Blood Angels win, though at cost. The Red Thirst becomes active in all Blood Angels. The forces of Chaos were denied their stronghold, the whole of the Signus Cluster is scoured, declared ''mortis perdita'', and left to rot for eternity. The Blood Angels seal all records away to be eternally guarded by Crimson Paladins.
}}

The Signus Cluster campaign was the IX Legion's first taste of the galaxy-spanning clusterfuck formally known as the [[Horus Heresy]]. Hilariously, it is also a prime example of Chaos getting in its own way, as nobody on Team Horus could agree on whether they were trying to corrupt Sanguinius or just kill him, and wound up doing neither.

==The Background==

With his big rebellion against the Emperor getting underway, [[Horus]] wanted to take Sanguinius off the board permanently, knowing that he was both one of the Imperium's greatest assets and a potential rival should he be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Unfortunately, no one else on Team Horus could agree on a course of action. The Warmaster wanted his brother dead, but [[Erebus]] and the Chaos gods wanted to bag another primarch for their side. The only thing any of them could agree on was that they wanted the Blood Angels to give in to their innate bloodthirst and fall to Chaos. To this end, Horus decided to lure the Blood Angels to the Signus Cluster, a recently settled system out on the ass-end of the [[Imperium]], with a calculated lie. Years earlier, while the two primarchs were on campaign together against some xenos, Horus had accidentally witnessed Sanguinius mercy-killing one of his sons who had fallen victim to the [[Red Thirst]]. After getting over his initial bout of "WTF did I just see?", Horus had promised to help his brother find a cure.

Remembering all this, Horus sent some [[Word Bearers]] and an astropath to tell Sanguinius that the same dickwad xenos they'd fought together previously had invaded the Cluster. He also mentioned that said dickwads might have some technology that could help with the Blood Angels' little "problem". Sanguinius promptly rounded up the entire IX Legion and took off for Signus, though not before a Space Wolves pack turned up and attached themselves to the fleet because of [[Burning of Prospero|certain events]] that had recently occurred. Unbeknownst to them, Chaos was turning Signus into an immense booby trap for the IX Legion. Led by a Davinite priest, the Warmaster's troops began summoning daemons and transforming the entire cluster into a screaming hellhole with all kinds of horrors lying in wait for the unsuspecting Blood Angels.

==The Opening Stages==

When the Blood Angels’ fleet arrived in Signus, a bizarre veil descended over the Cluster, cutting them off from outside contact. Puzzled, they set off to find out what the hell was going on. Every world they scanned had been scoured of life. Dozens of ships drifted in the vacuum, unresponsive to hails. When the Blood Angels boarded these hulks, they discovered that the crews and passengers had all been reduced to boneless sacks of skin. The first planet they investigated exploded into Chaos runes when they got too close. The second planet turned out to be overrun with giant trash golems that nearly wiped out the squad sent to investigate it, and then started flinging chunks of itself at the legion’s fleet. Sanguinius, who was becoming increasingly irritated by all this unmanly warp fuckery, had his fleet drop an [[Exterminatus]] on that world. They stopped at the next planet, an agri-world called Scoltrum, long enough to look for survivors. They found that the planet was overrun with daemons (which they thought were some kind of aberrant xenos) but were able to recover a few survivors including a lady named Tillyan Niobe, who was a [[blank]], unknown to her. While all this was going on, the Word Bearers had sacrificed their astropath to summon Ka’Bandha the Bloodthirster, whom Horus tasked with killing Sanguinius.

Meanwhile, the non-Astartes in the fleet were going increasingly nutty thanks to all the Chaos bullshit going on around them, and the legion's ex-Librarians were suffering from really intense psychic visions of a screaming angel drenched in blood. When they got close enough to Signus Prime, things went to hell in very short order. Something unleashed a psychic shriek that staggered even the Space Marines and caused every mortal in the fleet to completely lose whatever was left of their shit and start killing themselves and everyone else. A [[Keeper of Secrets]] named Kyriss the Perverse used the frames of some broken servitors to manifest on the bridge of ''Red Tear'', Sanguinius' flagship, and start mocking him, and then a horde of Chaos-corrupted ships popped out of a nearby asteroid belt and began engaging the Blood Angels. This ended with the fleet admiral snapping, murdering her entire bridge crew, and setting the flagship to crash into Signus Prime. All the rest of the Blood Angels on board wanted to GTFO, but Sanguinius ordered them to hold fast and rode his ship down like a boss until it plowed into the corrupted soil of Signus.

==The Battle of Signus Prime==

After their abrupt landing on Signus Prime, the Blood Angels started securing their position on the planet. In short order, they found out where all the hundreds of thousands of missing bones had gone: the daemons had used them to build a gigantic palace known as the Cathedral of the Mark. Sanguinius ordered his sons to tool up and prepare for some ass-kicking. As the legion stormed the Cathedral, they were met with wave after wave of human cultists and lesser daemons led by Ka'Bandha, who taunted Sanguinius by telling him that Horus had betrayed him and that he planned to turn him and his entire legion to the service of the Blood God. Sanguinius responded by kicking Ka'Bandha's ass up and down the battlefield until the daemon got in a lucky shot with his whip that crushed the primarch’s legs. Ka’Bandha then unleashed a psychic mindfucking weapon called the Ragefire that instantly killed five hundred Blood Angels. The psychic backlash sent Sanguinius into a coma and triggered the onset of the Red Thirst in every single Blood Angel still standing. This was precisely the wrong move to make and it resulted in a massive case of [[not as planned]] for Team Chaos, who realized to their horror that they'd bitten off far more than they could chew; a horror that only increased as the Blood Angels became so colossally, jaw-droppingly, batshit [[Rage|ANGRY]] that they proceeded to [[rip and tear]] through literally everything in their way, and even some things not in their way at all, but instead off to the side, as was the case with the poor Space Wolf tagalongs who had the misfortune to run afoul of the future first [[Nassir Amit|chapter master]] of the [[Flesh Tearers]] and his 5th Company. An interesting aside to note here is that though they clearly seem to have lost their capacity (or perhaps just their patience) for higher levels of thought while fully immersed in the Red Thirst, the Blood Angels did not devolve into a dumb, aimless, fuckangry moshpit such as happens to the [[World Eaters]] once the latter is lost to the Butcher's Nails, and perhaps as had been expected by Team Chaos.

First Captain Raldoron and Apothecary [[Meros]] gathered a small team of Blood Angels who'd maintained control of their faculties, grabbed Niobe the blank, and attacked the Cathedral hoping to use her anti-psyker aura to shield themselves from the Ragefire's effects, while several of the legion's former Librarians chucked the Edict of Nikaea out the window and used their psychic abilities to snap their primarch out of his coma. Sanguinius immediately grabbed his sword, took off for the Cathedral, and kicked in the windows just as the Blood Angels assault team arrived. He proceeded to break open a massive can of whoop-ass on Ka'Bandha and Kyriss. Pinning the Slaaneshi daemon to a wall with his sword, he beat the shit out of Ka’Bandha, then tore off one of the Bloodthirster's wings and tossed him into a warp portal, though not before dropping one of the most kickass one-liners in all of Warhammer canon. Before he could finish the job, Kyriss offered him a deal: if Sanguinius were to take the Ragefire into himself and become a servant of Chaos, then the Blood Angels would be cured of the Red Thirst for good. Sanguinius was all set to do it, but Meros refused to let his gene-father make such a sacrifice. Instead, he jumped into the Ragefire after extracting his own gene-seed, becoming a daemonhost known as the Red Angel. Kyriss promptly had a bitchfit about how this was all Not As Planned, whereupon an annoyed Sanguinius shut him/her/it up with a quick head-chop.

==Outcome==

The IX Legion had won the Signus campaign, but it wasn't a clean victory. Hundreds of Blood Angels had been killed in the battle, the legion’s fleet had lost a lot of its mortal crews and several of its best ships were heavily damaged, and what's more, the 5th Company had to live with the shame of knowing that they'd murdered some of their fellow loyal brother legionaries in their Thirst-induced rage. Sanguinius was so disgusted by the whole thing that he had his Astartes clean up every last trace of their presence in the system down to the bolter shells, then parked some warning beacons around the Cluster and ordered his fleet to set course for Terra to answer the summons of [[Rogal Dorn]]. They wound up getting lost in a huge warp storm, bigger than anything they had ever seen before. Eventually, their Navigators spied some kind of psychic beacon and made a beeline for it, and thus they stumbled upon [[Imperium Secundus]]...

The loss at Signus was the first major setback of the Heresy for the Traitors. Sanguinius and the IX Legion had been hurt, but they remained uncorrupted and would continue to fight for the Imperium. Horus was pissed, Erebus was pissed, the Chaos gods were pissed, and Ka’Bandha was supremely butthurt about the whole thing; a butthurt that would last forever more. Erebus made the mistake of going to Horus’ flagship and throwing a tantrum at the Warmaster about how he'd fucked up the Chaos gods' plan. Horus reacted about as calmly as a Chaos-corrupted primarch could be expected to: he skinned the douchebag's big, stupid face off with a fuckmothering ATHAME and reminded Erebus that ''he'' was in charge of the Heresy, not some bitch-ass warp gribblies.

{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Signus Campaign

2021-06-27T05:42:05Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB:

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Signus Cluster Campaign
|image=
|attacker= [[Blood Angels]]
|defender= Chaos
|commander1= [[Primarch]] [[Sanguinius]]
|commander2= Kyriss the Perverse, [[Ka'bandha|Ka'Bandha]], Bloodthirster of [[Khorne]]
|date=005-006.M31
|scale=Intrasolar, planetary
|theatre=The Signus Cluster
|strength1= ~120,000 Blood Angels, Imperial fleet, Space Wolves contingent, Custodes detachment, Mechanicum allies
|strength2= Uncounted daemons and human cultists
|casualties1= Between Mild to Moderate losses among Blood Angels but awoke their dormant Red Thirst. Severe losses among mortal auxiliaries and support elements. All Space Wolves KIA.
|casualties2= All daemons slain or banished to the Warp. All mortal combatants killed. Erebus' face.
|status= Blood Angels victory
|outcome= The Blood Angels win, though at cost. The Red Thirst becomes active in all Blood Angels. The Signus Cluster is scoured, declared ''mortis perdita'', and left to rot for eternity. The Blood Angels seal all records away to be eternally guarded by Crimson Paladins.
}}

The Signus Cluster campaign was the IX Legion's first taste of the galaxy-spanning clusterfuck formally known as the [[Horus Heresy]]. Hilariously, it is also a prime example of Chaos getting in its own way, as nobody on Team Horus could agree on whether they were trying to corrupt Sanguinius or just kill him, and wound up doing neither.

==The Background==

With his big rebellion against the Emperor getting underway, [[Horus]] wanted to take Sanguinius off the board permanently, knowing that he was both one of the Imperium's greatest assets and a potential rival should he be corrupted by the Ruinous Powers. Unfortunately, no one else on Team Horus could agree on a course of action. The Warmaster wanted his brother dead, but [[Erebus]] and the Chaos gods wanted to bag another primarch for their side. The only thing any of them could agree on was that they wanted the Blood Angels to give in to their innate bloodthirst and fall to Chaos. To this end, Horus decided to lure the Blood Angels to the Signus Cluster, a recently settled system out on the ass-end of the [[Imperium]], with a calculated lie. Years earlier, while the two primarchs were on campaign together against some xenos, Horus had accidentally witnessed Sanguinius mercy-killing one of his sons who had fallen victim to the [[Red Thirst]]. After getting over his initial bout of "WTF did I just see?", Horus had promised to help his brother find a cure.

Remembering all this, Horus sent some [[Word Bearers]] and an astropath to tell Sanguinius that the same dickwad xenos they'd fought together previously had invaded the Cluster. He also mentioned that said dickwads might have some technology that could help with the Blood Angels' little "problem". Sanguinius promptly rounded up the entire IX Legion and took off for Signus, though not before a Space Wolves pack turned up and attached themselves to the fleet because of [[Burning of Prospero|certain events]] that had recently occurred. Unbeknownst to them, Chaos was turning Signus into an immense booby trap for the IX Legion. Led by a Davinite priest, the Warmaster's troops began summoning daemons and transforming the entire cluster into a screaming hellhole with all kinds of horrors lying in wait for the unsuspecting Blood Angels.

==The Opening Stages==

When the Blood Angels’ fleet arrived in Signus, a bizarre veil descended over the Cluster, cutting them off from outside contact. Puzzled, they set off to find out what the hell was going on. Every world they scanned had been scoured of life. Dozens of ships drifted in the vacuum, unresponsive to hails. When the Blood Angels boarded these hulks, they discovered that the crews and passengers had all been reduced to boneless sacks of skin. The first planet they investigated exploded into Chaos runes when they got too close. The second planet turned out to be overrun with giant trash golems that nearly wiped out the squad sent to investigate it, and then started flinging chunks of itself at the legion’s fleet. Sanguinius, who was becoming increasingly irritated by all this unmanly warp fuckery, had his fleet drop an [[Exterminatus]] on that world. They stopped at the next planet, an agri-world called Scoltrum, long enough to look for survivors. They found that the planet was overrun with daemons (which they thought were some kind of aberrant xenos) but were able to recover a few survivors including a lady named Tillyan Niobe, who was a [[blank]], unknown to her. While all this was going on, the Word Bearers had sacrificed their astropath to summon Ka’Bandha the Bloodthirster, whom Horus tasked with killing Sanguinius.

Meanwhile, the non-Astartes in the fleet were going increasingly nutty thanks to all the Chaos bullshit going on around them, and the legion's ex-Librarians were suffering from really intense psychic visions of a screaming angel drenched in blood. When they got close enough to Signus Prime, things went to hell in very short order. Something unleashed a psychic shriek that staggered even the Space Marines and caused every mortal in the fleet to completely lose whatever was left of their shit and start killing themselves and everyone else. A [[Keeper of Secrets]] named Kyriss the Perverse used the frames of some broken servitors to manifest on the bridge of ''Red Tear'', Sanguinius' flagship, and start mocking him, and then a horde of Chaos-corrupted ships popped out of a nearby asteroid belt and began engaging the Blood Angels. This ended with the fleet admiral snapping, murdering her entire bridge crew, and setting the flagship to crash into Signus Prime. All the rest of the Blood Angels on board wanted to GTFO, but Sanguinius ordered them to hold fast and rode his ship down like a boss until it plowed into the corrupted soil of Signus.

==The Battle of Signus Prime==

After their abrupt landing on Signus Prime, the Blood Angels started securing their position on the planet. In short order, they found out where all the hundreds of thousands of missing bones had gone: the daemons had used them to build a gigantic palace known as the Cathedral of the Mark. Sanguinius ordered his sons to tool up and prepare for some ass-kicking. As the legion stormed the Cathedral, they were met with wave after wave of human cultists and lesser daemons led by Ka'Bandha, who taunted Sanguinius by telling him that Horus had betrayed him and that he planned to turn him and his entire legion to the service of the Blood God. Sanguinius responded by kicking Ka'Bandha's ass up and down the battlefield until the daemon got in a lucky shot with his whip that crushed the primarch’s legs. Ka’Bandha then unleashed a psychic mindfucking weapon called the Ragefire that instantly killed five hundred Blood Angels. The psychic backlash sent Sanguinius into a coma and triggered the onset of the Red Thirst in every single Blood Angel still standing. This was precisely the wrong move to make and it resulted in a massive case of [[not as planned]] for Team Chaos, who realized to their horror that they'd bitten off far more than they could chew; a horror that only increased as the Blood Angels became so colossally, jaw-droppingly, batshit [[Rage|ANGRY]] that they proceeded to [[rip and tear]] through literally everything in their way, and even some things not in their way at all, but instead off to the side, as was the case with the poor Space Wolf tagalongs who had the misfortune to run afoul of the future first [[Nassir Amit|chapter master]] of the [[Flesh Tearers]] and his 5th Company. An interesting aside to note here is that though they clearly seem to have lost their capacity (or perhaps just their patience) for higher levels of thought while fully immersed in the Red Thirst, the Blood Angels did not devolve into a dumb, aimless, fuckangry mob such as happens to the World Eaters once the latter is lost to the Butcher's Nails, and perhaps as had been expected by Team Chaos.

First Captain Raldoron and Apothecary [[Meros]] gathered a small team of Blood Angels who'd maintained control of their faculties, grabbed Niobe the blank, and attacked the Cathedral hoping to use her anti-psyker aura to shield themselves from the Ragefire's effects, while several of the legion's former Librarians chucked the Edict of Nikaea out the window and used their psychic abilities to snap their primarch out of his coma. Sanguinius immediately grabbed his sword, took off for the Cathedral, and kicked in the windows just as the Blood Angels assault team arrived. He proceeded to break open a massive can of whoop-ass on Ka'Bandha and Kyriss. Pinning the Slaaneshi daemon to a wall with his sword, he beat the shit out of Ka’Bandha, then tore off one of the Bloodthirster's wings and tossed him into a warp portal, though not before dropping one of the most kickass one-liners in all of Warhammer canon. Before he could finish the job, Kyriss offered him a deal: if Sanguinius were to take the Ragefire into himself and become a servant of Chaos, then the Blood Angels would be cured of the Red Thirst for good. Sanguinius was all set to do it, but Meros refused to let his gene-father make such a sacrifice. Instead, he jumped into the Ragefire after extracting his own gene-seed, becoming a daemonhost known as the Red Angel. Kyriss promptly had a bitchfit about how this was all Not As Planned, whereupon an annoyed Sanguinius shut him/her/it up with a quick head-chop.

==Outcome==

The IX Legion had won the Signus campaign, but it wasn't a clean victory. Hundreds of Blood Angels had been killed in the battle, the legion’s fleet had lost a lot of its mortal crews and several of its best ships were heavily damaged, and what's more, the 5th Company had to live with the shame of knowing that they'd murdered some of their fellow loyal brother legionaries in their Thirst-induced rage. Sanguinius was so disgusted by the whole thing that he had his Astartes clean up every last trace of their presence in the system down to the bolter shells, then parked some warning beacons around the Cluster and ordered his fleet to set course for Terra to answer the summons of [[Rogal Dorn]]. They wound up getting lost in a huge warp storm, bigger than anything they had ever seen before. Eventually, their Navigators spied some kind of psychic beacon and made a beeline for it, and thus they stumbled upon [[Imperium Secundus]]...

The loss at Signus was the first major setback of the Heresy for the Traitors. Sanguinius and the IX Legion had been hurt, but they remained uncorrupted and would continue to fight for the Imperium. Horus was pissed, Erebus was pissed, the Chaos gods were pissed, and Ka’Bandha was supremely butthurt about the whole thing; a butthurt that would last forever more. Erebus made the mistake of going to Horus’ flagship and throwing a tantrum at the Warmaster about how he'd fucked up the Chaos gods' plan. Horus reacted about as calmly as a Chaos-corrupted primarch could be expected to: he skinned the douchebag's face off and reminded Erebus that ''he'' was in charge of the Heresy, not some bitch-ass warp gribblies.

{{40k-Timeline}}

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

High Lords of Terra

2021-06-25T07:59:09Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* The High Lords at the end of the 41st Millenium and the Rise of the Primarch */

[[Image:High_Lords.jpg|600px|thumb|right|The Spring 40,002 leisurewear collection from Maison Rouboute, modelled by (L-R): the Inquisitorial Representative, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard, the Master of the Administratum (quill-glove: model’s own) and the Fabricator-General of Mars.]]

{{Topquote|Functionaries are like books in a library: the higher they are, the least they serve.|Georges Clemenceau}}
{{Topquote|The measure of a man is what he does with power.|Plato}}

The '''High Lords of Terra''' (aka “Asthmatic Assholes”) are the twelve members of the '''Senatorum Imperialis''', the Council of the High Lords of Terra, and the rulers of the [[Imperium of Man]] in the [[Emperor|Emperor's]] absence.

==Overview==
After [[Horus]] [[Horus Heresy|got his heresy on]], the Emperor had to "ascend" the Golden Throne to keep himself alive. Since he wasn't dead, [[Roboute Guilliman]] reasoned that a new leadership was needed to guide the Imperium. He took the job of '''Lord Commander of the Imperium''' from [[Rogal Dorn]] and set up the High Lords from the old Council of [[Terra]], inviting the heads of the [[Administratum]], the [[Officio Assassinorum]] and the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] to the table as well. As time went on, the [[Ecclesiarchy]], the [[Inquisition]], the [[Navigator|Navigators]] and others were also invited. They seem to have influence over the [[Minotaurs]].

While it's plainly evident that they are not making the Imperium better, there is some evidence that they may be making the Imperium worse than it actually needs to be (although whether this is due to malice or incompetence is anyone's guess, most people are betting on the latter). Exactly what they decide on isn't clear either. "Making decisions that affect the whole galaxy" sounds like a lofty purpose but really all the different departments seem to do things by themselves. The [[Space Marine]] chapters decide where they fight, the Inquisition governs itself, the Navigators govern themselves, the Administratum is like a machine just left running and doesn't even change gears... so unless they are just the people with the stamps to approve everything, we need some more fluff on what they are doing GW!

Well good news, I guess: as of 6th they are becoming more and more pro-active. AND in the new series The Beast Arises has them as the main characters and thus we can finally see how they run things. TL:DR oh, my God-Emperor, they're worse than the fans believed. During [[the War of The Beast]], about half the High Lords were politicking and trying to use the biggest Ork WAAAGH! in their favour, getting billions killed along with dozens of Space Marine Chapters and even, it seems, a Primarch. The others tried to deny its existence entirely, leaving only the Grand Master of Assassins to deal with reality (go figure why he wanted to kill the jackasses). Funny enough they're also all portrayed as being very good at their jobs (the Imperial Navy High Lord is a skilled admiral, for example), they're just too focused on the interests of their own factions to work together. Of course, then the Grand Master of Assassins did [[The Beheading]].

For the times the present day 41st millennium High Lords are mentioned, they tend to be treated with rather neutral tones. Typically the fluff only brings up their reactionary declarations to military matters and nothing about their politics, leaving their effectiveness and competence open to speculation. Given that Warhammer 40k is often about [[Your Dudes]] ("Your Setting" in this case), this is likely intentional.

==The High Lords at the end of the 41st Millenium and the Rise of the Primarch==

''Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion'' has actually finally given us details about the High Lords during the Fall of Cadia, giving us a full list of names and allowing some to show political opinions (Mostly concerning the proposed usage of the Adeptus Custodes that is the main issue for the first half of the book), but considering that Guilliman replaced many of them and the book states that members tend to have short reigns due to the stress of the job resulting in early deaths and/or retirement, who knows what they are like now, if any are still around. Lev Tieron, the Chancellor of the Imperial Council of the time, notes that many of the High Lords he'd known and read about were technically mad, obsessed, or just plain power-hungry, but that they were still the best qualified to do their jobs. Make of that what you will by comparison. Indeed, Tieron's successor Anna-Murza Jek (who currently holds the post) would be assisted by a retired Tieron in defeating the Hexarchy coup after she became suspicious of their actions.

''Vaults of Terra'' reveals another far darker side to the High Lords. At least 3 of them were involved in a massive conspiracy to smuggle / lure (potentially a bit of both) a Dark Eldar [[Haemonculus]] onto Terra and into the Palace so that he could fix the Golden Throne / try to resurrect the Emperor. Insanity of the plan aside, it goes without saying that the High Lords had also given considerable "payment" to the Dark Eldar in exchange (read LOTS OF slaves and torture victims). They even contrived to attack various parts of the Inquisition in order to keep the secret. This worked surprisingly well, right up until the conspirators tried pulling the same trick with the Custodes who promptly carved them to pieces. Even whilst the Great Rift was unfolding, the conspirators still tried to keep covering their bases, ignoring the Astronomicon failing in order to cover up their dirty laundry. Far less doddering incompetence and far more sneaky bastarding evil.

An important part of Terra's political background is the so called "Static" tendency, namely the belief that the Emperor, via the Council of Terra had come up with pretty much the best way of running the Imperium and that any deviation from that was only slightly better than outright heresy. In practice though, this was little more than an excuse not to upset the status quo or deviate outside from the comfortable norms.

As of ''the Gathering Storm'', [[Roboute Guilliman]] came back to [[Terra]] and proceeded to go full [[Rage|'Powerfisting-mode']] at several members of the High Lords following an attempted civil coup d'etat against him, replacing them with people Papa Smurf (seemingly - see below) trusted in the capabilities and competences of. The other High Lords who were not removed were given a mean look by the Blue Wonder and were essentially given a second chance with Robby keeping a close eye on them. Regardless of affiliation, the Council was rocked by the change to thousands of years of them on top, as well as the colossal waves of reforms put in place by Bobby G.

This lasted about as long as it took for Guilliman to head off on the Indomitus Crusade, wherein several High Lords (and two prior incumbent deposed by Guilliman) attempted to stage a coup against Guilliman in absentia, to the extent of indirectly allowing chaotic cults to flourish on Terra, thereby granting themselves the forces and powers necessary to take over, including the entire Minotaurs Chapter. The Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Assassins, and later the Imperial Fists were having absolutely none of it though and promptly intervened. Immediately after the couple of hours it took for the Custodians to notice, the traitor High Lords were permanently ventilated, the Minotaurs forced to obey by the replacement Mistress of the Administratum, and replacement Lords drafted in. It's implied that Guilliman predicted that something like this would happen, so at least he's aware of what the council is like. It also adds an interesting possibility that Guilliman deliberately stacked the council with potential liabilities/left them in (he could have flooded the first redraft with reformers, but didn't) so that he could later replace them with the competent loyalists after those tendencies were proven suspect got themselves killed along with the Cults they had let form, purging Terra of traitors of both Chaos and power hungry moron kinds in a matter of hours.

==Members==
The High Lords are theoretically a dynamic body of 12 (or 13; see below) members that changes based on the needs of the Imperium. That this is the same number of members as are on the [[Skaven]] council of 13 is something we're probably not suppose to notice. Or they're both a reference to Jesus and the 12 Apostles. Anyway, there's supposed to be a whole Senatorum Imperialis, but the 12/13 are the guys that actually matter, plus a few more with similarly but not-quite as important roles being given descriptions.

===Nine Permanent Members===
In reality, [[Games Workshop|the same nine old fucks decide everything millennium in and millennium out]] because they/who they represent are just so influential, leaving only 3 seats up for grabs. These nine guys are:

*'''Ecclesiarch:''' The Space Pope, the leader of the Adeptus Ministorum, or [[Ecclesiarchy]]. Was granted a seat in M32 for the first time, seat which became permanent three centuries later. During the [[Age of Apostasy]], the Ecclesiarch briefly usurped the Master of the Administratum as most powerful High Lord. Goge Vandire solved that problem by being head of both, then went nuts with power and had to be killed by the proto-Sisters of Battle after Custodes informing them of the Emperor's will that Vandire must die (incidentally allowing the Sisters to prove their loyalty and to be accepted as the official Ecclesiarchy armed force through the pre-arranged exact wording of "no men under arms" in the reform laws by Vandire's replacement Ecclesiarch [[Sebastian Thor]] and the other High Lords at the time). As of M41/M42, the Ecclesiarch is considered tied with the Fabricator-General and the Grand Master of Assassins for third most powerful High Lord. Baldo Slyst was fired by Guilliman from this post, and joined in Irthu Haemotalion's failed Hexarchy coup and was shot by a [[Vindicare Assassin]]. Baldo's replacement Eos Ritira is the current Ecclesiarch and she is seen as a reformist.
*'''Fabricator-General of Mars:''' The head of the Adeptus Mechanicus will occasionally take time from meditating on the [[Omnissiah]] or running his/her ''own'' nation to help run the Imperium. The only member of the 'High Twelve' that isn't regularly stationed in the Palace itself, mostly due to practical reasons: the most recent one had great difficulty attending meetings in the 'flesh' owing to being augmented to the size of a small building. Luckily, [[Mars]] is close enough to [[Terra]] to allow for old-fashioned vox communication so it is in the end but a minor hassle. He also seems to have an unspoken role of being the one to lead repairs and maintenance of the Golden Throne. Despite the current holder (Oud Oudia Raskian) being thoroughly opposed to the Custodes being allowed off-world and having collaborated with others to smuggle a goddamn [[Haemonculus]] onto Terra, he's still around, probably because Rowboat Girlyman can't get rid of him without pissing the AdMech off or having no one but [[Belisarius Cawl]], who is too radical to hold the post, to replace him.
*'''Grand Provost Marshal:''' Head of the [[Adeptus Arbites]]. Makes sure the Imperium's myriad jackboots know whose skulls to bust. Often the head of the Arbites on Terra, which is actually a pretty good qualification, as Terra is one mean beat. Aveliza Drachmar was the previous Grand Provost Marshal, taking part in the coup as one of the plotters who wasn't fired from their job earlier but was upset by the Custodes being sent on missions away from Terra, citing [[Lawful Stupid]] reasons and thus getting herself shot by a Vindicare Assassin on orders of Fadix.
*'''Inquisitorial Representative:''' A member of the [[Inquisition]], sent to insure that the Emperor's pet psychopaths are up to date on what laws to enforce, which can be difficult given how factionalized the Inquisition has been shown to be in fluff. An Inquisitor's term is 5 years after which he has to step down to make place for another. It is interesting to note that while there is hefty political competition for the other seats, the seat of Inquisitorial Representative carries little merit because it prevents an Inquisitor from carrying out his primary duty: to directly protect the Imperium from its many enemies by working in the field, not from working at one of the shiniest of desks in the galaxy. They are selected, often unanimously, from Inquisitor Lords from the sectors near Terra, granting the individual the title of Inquisitor Lord Terra even after his service ends. On the plus side, the Inquisition mostly runs on an "influence" system, and becoming the Inquisitorial Representative gives the Lord Inquisitor in question a substantial boost in influence. Furthermore, one almost never becomes a full-fledged Inquisitor (let alone a Lord Inquisitor) without a lot of hard-earned field experience doing dirty work in the nastier parts of the galaxy, so the Inquisitorial Representative is likely to be one of the more competent and practical members of the bunch (whether the Inquisitor in question is entirely sane and rational is another matter altogether). However, in rare cases the Inquisition is too busy to send a representative because Xenos and Chaos incursions are too numerous. It's been noted by Imperial historians that whenever there wasn't a representative from the Inquisition on the High Lords to keep things in check, [[Age of Apostasy|bad]] [[The Beheading|things]] [[Nova Terra Interregnum|happened]].
*'''Grand Master of Assassins:''' Perhaps equally surprisingly, the other High Lord who often acts as a check and balance for sanity (for reasons which, if not obvious, will will become apparent if you read '''The Beast Arises''' series) is the head of the [[Officio Assassinorum]], and an informal watchdog of the Council. The Grand Master is constantly watched by the other High Lords, out of concern that he might assassinate the others - mostly because one Grand Master did. [[The Beheading|Funny story]]. It's seen as tradition for the Master of Assassins to send back the corpses of the other High Lord's spies periodically, as a polite reminder that they do not tolerate the other lords messing with their business. His situation in the council is a bit complicated: theoretically, the [[Officio Assassinorum]] is a branch of the [[Administratum]], so this guy has the Master of the Administratum as his boss. Also, he needs the whole council's approval to send out his assassins away from Terra after a target as per Big.E's edict. On the other hand, any attempt by the Master of the Administratum (or any other High Lord) to boss the assassins around is likely to result in death due to be seen as trying to pull a [[Goge Vandire]]; so the Grand Master has a lot of practical independence politically speaking. According to Lev Tieron, the post of Grandmaster is frequently behind the periods of unrest within the High Lords - Drakan Vangorich was merely the best known. That said, the recent incumbent - Fadix - was almost single-handedly responsible for saving Terra from the aforementioned coup attempt (though probably because the Custodians were too busy laughing to get involved immediately / didn't need to because their leadership knew what was going on and it let them keep their golden hands clean). Or, he goaded the seditious High Lords into showing their hands by offering them the assurance that the ultimate sanction was on their side, thereby causing the unrest and rebellion so that it could be flushed out once and for all. Fadix currently still holds the post.
*'''Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica:''' The guy/gal in charge of the selection, training, and use of [[Astropath]]s and other various kinds of sanctioned [[psyker|psykers]] within the Imperium. Making sure the Imperium's giant network of psychic email servers don't go to shit is so damn important to keep it running that they gave them a permanent seat.
*'''Master of the Administratum:''' The head of the Imperial bureaucracy. While the Master of the [[Administratum]] is an equal with the rest of the High Lords on paper, in practice he is considered the "head" of the Senatorum and most powerful of the High Lords, and they are fucking territorial about that. With the Emperor appointing Roboute Guilliman Imperial Regent, the Master of the Administratum is now the ''second'' most powerful High Lord, with the Fabricator-General and Ecclesiarch now fighting for ''third'' most powerful. Irthu Haemotalion was very upset about this after being fired and got killed by Fadix along with his fellow conspirators (he was also shot by a Vindicare). He was replaced by Violeta Roskavler who has a reputation of being a hard working logistical genius.
*'''Master of the Astronomican:''' While the Adeptus Astronomica isn't nearly as large or influential as the other members' branches, they keep the light of the [[Astronomican]] burning. The Astronomican in turn keeps the Imperium from collapsing, and every other High Lord from being fucked inside out by [[daemon]]s on their way to meetings, so they let this guy have a chair along with his pal/rival from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Because the Adeptus Astra Telepathica serves as the Astronomican's recruitment arm, having these two members disagree on policy is uncommon, but they ''are'' legally independent bodies (each of equal rank with the Administratum), so it's certainly possible. The previous one died during the Chaos (of both capital C and regular c varieties) of the Long Night and Guilliman used the opportunity to stack the High Lords with competent loyalists further after Fadix's purge of the morons who tried to rebel against a fucking Primarch already emptied several slots (along with some firings that lead to said coup attempt in the first place).
*'''Paternoval Envoy:''' Representing the [[Navis Nobilite]], the third of the guys to get a seat because otherwise the Imperium would collapse without faster than light travel and communications. This guy/gal makes sure that the Navigators have a say in what's going on, so they won't get declared abominations of the holy human form. Unlike the other posts, s/he is not the head of the combined Navigator houses, but a representative from the Paternova, the currently effective head house of the Navis Nobilite. The Paternova cannot attend meetings because s/he stays in the Palace of the Navigators due to...[[Mutant|changes]] they undergo upon assuming the post, which would cause <s>mass rioting among the populace</s> questions among the less-informed. As a result, the Paternoval Envoy is a young, still fully-human looking [[Navigator]] (except for the third eye, of course) and usually chosen from a weak house who couldn't upset the balance of power among the Navigators should the position go to his head. Theoretically, the Paternova's rank equals that of the other two people who run the Imperial Fleet (both of whom sometimes also get seats - see below), but they are just too practically important and significant for anyone to really claim they outrank them.

===Three Dynamic Members===
The remaining three fluid positions are held by people either beholden to one or more permanent members, or by people so powerful they just walk in to take a seat. Needless to say, they keep the seat as long as they, or their allies, are strong enough to hold it. They include:
*Independent
**'''Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]]:''' He's kind of a special case: by Big E's ancient but never overturned decree, the Captain-General speaks with His voice at all times, unless Malcador or Himself are present. This would technically make the Captain-General the leader of the Imperium as a whole (with Malcador ultra-dead and Big.E unable to communicate) but since that setup was (even more) horribly impractical, a compromise was found. In normal circumstances, The 12 High Lords and the rest of the Senatorum Imperialis deal with leading the Imperium while the Captain-General and his fellow Custodes ensure the security of the Imperial Palace and the Emperor; both institutions working in tandem without much interaction or interference. However, whenever the Captain-General decides he needs to join the discussions (for instance, to make sure the High Lords keep their shit together or to [[Angry Marines|tear the next Goge Vandire a new asshole]]), a seat is freed for him on the spot until whatever situation made him pop his head in is resolved. While he generally despises playing politics with mere mortals whenever he does attend a meeting, all the other High Lords shut their flapping gums and pay close attention to what he has to say. <s>''NOTICE ME, SENPAI!''</s>. Not really, it is more about a Custodian being a murder machine leagues ahead of anything short of Greater Daemons, and the fact he literally has Big E's full authority behind him. The current Captain-General is [[Trajann Valoris]], currently the only High Lord other than Guilliman and [[Dante]] known to be getting a model and rules for the tabletop. Scratch that, Abbess Sanctorum Morvenn Vahl is also getting one, see below for details on that.
*[[Administratum]] Subordinates
**'''Chancellor of the Estate Imperium:''' The Imperium's head paper pusher. Seriously, s/he's a glorified secretary. The most useless of the High Lords, and only gets on if the Master of the Administratum feels he needs another vote on things and can muscle him in. The previous holder of the office was Brach, who died in 999.M41 before the reforms of Guilliman.
**'''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUrhqCkYwps Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard]:''' The leader of the [[Imperial Guard|Emprah's hammer]]. Nominally in charge of every man, woman, and child in the Imperium with a flashlight to point, although the bureaucratic distances and sheer, incomprehensibly large numbers of personnel involved means that s/he mostly dictates uniform and grooming standards, and maybe operational doctrine if the bigwigs at the Departmento Tactica are feeling indulgent. With the Master of the Administratum in charge of his/her record keeping and the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium in charge of his/her bank account, though, The Lord Commander Militant hasn't got as much of independent swing as one might think. Still, someone needs to give career bureaucrats some form of advice in military necessity, therefore his/her seat. The previous holder, Mar Av Ashariel, was among the failed Hexarchy plotters and was killed by a [[Callidus Assassin]].
***'''Lord Commander of the Segmentum Solar:''' A direct underling of the Lord-Commander Militant that often only gets a seat whenever the military situation goes from '''shitty''' to '''completely FUBAR''' and there's a need for some crusade or other to set things <s>right</s> a little less wrong in the Imperium. S/he is the commander of the Imperium's forces (those that listen to the military bureaucracy anyway) in charge of guarding humanity's [[Segmentum|chewy center, Segmentum Solar]].
**'''Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy:''' Discards the shiniest of flying space cathedrals in favour of the shiniest of desks. Like his/her counterpart(s) in the Imperial Guard, s/he often gets a seat when there is some Ork WAAAGH!/Tyranid Fleet/Black Crusade/Tau Expansion/... happening. Unlike his/her counterpart, though, s/he isn't dependent on the Chancellor for his/her money, but ''is'' dependent on the Navigator houses and the Astronomican for navigation; and on the Adeptus Astra Telepathica for communications. As a result, s/he doesn't have as much wriggling room as one might think either, but the same thing about military necessity also applies here. The previous holder of the post, Merelda Pereth, was among the failed Hexarchy plotters and was killed by a Callidus Assassin.
**'''Speaker for the Chartist Captains:''' Spokesperson of the Merchant Fleet, this High Lord defends the interests of the various trade captains within the Imperium. They are similar to but less powerful than [[Rogue Traders]], but make up about 90% of the Imperium's spacefaring capability. They might not look like much at first glance, but along with the various [[Psyker]]s above they're the glue keeping the Imperium together by making interplanetary commerce possible at all (which is a matter of survival for many, many planets), so they too get a voice in running things when there's a seat free (read: in those times of relative calm when the military situation is galactically stable, so the decades of this seat being free can probably be counted on one's hands). There are four levels of Merchant Charters, from flying fixed and limited routes to being allowed to travel through all of Imperial space within the Segmenta.
*[[Ecclesiarchy]] Subordinates
**'''Abbess Sanctorum of the Adepta Sororitas:''' The head of the [[Adepta Sororitas]]. The only member of the High Lords who is a woman by default, she is elected from the leaders of every order of the Sororitas. Like the Inquisitorial Representative, there is no real race for this position. It is, in fact, considered a penance to become the Abbess Sanctorum, which, given the other assholes in the Senatorum, is not that far from the truth. Before the Abbess is formally inducted, she is to take a pilgrimage to San Leor, the homeworld of the Daughters of the Emperor. The current would-be Abbess, Sister Sabrina of the Order of the Ermine Mantle, disappeared during her pilgrimage. Tradition dictates there cannot be another Abbess elected until the current one's fate has been determined, so the seat of the Abbess remains empty as of now. Post Great Rift, Celestine and her forces were able to find Sabrina trapped fighting off waves of Daemons on San Leor. After fighting them off, she was finally able to take up her seat. Later, Guilliman was able to get the newest Abbess to support his purge of Holy Terra’s more corrupted dredges in society while she also urged the Assassin to send a Vindicare agent on a hunt against an Ork Warboss that had [[looted]] [[wat|a Shrine-World]].
***As of Warhammer Fest 2021, the current Abbess Sanctorum has been revealed to be [[Morvenn Vahl]]. While it's uncertain what befell of Sabrina, the current reveals say that Vahl was elevated here by the advisory of Guilliman and the custodes (and by the Ecclesiarch, who mistakenly expected that her youth would make her easily manipulated). She's also currently helping with the ongoing war in the Charadon sector against [[Typhus]].
**'''Cardinal of the Holy Synod of Terra:''' Some old guy from a group of old guys who spend all their time arguing about slight deviations in doctrine. Their only useful function is electing the head of the Ecclesiarchy who gets them their chair on the council. Mentioning that this is a conflict of interest is considered [[heresy]]. The Holy Synod is an organization that primarily concerns itself with running the church on Terra, so in theory, it can provide up to 3 Cardinals to fill all the vacancies, though this would never fly even in peacetime.

===The Thirteenth Lord===
The position of '''Lord Commander''' of the Imperium's armed forces was one that [[Rogal Dorn]] was originally invested with as the coordinator of the loyalist war effort during the Horus Heresy. [[Roboute Guilliman]] took it from him at some point afterwards and used the title '''Lord Commander of the Imperium''' ''(as the first man to command the forces of the Imperium in its entirety)'' where it became synonymous with '''Lord Guilliman''' even past his injury and eventual removal by his brother [[Fulgrim]] ''(presumably because no one had the balls to remove the plaque from the door)''. The position lasted at least until the 32nd Millennium and was the ''de jure'' leader of the Senatorum Imperialis, and on paper was the commander of the entirety of the Imperium's military forces. We say "on paper" because the last dude prior to Chapter Master [[Slaughter Koorland]] was a puppet of the other agents of the senate, and was generally incompetent. Koorland's successor, [[Maximus Thane]], also took the role of Chapter Master of the [[Imperial Fists]], and was presumably the last to hold the title, because after issuing a series of standing orders, he decided to leave Terra and rebuild the broken Imperium following the [[War of The Beast]], only returning to deal with [[The Beheading]]. The post appears to have been abolished at some point after this.

As of the closing years of the 41st millennium, Roboute Guilliman is back as the Lord Commander again, mostly because nobody else available could be trusted with a job that important, but also significantly due to the fact that nobody dared to say no to him when he announced he was taking his seat back. At least, not to his face. Several of the High Lords did, however, attempt to stage a coup, which was foiled by the Adeptus Custodes and Grand Master Fadix of the Assassinorum who had the four (well, three, he double agented and backstabbed them) serving and two fired High Lords attempting the coup simultaneously killed by his subordinates. He also appointed [[Dante]] as Lord Regent of the northern half of the Imperium and as mentioned replaced the Master of the Astronomican who had coincidentally died due to the Long Night in the immediate aftermath of the Great Rift opening.

==The Senatorum==
As mentioned, the High Lords of Terra are a dynamic organisation, that shifts and changes according to the politics of the day. The seventeen Lords listed above in no way represent the entirety of Imperial government, nor do those Lords who '''''don't''''' get a seat on that particular day lose their ability to have their voices heard or impact policy; the Senatorum actually consists of tens of thousands of politicians, all with their own voting rights and agendas. However, the full body virtually never meets in session, and those positions that fall out of eminent favour simply don't occupy seats on the "High Twelve", which also comes with a reduction in privileges, including the right to give orders to Custodians ''(they make the distinction between High Lords and those of the High Twelve + Rotating Greater Lords not currently voting)''. That right to give orders, however, is rendered moot within the Imperial Palace, with the obvious exception of the Captain-General. Known lesser lords and positions are as follows, note how their jobs when described are relatively important to the general situation as well rather than being some nobody on present to raise numbers:

*'''Chancellor of the Imperial Senate''': A rank that exists outside of the High Lords, who acts like the presiding officer of the council. Their job is sometimes more arduous than the actual High Lords, as they have to essentially herd, bully, intimidate, sweet talk, and basically cajole all twelve into regular sessions, as well making sure the process doesn't turn into an eternal game of 'pass the buck'. They are also meant to be as politically neutral as possible, which considering how much cross intent and vested interest floats around the council is either very easy or extremely hard. Lev Tieron was the previous holder and retired during Guilliman's reforms citing old age. His protégé and successor Anna-Murza Jek was instrumental in the foiling of the Hexarchy plot and is currently in office.
*'''Commandant of the Schola Progenium''': The head of the [[Schola Progenium]], and the joint senior-[[Commissar]] of the Imperium, presumably with the head of the Commissariat. Makes sure the new generations properly worship the Emprah and properly hate anything the government does.
*'''Chirurgeon-General of the Orders Hospitaller''': The head Medicae of the Imperium. Though part of the High Twelve in the days of the Emperor, the Chirurgeon-General lost their status as a rotating member of the High Lords after the Horus Heresy, which goes to show how little a priority healthcare is in the Imperium, though for what its worth the post remained as major lesser High Lord.
*'''High Lord of the Imperial Chancellery''': The head of the Imperial Chancellery. This is the person who runs the offices of the Adeptus Terra and is essentially the superintendent of the Imperial Chancellery (Custodian interference and forbidden areas of the Imperial Palace aside). Originally part of the High Twelve, it lost its status after the Heresy and remained a major lesser High Lord.
*'''Lord Constable of the Synopticon''': The head of the Synopticon. What exactly this does is unknown, but "Synopticon" is a word that means ''"Surveillance of the few by the many"''; as his title is "Constable" that presumably makes him some kind of rule enforcer for the Senatorum itself, making sure proper procedure is followed while being more directly involved than the Chancellor. Other guesses are that he's the leader of the space CIA as opposed to the Inquisition's space FBI, or that he acts as the security chief for the Imperial Chancellery.
*'''Mistress Plenary of the Catacombs''': The person overseeing the Catacombs. What exactly that means is unknown, but given what is usually placed in the catacombs of the Imperial Palace, it probably isn't [[Heresy|pretty]].

These six are generally important to the galactic situation or at least Terra's (or the Chancellery within the Imperial Palace itself) and if any of the lesser lords outside the "can be one of the big thirteen" group are in an important but not-everyone is present level meeting its them. Other posts don't have names in the fluff at this time. Speculatively, the Segmenta and particularly important Sectors might have representatives.

When it is expedient or politically advantageous to do so, the High Lords may choose to take seats in various chambers around the Imperial palace. While some chambers are large enough to seat the whole of the senate and then some, others are barely larger than an office, where lesser lords get excluded (save the above posts who as mentioned previously are the most likely of the lesser lords to be present in big deal government meetings which involve those outside the High Twelve but not the other Senatorum politicians, alongside the rotating greater lords).

Finally, the actual bureaucrat in charge of the Senatorum itself, the Chancellor of the Imperial Council (currently Anna-Murza Jek, protege and successor to the retired Lev Tieron), should be detailed further. This is not a High Lord of Terra, but still wields great political power as being in charge of the top level bureaucracy allows them great influence and power as was seen when Jek became suspicious of the fired Master of the Administratum and Ecclesiarch plotting against Guilliman. She was critical in arranging for the traitors to spring their coup early and getting them killed by Grand Master of the Assassins Fadix backstabbing them.

==Trivia==
* The authors of the ''[[Horus Heresy]]'' series are collectively referred to as the "High Lords of Terra" on [[Black Library]]'s blog. According to [[Dan Abnett]], this is intended as self-deprecation. Yes, even the makers of 40K canon think the High Lords of Terra are useless.
* All tea and biscuits are the property of the High Lords of Terra and no one else. They are needed for the constant meetings the High Lords have (most likely to decide what colour to paint the Imperial Palace's walls this season).{{BLAM|Of course it should be GOLD, the Emprah's favorite!}}
* The High Lords do decide on foundings of Space Marines and assign the title of Warmaster to special individuals undertaking Imperial crusades. However considering how many chapters turn renegade or do their own thing and how many crusades seem to fall into failure, this could be further proof of the High Lords' collective uselessness.
* With Papa Smurf as defacto leader of the entire Imperium again, the usefulness of the High Lords have went up a reasonable notch. Mostly because most of them were sacked and replaced after they were [[Fail|dumb enough to try and stage a coup against Roboute freaking Guilliman]].
**Actually only two were sacked. Four more joined the treason plot. The Grand Master of Assassins backstabbed the plotters and killed the other five and kept his post.
* Their Fantasy equivalent, the [[Skaven#Hierarchy|Council of Thirteen]] manages to be more effective and productive despite being run by megalomaniac backstabbing ratmen drug addicts.

==See Also==
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5492330/ Writefaggotry from /tg/ on the High Lords]
{{Imperium}}

Minotaurs

2021-06-25T07:50:24Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Current Events */

{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Minotaurs
|Heraldry = [[File:Minotaurs Symbol.jpg|200px]]
|Number = N/A
|Battle Cry = That's a nice watch. (Presumably)
|Founding = [[21st Founding]] (Supposedly)
|Successors of = '''+++Classified by order of the [[High Lords]]+++''' (The original Minotaurs are unknown; the new Minotaurs are all but confirmed to use Iron Warriors geneseed. Hints that one of the two are chimeric, money's on the unstable psychopaths)
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = [[Asterion Moloc]]
|Primarch = Unknown; Angron (yellow/red Minotaurs "probably"); Perturabo (bronze Minotaurs)
|Homeworld = Fleet Based
|Specialty = (Old) Being psychotic [[Leeroy Jenkins]]; (New) Beating the shit out of other [[Space Marines]], taking their stuff, pissing off the [[Ultramarines]], siege warfare, and being the [[High Lords]]' personal army.
|Strength = 1000 (Officially)
|Allegiance = [[High Lords of Terra]]
|Colours = (old) Ketchup & Mustard stripes; (new) Bronze with a little Red.
}}
''If you are looking for the bull-headed beastmen from Greek mythology, see [[Minotaur]].''

==Out with the old...==
The '''Minotaurs''' (also known as the Moomarines) are a [[Chapter]] of [[Space Marine]]s and massive dicks. They were formed in the [[21st Founding|Cursed Founding]] as psychopathic berzerkers and were possibly successors to more stab-happy legions, like the [[Blood Angels]] (looking at you [[Flesh Tearers | Sanguine Berzerkers]]) or [[World Eaters]]. They first appeared in [[White Dwarf]] as one of the playable Chapters for the Chapter Approved Cursed founding article where they were also mentioned to have beaten the shit out of the [[Lamenters]] during the [[Badab War]], because the Lamenters chose the wrong side and the Minotaurs wanted an excuse to [[RIP AND TEAR]]. Then they disappeared. (to everyone's relief). Their color scheme was also fucking atrocious.

==...and in with the new==
[[File:Minotaurs Tact. Marine.jpg|250px|thumb|left|The Minotaurs have many suits of MKVIII "errant" pattern Power Armor.]]
The Minotaurs later popped up in [[Imperial Armour#Volume Ten - The Badab War - Part Two|Imperial Armour Volume 10]] and had their lore (and thankfully colour scheme) overhauled. They're still massive dicks though. Now the psycho-Minotaurs apparently disappeared thousands of years before the [[Badab War]], instead its these cunts who stomp stomp the poor Lamenters (and also take their stuff). They now dress like [[Iron Warriors|ancient Greeks]] and their Chapter Master, one [[Asterion Moloc]], appears to have pilfered the prop department from 300 for his outfit. They no longer maintain the "psychopathic berzerkers' flavour; instead (while still liking melee combat) they make and execute detailed battle plans focusing on siege and attrition warfare, being brooding, paranoid about security protocols, and very pragmatic. Example of that last trait being in [[Imperial Armour Volume 12]] here they let a good chunk of the [[Imperial Navy]] fight and die before they stepped in to give themselves a better chance against the Necrons (what assholes). They are essentially Greek-ier [[Iron Warriors]], who steal shit like the [[Blood Ravens]] (but instead of hijacking your stuff when you aren't looking, they will just mug you and take it). This better explains why they stole the Lamenters' stuff like the school bully shaking down the class nerd for his lunch money, once the old fight between the Lamenters and Minotaurs was retconned to have happened with these Minotaurs instead.

The chapter has vast stores of incredibly rare wargear, which includes: shittons of Mk8 [[power armor]], as well as Arkonak & Tartaros-pattern [[Terminator]]s and several [[Spartan Assault Tank]]s, the most [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank]]s out of any chapter, loads of [[Dreadnoughts]] (including the rare Contemptor-pattern), [[Storm Eagle#Roc Pattern|their very own Storm Eagle variant]], and at least one [[AWESOME|power spear/lascannon combo]] that might have been <s>jacked</s> gifted from the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. When you combine the stuff given to them by their [[High Lords of Terra|sugar daddies on Terra]] and the cool wargear they have stolen from other Chapters, they have no shortage of the best toys available to the Astartes.

They also act as the attack dogs of the [[High Lords of Terra|High Lords']], often acting under their direct orders and telling anyone in their way to piss off. Oh, and the [[Administratum]] records are sealed (under direct order of the [[High Lords]]), so that not even [[inquisitor|Inquisitors]] can easily (if at all) access them. Which implies something about them (gee, wonder what?) has at least some Inquisitors worried.

They also seem to have little to no respect for anyone aside from the High Lords and The Emperor, though they do not extend this respect to His chosen, going so far as to bad-mouth Custodes and Sisters of Silence to their faces. For another example, one of their [[Brother-Captain]]s is known to have insulted [[Marneus Calgar]] right in front of the [[Genesis Chapter]] (a 2nd founding [[Ultramarines]] descendant), basically telling them to stop sucking Calgar off 24/7; and the chapter later tore the [[Inceptors]] chapter (another Ultramarines successor) apart and stole all their stuff, formally pissing off the [[Ultramarines]] and all of their successors. The Ultramarines got so salty about this they even perma-banned the Minotaurs from entering [[Ultramar]] (as if the Minotaurs cared). The chapter also may or may not have shot down a [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight]] strike cruiser for trying to swoop in and steal all the glory of taking down a renegade chapter the Minotaurs had been hunting and fighting for awhile. Essentially they've told both of [[Matt Ward]]'s special snowflakes to go raw dog a plasma gun.

Needless to say, [[/tg/]] thinks they're pretty cool (and they are still massive dicks).

==Current Events==
During later M41 - early M42, the [[Death Guard]] directly besieged their space-borne [[Fortress-Monastery]] and poisoned their gene stocks beyond repair, forcing the Minotaurs to race towards [[Terra]] to restock their gene-vaults.

At least, that was the ''official'' reason, and as noted by [[Valerian]] in ''The Regent's Shadow'', no one was fooled by this, especially since the Daedalos Krata was ''right there''. The real reason for their return would be made clear very soon, however.

Once at Terra, the Chapter was tasked to work alongside the [[Imperial Fists]], [[Sisters of Silence]], and [[Adeptus Custodes]] in quelling a rebellion growing on Terra itself. During the course of the investigations they had to teach the Imperial Fists what they think of someone trying to steal their glory. i.e. the Imperial Fists tried to investigate a cultist kill-site cleared by the Minotaurs, aka the Imperial Fists were trying to steal the Minotaur's intel and get to the cultists first, and in response the Minotaurs killed the two Imperial Fists sent to investigate (after the Minotaurs warned them, and were promptly ignored by the Imperial Fists). An Imperial Fist got salty at this and tried to blow up at a Minotaur back at HQ. Said Imperial Fist got the shit beaten out of him by the Minotaur and made a fuckawful mess of the nice lady's house they were fighting in (that's actually not a joke). Their brawl continued until a Custodian interposed himself between the two, warning the Minotaur to calm the fuck down unless he wanted to try his luck with a Talon of the Emperor. The Minotaur called the Custodian some mean names but could tell that he was outclassed, instead simply stormed out, while the grumpy Imperial Fist didn't even bother to thank the Custodian. [[Dick]].

Eventually the HQ of the cultists was discovered, and the Minotaurs were the first ones there. Launching a '''SIEGE''' of the enemy's HQ while the Imperial Fists and Custodes were just then managing to figure out where it was. It turns out the rebellions were caused by the former members of the High Lords who had since been exiled by the now revived Guilliman. At first it seemed that the Minotaurs had sided with the rebellious former High Lords, with Moloc himself standing by the former Master of the Administatium, Haemotalion. However, with the actual leaders of the rebellion sniffed out, assassins from the Vindicare Temple killed them all except for the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum (who wasn't actually a traitor, instead having infiltrated the traitors as part of the plan to find/kill them) and Moloc (who had "conveniently" left the room just before the kill order was given). In very short order, all hell broke loose. With no one being aware of who was on whose side, the Minotaurs came into direct combat with a small contingent of Custodes and Sisters of Silence. They killed a few Sisters of Silence, and even one of the Custodes (poor bastard was mobbed by multiple Minotaurs), but they suffered far greater losses themselves (as if they cared). Eventually though, a lot more Minotaurs showed up and started surrounding the Custodes and the Sisters, who had formed a perimeter around the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum to protect him (as the Minotaurs weren't told he wasn't actually one of the traitors). Moloc himself was about to 1v1 Custodes Shield-Captain Valerian (with Moloc making the Custodes feel as close to afraid as a Custodes could possibly be. Sort of. Bear in mind that in combat, the Custodes size up their adversaries and determine how to most efficiently kill them in milliseconds, effectively killing them before they've even crossed blades. In this case however, Valerian admitted he saw no flaw in Moloc's battle form, armour, or anything to exploit, and thus had 0 idea how to beat him before combat was begun, meaning he'd have to wing it, which Valerian REALLY didn't like.), before the actual, non-deposed Master of the Administratum (Violeta Roskavler, who had been promoted by Guilliman), teleported in and (whispering to Moloc) ordered the Minotaurs to stand down. Apparently this whole mess, for the most part, was [[Just As Planned]], as the Minotaurs later departed for Guilliman's [[Indomitus Crusade]] without any form of issues.

During the Indomitus Crusade, the Minotaurs put on their good ass-stomping boots to deal with some Thousand Sons who had taken over a space station.

==Chapter History and Geneseed Confusion==
There is a significant amount of [[DERP]] surrounding who their daddy is, how long they've been around, or if these are even all the same group of dicks. Like the [[Fire Angels]], the Minotaurs are an example of two chapters sharing the same name, even the sourcebooks point out that the [[Cursed Founding]] Minotaurs and the bronzy Minotaurs are so different that it's a possibility there are multiple chapters who have the same name. There isn't much of a question around only "a" Minotaurs chapter being made during the [[Cursed Founding]] in M36, the same books leaves it ambiguous by alluding to there having been different Minotaurs chapters (essentially keeping the ketchup-mustard-psycho Minotaurs canon alongside the "new" Minotaurs). Pulling things like having records of the "Minotaurs" being around as far back as back in M32 (tag teaming a bunch of Chaos-spark rebellions with some other Chapters, and noticably not just wiping their asses with the battle plans before bolting hell-for-leather into melee range), even tho psycho "Minotaurs" chapter is listed as M36 [[Cursed Founding]]; pointing out that "chimeric" geneseed Astartes (especially from the [[Cursed Founding]]) tend to be mentally/physically unstable, but the "new" Minotaurs are about as stable as you can get (the "old" Minotaurs tho....yeah); and highlighting the difference in behavior, look, and combat doctrines of the bronze colored Minotaurs compared to records of the yellow/red Minotaurs.

Given the yellow/red Minotaurs tendencies to absolutely annihilate whatever is in their way, completely forgo any sort of intel gathering or battle plans, and a [[Rip and tear|psychotic need to just rage rush the enemy to get their stabby-stab on]], it's certainly possible for them be successors to one (or more) of the more bloodthirsty legions such as the [[Blood Angels]] or [[World Eaters]]. A chimeric blend with another gene-line would certainly make sense with their [[Cursed Founding]] origins and batshit insanity.

The bronze Minotaurs being the chimeric ones makes markedly less sense, since they are pretty much free of any mutations and have in fact one of the highest [[gene-seed]] acceptance rates of any Chapter (a classic Iron Warriors trait). Given their "brooding, maligned, paranoid, and pragmantic" behaviors; obsessive and meticulous data-analysis; noted mastery of siege and attrition warfare (with a secondary preference for close range combat); and heavy ancient Greek theme, they are a near 1-1 match of the [[Iron Warriors]]. Their 5th/6th/7th edition chapter tactics are even the same as the 30k Iron Warriors Legiones Astartes rules. This makes sense, given their depiction in the [[Imperial Armour]] books basically being [[Iron Warriors]] with a bronze color scheme.

If the bronzy Minotaurs are [[Iron Warriors]] successors, it would go a long way in explaining why the [[High Lords]] keep their records well and far away from the [[Ordo Hereticus]].

According to Eadwin Brown, one of the developers of the Badab War: The current incarnation of the Minotaurs was formed by a garrison of [[Iron Warriors]] who were allowed to rejoin the Imperium (but put on a short leash by the High Lords) back during the [[Great Scouring]]. The reason for their lack of/confusing history (including a different chapter getting the same name) being a mix of deliberate actions of the [[High Lords]] not wanting to lose their personal pet Astartes and the difficulty of the Administratium's already shitty record keeping. Or maybe the Cursed Founding World Eater chimera Minotaurs were explicitly set up to fail in a deniable fashion that allowed the High Lords to get the Iron Warrior Minotaurs quietly formalised. If this is true, this raises all sorts of questions as to whether the Cursed Founding was deliberate to cover this up. It also means that there are probably many other Chapters like the Minotaurs from traitor legions. The Chapters that seem free of High Lord control but blatantly from traitor legions likely descend from those badass loyalists among the traitor legions. The Chapters held on a short leash by the High Lords are probably descended from traitor legion stock whose founders were of questionable loyalty, such as a surrendering garrison. Evidence of this might even be the excellent equipment they posses. After all, wouldn’t it be exactly like those dumb fucks to heavily equip possible traitors instead of loyal Chapters just so they can pretend to actually control them?

==Other Information==
[[File:Minotaurs Tartaros.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The Chapter has many Tartaros pattern suits and other relics.]]While the Minotaurs are strict followers of the [[Codex Astartes]], they're almost never seen as small groups or even individual companies. Every time they're deployed its always been at full Chapter strength. Their incredible effectiveness just goes to prove the Codex is awesome at a Chapter level and above. It isn’t like Guilliman didn’t study his brothers’ tactics, too. They fight in only one war zone at a time with the entire chapter fighting together. This makes them essentially a massive fucking beatstick that the High Lords call upon when shit hits the fan. They also have an unusual preference for killing other Space Marines, which made them feel right at home during the Badab War. Given their fancy new gear, their borderline omnicidal tendencies, and always operating as a full chapter, it would seem that the job of the "Emperor's Executioners" no longer falls upon the [[Space Wolves]]. They were probably created for fighting Chaos and renegade Marines and just sorta turned out pretty handy for forcing idiot [[Chapter]]s into line.

To the High Lord’s credit, the Minotaurs seem to not be an abuse of power. The Chapters they beat up are let go if they flee or surrender early instead of digging in. Those that keep fighting are curbstomped, but not exterminated. And when they beat on Marines, it’s hard to argue that the receivers of said beating didn’t deserve it (save in [[Lamenters|very specific instances]] and even then, the blame for THAT falls squarely on the High Lords paranoia and [[Lugft Huron]] being an arrogant dickass).

Unlike most Chapters, the Minotaurs appear to be able to replenish their numbers at an accelerated rate, to the point that they could recover from losses in a fraction of the time it would take other Chapters a century or two to fully recover from. This allows them to quickly rebuild their force to full Chapter strength, even after suffering what would normally be unsustainable causalities. Imperial observers during the Antigonis campaign theorized that this may have something to do with the heavy use of hypnotherapy and neuro-cerebral therapy used in the training of neophytes and frequently "refreshed" with the help of Apothecaries in the Chapter. This has proven to have some unpleasant side-effects- the Minotaurs are highly xenophobic and paranoid, even by the high standards of the Imperium. These are bonus perks in a galaxy in which not being sufficiently xenophobic and paranoid gets you or your soul eaten.

There's also a good chance that they recruit from [[Terra]] itself thanks to their connections with the High Lords, giving them a massive recruit pool, as the Imperial Fists are also able to replenish losses equally fast thanks to having billions of potential candidates. This is mostly due to the Imperial Fists building recruitment posts on every world they rescue from invasion. Even then they request permission first as Dorn said he "...want recruits, not vassals". The Black Templars also do this and benefit greatly from this method. And since the Minotaurs gene-seed tithes are locked away nice and tight, no one is sure who their progenitors are.

Aside from the hideous old ketchup-and-mustard motherfuckers and the Greek muggers, there are also a pair of Chapters called the [[Brazen Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs wearing the [[Taurans]]' chapter badge) and [[White Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs but with a white Tauran bullhead badge). There isn't much fluff on them, being two of those Chapters with a name and a color design and nothing else.

==(In)famous Campaigns==
*'''[[Solar Rebellion]]''' - The Chapter is listed among the Imperial Forces tasked with bulldozing the many [[Chaos Cults]] sparked by the [[World Eaters]], [[Iron Warriors]], and [[Night Lords]] within the western Segmentum Solar. The interesting part is, [[Time of Rebirth|this was in M32...]] the [[Cursed Founding]] was in M36...
*'''[[Macharian Heresy]]''' - The Chapter is called to deal with the petty star empires created by the former generals of [[Lord Solar Macharius]]. They crush one after the other, following all of the High Lord's orders without question, and causing a lot of collateral damage in the process.
*'''Euxine Incident''' - ''The'' action that earned the Chapter their reputation. Still during the [[Macharian Heresy]], the [[Inceptors]] Chapter got involved in a fight with the Doom Warriors. They were supposedly drinking buddies before-hand but their friendship was broken over [[Lawful Stupid|matters of "honor"]]. The Imperium, not wanting ''more bullshit'', sent in the Minotaurs to beat some sense into them. The Chapter, in it's [[rape|usual style]], hit both chapters at once. The Doom Warriors, having some sense gained from this initial strike, left the Euxine system. The Inceptors did not leave. Instead they dug in and fought the Minotaurs like men. They lost, and the 100 surviving Inceptors were forced to surrender at barrel point. After they surrendered, [[That Guy|the Minotaurs robbed their relics, jacked Battle-Barge, and left.]] The [[Ultramarines]], seeing at how one of their own [[second founding]] successors got treated like shit, declared that the Minotaurs were permabanned from [[Ultramar]]. Nothing like punishing a loyalist Chapter for beating up civil war mongering renegades to prove your own loyalty.
*'''Defense of Hermetica''' - The heavily-fortified capital of a sector located in the [[Segmentum]] Solar finds itself overwhelmed when the [[Word Bearers]] suddenly dropped from a warp rift in a motherfucking [[Space Hulk]] filled to the brim with [[Mutant]]s. The Minotaurs are the first imperial force to respond: they track the [[Dark Apostle]] into the main cathedral, and decide to blast their way in with orbital bombardement and tanks regardless of civilian casualties. [[Asterion Moloc]] and his [[Terminator]]s slaugther their way into the catacombs, but the Dark Apostle escapes before he can be dealt the killing blow.
*'''[[Badab War]]''' - You know this one: [[Lugft Huron]] declares independance from the [[High Lords of Terra]], and a fuckton of chapters are sent his way to remind him why that is not a thing. The Minotaurs gained several important victories during this time, but would be more infamously remembered for the shit they did to the poor [[Lamenters]]. (The same thing they did to the [[Inceptors]]) Suffice to say, if anyone had any doubts on their behavior before, those doubts were quickly dispelled after that.
*'''Battle of Rynn's World''' - The Minotaurs saw action on Rynn's World during the attempt to reclaim the [[Crimson Fists]]' homeworld from the [[Orks]]. Shockingly, they didn't attempt anything like scavenging the ruins of the Crimson Fists [[Fortress-Monastery]]. Maybe it has something to do with [[Alexis Polux|who founded the Crimson Fists]]....and a certain friendship he had with [[Barabas Dantioch|a particular loyal Iron Warrior]].
*'''Harrowing of the Night Reapers''' The aforementionned [[Chapter]] had been sent on penitent crusade to the a dengerous backwater nebula as punishment for abandoning a Shrine World to the forces of Chaos. They went radio silent after a while, and steadly started to deviate from [[Codex]] doctrine, tactics, and equipment. Six years after last contact and many suspicious raids in the area, irrefutable proof of their attack on a [[Rogue Trader]] vessel earned them an ''Excommunicate Traitoris''. Four companies of the [[Avenging Sons]] went after them, but that chapter can't do anything right and got ambushed by the Night Reapers, who captured one of their [[Space Marine Strike Cruiser|Star Cruisers]] and mauled another. They blamed their humilliating defeat on "Warp flame weapons" that bypassed [[Void shields]], so the High Lords had to send someone who could actually [[get shit done]]: The Minotaurs and the [[Red Hunters]]. (now we're talking) The two Chapters fought the Night Reapers and their heretekal Xeno-tech across a dozen star systems until they cornered them at a pre-human space wreck so massive it had it's own athmosphere and ecosystem. The Night Reapers were searching for a weapon that they beleived would allow them to defeat the Imperials, when a [[Grey Knights]] ship showed up demanding all Imperial forces to pull back. The Minotaurs, naturally, didn't give a fuck and kept fighting. The Knights of Titan had to launch their teleport assault in the midst of the battle. Shortly after, something happened that caused everyone to get BTFO to kingdom come: Minotaurs, Night Reapers, and Grey Knights alike. The Grey Knight's strike cruise was somehow damaged by the blast....and it somehow killed everyone onboard. [[Asterion Moloc]] was [[Phoenix Lord|the only survivor]].
*'''[[Orphean War]]''' - Karma finally starts catching up to the Chapter's douchebaggery when they have to face the Necrons of the [[Maynarkh Dynasty]]. They lose their stolen ships in the desperate assault against the necron fleet over Amarah Prime, and take many casualties that would be sorely felt later in their race back to [[Terra]]. Moloc <s>dies</s> [[Phoenix Lord|almost dies]] again, this time by achieving a mutual KO against the Maynarkh [[Necron Overlord|Overlord]] Makthlan Kutlakh the World Killer.

==Daily Rituals==
This is before roboute guillimans return

:04:00 Wake Up: The Minotaurs arise from their beds (each Minotaur has their own king-sized bed with luxury mattress and comforter). They make sure to beat up a dummy space marine before leaving.
:05:00 Morning Prayer: The Minotaurs gather in the chapel to praise the Emperor. They also praise the High Lords of Terra. Any battle brother who prays to not have to kill other space marines is put in the "patience chamber".
:06:00 Morning Firing Rituals: The Minotaurs pull live space marines from the "patience chamber" to practice firing upon. Any battle brother whose shot kills the space marine instantly is put into the "patience chamber".
:08:00 Morning Battle Practice: The Minotaurs release captured prisoners within the "patience chamber." Imprisoned members include failed Minotaurs, rebellious Ultramarines (and successors), Marines Malevolent, Fallen, The <s>victims</s> participants are then forced to fight the entire chapter with substandard equipment.
:10:00 Morning Tactical Indoctrination: The Minotaurs finish off the last of their prisoners and gather together in the Great Hall to discuss strategy. Common tactics involve marching right through enemy fire, throwing allied units into enemy fire THEN marching through whats left, missile strikes on engaged melee units, and techniques to kill other space marines. Any battle brother who points out the faults in these tactics is put in the "patience chamber" (any actual faults are noted for later tactical refinement).
:11:00 Afternoon Prayer: The Minotaurs give thanks to the High Lords of Terra for allowing them to be such dicks. In a sacred ritual, each battle brother is required to kiss the butt of golden statues honoring the High Lords Of Terra. Any battle brother who claims this is gay is sent to the "patience chamber".
:12:00 Afternoon Meal: The Minotaurs gather to feast upon fine meats and food provided by their besties: the High Lords. Serfs rush quickly to ensure that each marine is fed to his heart's content. Those who don't clean their plates are sent to the "patience chamber".
:13:00 Afternoon Battle Practice: The Minotaurs descend to any number of worlds in order to hone their space marine killing skills. The Lamenters are the most frequent target, but Baal and Ultramar are also popular destinations. A number of the the targeted space marines are captured and put in the "patience chamber". The food stocks of enemy forces are taken for Evening Meal.
:15:00 Afternoon Firing Rites: The Minotaurs practice shooting at cutouts for once. These cutouts are usually painted [[Ultramarines|blue]], [[Lamenters|yellow]], or [[Grey Knights|grey]].
:16:00 Enhanced Tactical Indoctrine: The Minotaurs learn how to most effectively teamkill each army in the Imperium. During this time, they also will use artillery and vehicle simulators in order to practice causing the most possible destruction upon space marines fortifications such as: driving tanks straight through walls and orbital strikes on Astartes medical station.
:17:00 Recruitment: <s>Slaves</s> Fresh recruits arrive from Terra. These are force to either serve as serfs for the chapter, or begin the Minotaurs' <s>forced reprogramming</s> training process. Imperial Officials are ordered to turn a blind eye to this process, causing the Salamanders to [[RAGE]].
:18:00 Evening Meal: The Minotaurs feast once again, devouring the food stocks taken during Afternoon Battle Practice, infront of the survivors of who they took it from. Any brother who feels guilty about this is sent to the "patience chamber".
:20:00 Propaganda: Minotaurs gather in the Great Hall [[Bullshit|to listen to the brilliant, enlightened, sophisticated, and productive conversations that the High Lords partake in.]] Any battle brother who dozes off or claims the High Lords are full of shit is sent to the "patience chamber".
:22:00 Free time: The Minotaurs are granted free time. This mostly involves reading the excessive number of manuals on how to kill space marines, beating each other up as practice, and repainting wargear taken from other Chapters.
:23:00 Bed Time: The Minotaurs retire to their quarters for the evening. Before falling asleep, they beat up the space marine dummy again.

==Tabletop==

===Chapter Approved===
When the first Minotaurs were introduced as one of the Cursed Founding chapters, for +10 points per model, or +20 per dreadnought (on top of the regular costs) you could give your entire army Fearless and +1 Attack though they had to move towards and assault the nearest enemy they could (even if they had no chance of hurting it) and had to sweep advance, but nobody did it because painting them WAS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. Both because they had the most annoying colour scheme (worse than the quarter ones like the [[Howling Griffons]]) and because their colours made them look fucking ugly.

===6th Edition===
With the updates they got their own Chapter Tactics. Minotaurs Chapter Tactics models don't take morale checks from shooting attacks, and can re-roll failed pinning tests. In addition they have crusader USR, and +1 to charge distance when in the enemy deployment zone. Overall one of the [[fail|worst]] Chapter Tactics. Crusader certainly is nice to have, but ATSKNF makes re-rolling pinning and no morale checks from shooting pretty redundant. If you're gonna play Minotaurs you're gonna have to bring Moloc, who is a fucking monster in CC while gaining a VP per character executed in a challenge ''and'' giving your guys Prefered Enemy (Space Marines). So if you didn't get the memo, Minotaurs are meant to be run with Moloc as your Warlord against other Space Marine armies. If a friend of yours is running a really annoying Space Marine army, especially if he has Smashfucker, sic these guys on him and watch him cry.

===8th Edition===
How 8th Edition treated Forge World chapters is an issue of [[skub|intense debate]]. Sure, you can choose whatever tactic you want, but it still feels like an afterthought on the part of Games Workshop. That aside, Moloc and Aiakos came out of the update relatively unscathed, still being hard nuts to crack and very lethal overall, but with loss of initiative, and Moloc has lost the main thing he was taken for - the godsent army-wide Preferred enemy: Space Marines. Instead he can "do the wulfen" now. Ivanus, however, has lost all of his utility and is just an overpriced Chaplain with attacks and wounds of a captain, and no longer gains an extra attack from having two specialist weapons. Hecaton fell into category of Characters too fat to use Character rule and costs a little shy of a goddamn GALLANT KNIGHT but with Hero of the Chapter strategem can be a pain in the ass on a city map. Kraatos also no longer exists as of the FAQ, with Forge World telling you to just [[fail|use him as a regular devastator marine]]. ROC pattern Storm Eagle still rocks though.

===9th Edition===
As of the Imperial Armour Compendium, they play up the Minotaurs siege warfare specialization. Suggesting they be played using the Imperial Fists supplement, with the Stalwart and Duelist traits.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Minotaurs_Original_Scheme.jpg|[[Fail|Their original scheme]], just try and paint an entire Chapter of them.
File:Veteran_Brother_Isskar.PNG|Stylized red markings are used to identify [[Veteran Squad]]s...
File:Sternguard_Veteran_Thoul.PNG|...And sergeants
</gallery>

{{Marines-Official}}

Minotaurs

2021-06-25T07:47:23Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* ...and in with the new */

{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Minotaurs
|Heraldry = [[File:Minotaurs Symbol.jpg|200px]]
|Number = N/A
|Battle Cry = That's a nice watch. (Presumably)
|Founding = [[21st Founding]] (Supposedly)
|Successors of = '''+++Classified by order of the [[High Lords]]+++''' (The original Minotaurs are unknown; the new Minotaurs are all but confirmed to use Iron Warriors geneseed. Hints that one of the two are chimeric, money's on the unstable psychopaths)
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = [[Asterion Moloc]]
|Primarch = Unknown; Angron (yellow/red Minotaurs "probably"); Perturabo (bronze Minotaurs)
|Homeworld = Fleet Based
|Specialty = (Old) Being psychotic [[Leeroy Jenkins]]; (New) Beating the shit out of other [[Space Marines]], taking their stuff, pissing off the [[Ultramarines]], siege warfare, and being the [[High Lords]]' personal army.
|Strength = 1000 (Officially)
|Allegiance = [[High Lords of Terra]]
|Colours = (old) Ketchup & Mustard stripes; (new) Bronze with a little Red.
}}
''If you are looking for the bull-headed beastmen from Greek mythology, see [[Minotaur]].''

==Out with the old...==
The '''Minotaurs''' (also known as the Moomarines) are a [[Chapter]] of [[Space Marine]]s and massive dicks. They were formed in the [[21st Founding|Cursed Founding]] as psychopathic berzerkers and were possibly successors to more stab-happy legions, like the [[Blood Angels]] (looking at you [[Flesh Tearers | Sanguine Berzerkers]]) or [[World Eaters]]. They first appeared in [[White Dwarf]] as one of the playable Chapters for the Chapter Approved Cursed founding article where they were also mentioned to have beaten the shit out of the [[Lamenters]] during the [[Badab War]], because the Lamenters chose the wrong side and the Minotaurs wanted an excuse to [[RIP AND TEAR]]. Then they disappeared. (to everyone's relief). Their color scheme was also fucking atrocious.

==...and in with the new==
[[File:Minotaurs Tact. Marine.jpg|250px|thumb|left|The Minotaurs have many suits of MKVIII "errant" pattern Power Armor.]]
The Minotaurs later popped up in [[Imperial Armour#Volume Ten - The Badab War - Part Two|Imperial Armour Volume 10]] and had their lore (and thankfully colour scheme) overhauled. They're still massive dicks though. Now the psycho-Minotaurs apparently disappeared thousands of years before the [[Badab War]], instead its these cunts who stomp stomp the poor Lamenters (and also take their stuff). They now dress like [[Iron Warriors|ancient Greeks]] and their Chapter Master, one [[Asterion Moloc]], appears to have pilfered the prop department from 300 for his outfit. They no longer maintain the "psychopathic berzerkers' flavour; instead (while still liking melee combat) they make and execute detailed battle plans focusing on siege and attrition warfare, being brooding, paranoid about security protocols, and very pragmatic. Example of that last trait being in [[Imperial Armour Volume 12]] here they let a good chunk of the [[Imperial Navy]] fight and die before they stepped in to give themselves a better chance against the Necrons (what assholes). They are essentially Greek-ier [[Iron Warriors]], who steal shit like the [[Blood Ravens]] (but instead of hijacking your stuff when you aren't looking, they will just mug you and take it). This better explains why they stole the Lamenters' stuff like the school bully shaking down the class nerd for his lunch money, once the old fight between the Lamenters and Minotaurs was retconned to have happened with these Minotaurs instead.

The chapter has vast stores of incredibly rare wargear, which includes: shittons of Mk8 [[power armor]], as well as Arkonak & Tartaros-pattern [[Terminator]]s and several [[Spartan Assault Tank]]s, the most [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank]]s out of any chapter, loads of [[Dreadnoughts]] (including the rare Contemptor-pattern), [[Storm Eagle#Roc Pattern|their very own Storm Eagle variant]], and at least one [[AWESOME|power spear/lascannon combo]] that might have been <s>jacked</s> gifted from the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. When you combine the stuff given to them by their [[High Lords of Terra|sugar daddies on Terra]] and the cool wargear they have stolen from other Chapters, they have no shortage of the best toys available to the Astartes.

They also act as the attack dogs of the [[High Lords of Terra|High Lords']], often acting under their direct orders and telling anyone in their way to piss off. Oh, and the [[Administratum]] records are sealed (under direct order of the [[High Lords]]), so that not even [[inquisitor|Inquisitors]] can easily (if at all) access them. Which implies something about them (gee, wonder what?) has at least some Inquisitors worried.

They also seem to have little to no respect for anyone aside from the High Lords and The Emperor, though they do not extend this respect to His chosen, going so far as to bad-mouth Custodes and Sisters of Silence to their faces. For another example, one of their [[Brother-Captain]]s is known to have insulted [[Marneus Calgar]] right in front of the [[Genesis Chapter]] (a 2nd founding [[Ultramarines]] descendant), basically telling them to stop sucking Calgar off 24/7; and the chapter later tore the [[Inceptors]] chapter (another Ultramarines successor) apart and stole all their stuff, formally pissing off the [[Ultramarines]] and all of their successors. The Ultramarines got so salty about this they even perma-banned the Minotaurs from entering [[Ultramar]] (as if the Minotaurs cared). The chapter also may or may not have shot down a [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight]] strike cruiser for trying to swoop in and steal all the glory of taking down a renegade chapter the Minotaurs had been hunting and fighting for awhile. Essentially they've told both of [[Matt Ward]]'s special snowflakes to go raw dog a plasma gun.

Needless to say, [[/tg/]] thinks they're pretty cool (and they are still massive dicks).

==Current Events==
During later M41 - early M42, the [[Death Guard]] directly besieged their space-borne [[Fortress-Monastery]] and poisoned their gene stocks beyond repair, forcing the Minotaurs to race towards [[Terra]] to restock their gene-vaults.

At least, that was the ''official'' reason, and as noted by [[Valerian]] in ''The Regent's Shadow'', no one was fooled by this, especially since the Daedalos Krata was ''right there''. The real reason for their return would be made clear very soon, however.

Once at Terra, the Chapter was tasked to work alongside the [[Imperial Fists]], [[Sisters of Silence]], and [[Adeptus Custodes]] in quelling a rebellion growing on Terra itself. During the course of the investigations they had to teach the Imperial Fists what they think of someone trying to steal their glory. i.e. the Imperial Fists tried to investigate a cultist kill-site cleared by the Minotaurs, aka the Imperial Fists were trying to steal the Minotaur's intel and get to the cultists first, and in response the Minotaurs killed the two Imperial Fists sent to investigate (after the Minotaurs warned them, and were promptly ignored by the Imperial Fists). An Imperial Fist got salty at this and tried to blow up at a Minotaur back at HQ. Said Imperial Fist got the shit beaten out of him by the Minotaur and made a fuckawful mess of the nice lady's house they were fighting in (that's actually not a joke). Their brawl continued until a Custodian interposed himself between the two, warning the Minotaur to calm the fuck down unless he wanted to try his luck with a Talon of the Emperor. The Minotaur called the Custodian some mean names but recognizing that he was outclassed, instead simply stormed out, while the grumpy Imperial Fist didn't even bother to thank the Custodian. [[Dick]].

Eventually the HQ of the cultists was discovered, and the Minotaurs were the first ones there. Launching a '''SIEGE''' of the enemy's HQ while the Imperial Fists and Custodes were just then managing to figure out where it was. It turns out the rebellions were caused by the former members of the High Lords who had since been exiled by the now revived Guilliman. At first it seemed that the Minotaurs had sided with the rebellious former High Lords, with Moloc himself standing by the former Master of the Administatium, Haemotalion. However, with the actual leaders of the rebellion sniffed out, assassins from the Vindicare Temple killed them all except for the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum (who wasn't actually a traitor, instead having infiltrated the traitors as part of the plan to find/kill them) and Moloc (who had "conveniently" left the room just before the kill order was given). In very short order, all hell broke loose. With no one being aware of who was on whose side, the Minotaurs came into direct combat with a small contingent of Custodes and Sisters of Silence. They killed a few Sisters of Silence, and even one of the Custodes (poor bastard was mobbed by multiple Minotaurs), but they suffered far greater losses themselves (as if they cared). Eventually though, a lot more Minotaurs showed up and started surrounding the Custodes and the Sisters, who had formed a perimeter around the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum to protect him (as the Minotaurs weren't told he wasn't actually one of the traitors). Moloc himself was about to 1v1 Custodes Shield-Captain Valerian (with Moloc making the Custodes feel as close to afraid as a Custodes could possibly be. Sort of. Bear in mind that in combat, the Custodes size up their adversaries and determine how to most efficiently kill them in milliseconds, effectively killing them before they've even crossed blades. In this case however, Valerian admitted he saw no flaw in Moloc's battle form, armour, or anything to exploit, and thus had 0 idea how to beat him before combat was begun, meaning he'd have to wing it, which Valerian REALLY didn't like.), before the actual, non-deposed Master of the Administratum (Violeta Roskavler, who had been promoted by Guilliman), teleported in and (whispering to Moloc) ordered the Minotaurs to stand down. Apparently this whole mess, for the most part, was [[Just As Planned]], as the Minotaurs later departed for Guilliman's [[Indomitus Crusade]] without any form of issues.

During the Indomitus Crusade, the Minotaurs put on their good ass-stomping boots to deal with some Thousand Sons who had taken over a space station.

==Chapter History and Geneseed Confusion==
There is a significant amount of [[DERP]] surrounding who their daddy is, how long they've been around, or if these are even all the same group of dicks. Like the [[Fire Angels]], the Minotaurs are an example of two chapters sharing the same name, even the sourcebooks point out that the [[Cursed Founding]] Minotaurs and the bronzy Minotaurs are so different that it's a possibility there are multiple chapters who have the same name. There isn't much of a question around only "a" Minotaurs chapter being made during the [[Cursed Founding]] in M36, the same books leaves it ambiguous by alluding to there having been different Minotaurs chapters (essentially keeping the ketchup-mustard-psycho Minotaurs canon alongside the "new" Minotaurs). Pulling things like having records of the "Minotaurs" being around as far back as back in M32 (tag teaming a bunch of Chaos-spark rebellions with some other Chapters, and noticably not just wiping their asses with the battle plans before bolting hell-for-leather into melee range), even tho psycho "Minotaurs" chapter is listed as M36 [[Cursed Founding]]; pointing out that "chimeric" geneseed Astartes (especially from the [[Cursed Founding]]) tend to be mentally/physically unstable, but the "new" Minotaurs are about as stable as you can get (the "old" Minotaurs tho....yeah); and highlighting the difference in behavior, look, and combat doctrines of the bronze colored Minotaurs compared to records of the yellow/red Minotaurs.

Given the yellow/red Minotaurs tendencies to absolutely annihilate whatever is in their way, completely forgo any sort of intel gathering or battle plans, and a [[Rip and tear|psychotic need to just rage rush the enemy to get their stabby-stab on]], it's certainly possible for them be successors to one (or more) of the more bloodthirsty legions such as the [[Blood Angels]] or [[World Eaters]]. A chimeric blend with another gene-line would certainly make sense with their [[Cursed Founding]] origins and batshit insanity.

The bronze Minotaurs being the chimeric ones makes markedly less sense, since they are pretty much free of any mutations and have in fact one of the highest [[gene-seed]] acceptance rates of any Chapter (a classic Iron Warriors trait). Given their "brooding, maligned, paranoid, and pragmantic" behaviors; obsessive and meticulous data-analysis; noted mastery of siege and attrition warfare (with a secondary preference for close range combat); and heavy ancient Greek theme, they are a near 1-1 match of the [[Iron Warriors]]. Their 5th/6th/7th edition chapter tactics are even the same as the 30k Iron Warriors Legiones Astartes rules. This makes sense, given their depiction in the [[Imperial Armour]] books basically being [[Iron Warriors]] with a bronze color scheme.

If the bronzy Minotaurs are [[Iron Warriors]] successors, it would go a long way in explaining why the [[High Lords]] keep their records well and far away from the [[Ordo Hereticus]].

According to Eadwin Brown, one of the developers of the Badab War: The current incarnation of the Minotaurs was formed by a garrison of [[Iron Warriors]] who were allowed to rejoin the Imperium (but put on a short leash by the High Lords) back during the [[Great Scouring]]. The reason for their lack of/confusing history (including a different chapter getting the same name) being a mix of deliberate actions of the [[High Lords]] not wanting to lose their personal pet Astartes and the difficulty of the Administratium's already shitty record keeping. Or maybe the Cursed Founding World Eater chimera Minotaurs were explicitly set up to fail in a deniable fashion that allowed the High Lords to get the Iron Warrior Minotaurs quietly formalised. If this is true, this raises all sorts of questions as to whether the Cursed Founding was deliberate to cover this up. It also means that there are probably many other Chapters like the Minotaurs from traitor legions. The Chapters that seem free of High Lord control but blatantly from traitor legions likely descend from those badass loyalists among the traitor legions. The Chapters held on a short leash by the High Lords are probably descended from traitor legion stock whose founders were of questionable loyalty, such as a surrendering garrison. Evidence of this might even be the excellent equipment they posses. After all, wouldn’t it be exactly like those dumb fucks to heavily equip possible traitors instead of loyal Chapters just so they can pretend to actually control them?

==Other Information==
[[File:Minotaurs Tartaros.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The Chapter has many Tartaros pattern suits and other relics.]]While the Minotaurs are strict followers of the [[Codex Astartes]], they're almost never seen as small groups or even individual companies. Every time they're deployed its always been at full Chapter strength. Their incredible effectiveness just goes to prove the Codex is awesome at a Chapter level and above. It isn’t like Guilliman didn’t study his brothers’ tactics, too. They fight in only one war zone at a time with the entire chapter fighting together. This makes them essentially a massive fucking beatstick that the High Lords call upon when shit hits the fan. They also have an unusual preference for killing other Space Marines, which made them feel right at home during the Badab War. Given their fancy new gear, their borderline omnicidal tendencies, and always operating as a full chapter, it would seem that the job of the "Emperor's Executioners" no longer falls upon the [[Space Wolves]]. They were probably created for fighting Chaos and renegade Marines and just sorta turned out pretty handy for forcing idiot [[Chapter]]s into line.

To the High Lord’s credit, the Minotaurs seem to not be an abuse of power. The Chapters they beat up are let go if they flee or surrender early instead of digging in. Those that keep fighting are curbstomped, but not exterminated. And when they beat on Marines, it’s hard to argue that the receivers of said beating didn’t deserve it (save in [[Lamenters|very specific instances]] and even then, the blame for THAT falls squarely on the High Lords paranoia and [[Lugft Huron]] being an arrogant dickass).

Unlike most Chapters, the Minotaurs appear to be able to replenish their numbers at an accelerated rate, to the point that they could recover from losses in a fraction of the time it would take other Chapters a century or two to fully recover from. This allows them to quickly rebuild their force to full Chapter strength, even after suffering what would normally be unsustainable causalities. Imperial observers during the Antigonis campaign theorized that this may have something to do with the heavy use of hypnotherapy and neuro-cerebral therapy used in the training of neophytes and frequently "refreshed" with the help of Apothecaries in the Chapter. This has proven to have some unpleasant side-effects- the Minotaurs are highly xenophobic and paranoid, even by the high standards of the Imperium. These are bonus perks in a galaxy in which not being sufficiently xenophobic and paranoid gets you or your soul eaten.

There's also a good chance that they recruit from [[Terra]] itself thanks to their connections with the High Lords, giving them a massive recruit pool, as the Imperial Fists are also able to replenish losses equally fast thanks to having billions of potential candidates. This is mostly due to the Imperial Fists building recruitment posts on every world they rescue from invasion. Even then they request permission first as Dorn said he "...want recruits, not vassals". The Black Templars also do this and benefit greatly from this method. And since the Minotaurs gene-seed tithes are locked away nice and tight, no one is sure who their progenitors are.

Aside from the hideous old ketchup-and-mustard motherfuckers and the Greek muggers, there are also a pair of Chapters called the [[Brazen Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs wearing the [[Taurans]]' chapter badge) and [[White Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs but with a white Tauran bullhead badge). There isn't much fluff on them, being two of those Chapters with a name and a color design and nothing else.

==(In)famous Campaigns==
*'''[[Solar Rebellion]]''' - The Chapter is listed among the Imperial Forces tasked with bulldozing the many [[Chaos Cults]] sparked by the [[World Eaters]], [[Iron Warriors]], and [[Night Lords]] within the western Segmentum Solar. The interesting part is, [[Time of Rebirth|this was in M32...]] the [[Cursed Founding]] was in M36...
*'''[[Macharian Heresy]]''' - The Chapter is called to deal with the petty star empires created by the former generals of [[Lord Solar Macharius]]. They crush one after the other, following all of the High Lord's orders without question, and causing a lot of collateral damage in the process.
*'''Euxine Incident''' - ''The'' action that earned the Chapter their reputation. Still during the [[Macharian Heresy]], the [[Inceptors]] Chapter got involved in a fight with the Doom Warriors. They were supposedly drinking buddies before-hand but their friendship was broken over [[Lawful Stupid|matters of "honor"]]. The Imperium, not wanting ''more bullshit'', sent in the Minotaurs to beat some sense into them. The Chapter, in it's [[rape|usual style]], hit both chapters at once. The Doom Warriors, having some sense gained from this initial strike, left the Euxine system. The Inceptors did not leave. Instead they dug in and fought the Minotaurs like men. They lost, and the 100 surviving Inceptors were forced to surrender at barrel point. After they surrendered, [[That Guy|the Minotaurs robbed their relics, jacked Battle-Barge, and left.]] The [[Ultramarines]], seeing at how one of their own [[second founding]] successors got treated like shit, declared that the Minotaurs were permabanned from [[Ultramar]]. Nothing like punishing a loyalist Chapter for beating up civil war mongering renegades to prove your own loyalty.
*'''Defense of Hermetica''' - The heavily-fortified capital of a sector located in the [[Segmentum]] Solar finds itself overwhelmed when the [[Word Bearers]] suddenly dropped from a warp rift in a motherfucking [[Space Hulk]] filled to the brim with [[Mutant]]s. The Minotaurs are the first imperial force to respond: they track the [[Dark Apostle]] into the main cathedral, and decide to blast their way in with orbital bombardement and tanks regardless of civilian casualties. [[Asterion Moloc]] and his [[Terminator]]s slaugther their way into the catacombs, but the Dark Apostle escapes before he can be dealt the killing blow.
*'''[[Badab War]]''' - You know this one: [[Lugft Huron]] declares independance from the [[High Lords of Terra]], and a fuckton of chapters are sent his way to remind him why that is not a thing. The Minotaurs gained several important victories during this time, but would be more infamously remembered for the shit they did to the poor [[Lamenters]]. (The same thing they did to the [[Inceptors]]) Suffice to say, if anyone had any doubts on their behavior before, those doubts were quickly dispelled after that.
*'''Battle of Rynn's World''' - The Minotaurs saw action on Rynn's World during the attempt to reclaim the [[Crimson Fists]]' homeworld from the [[Orks]]. Shockingly, they didn't attempt anything like scavenging the ruins of the Crimson Fists [[Fortress-Monastery]]. Maybe it has something to do with [[Alexis Polux|who founded the Crimson Fists]]....and a certain friendship he had with [[Barabas Dantioch|a particular loyal Iron Warrior]].
*'''Harrowing of the Night Reapers''' The aforementionned [[Chapter]] had been sent on penitent crusade to the a dengerous backwater nebula as punishment for abandoning a Shrine World to the forces of Chaos. They went radio silent after a while, and steadly started to deviate from [[Codex]] doctrine, tactics, and equipment. Six years after last contact and many suspicious raids in the area, irrefutable proof of their attack on a [[Rogue Trader]] vessel earned them an ''Excommunicate Traitoris''. Four companies of the [[Avenging Sons]] went after them, but that chapter can't do anything right and got ambushed by the Night Reapers, who captured one of their [[Space Marine Strike Cruiser|Star Cruisers]] and mauled another. They blamed their humilliating defeat on "Warp flame weapons" that bypassed [[Void shields]], so the High Lords had to send someone who could actually [[get shit done]]: The Minotaurs and the [[Red Hunters]]. (now we're talking) The two Chapters fought the Night Reapers and their heretekal Xeno-tech across a dozen star systems until they cornered them at a pre-human space wreck so massive it had it's own athmosphere and ecosystem. The Night Reapers were searching for a weapon that they beleived would allow them to defeat the Imperials, when a [[Grey Knights]] ship showed up demanding all Imperial forces to pull back. The Minotaurs, naturally, didn't give a fuck and kept fighting. The Knights of Titan had to launch their teleport assault in the midst of the battle. Shortly after, something happened that caused everyone to get BTFO to kingdom come: Minotaurs, Night Reapers, and Grey Knights alike. The Grey Knight's strike cruise was somehow damaged by the blast....and it somehow killed everyone onboard. [[Asterion Moloc]] was [[Phoenix Lord|the only survivor]].
*'''[[Orphean War]]''' - Karma finally starts catching up to the Chapter's douchebaggery when they have to face the Necrons of the [[Maynarkh Dynasty]]. They lose their stolen ships in the desperate assault against the necron fleet over Amarah Prime, and take many casualties that would be sorely felt later in their race back to [[Terra]]. Moloc <s>dies</s> [[Phoenix Lord|almost dies]] again, this time by achieving a mutual KO against the Maynarkh [[Necron Overlord|Overlord]] Makthlan Kutlakh the World Killer.

==Daily Rituals==
This is before roboute guillimans return

:04:00 Wake Up: The Minotaurs arise from their beds (each Minotaur has their own king-sized bed with luxury mattress and comforter). They make sure to beat up a dummy space marine before leaving.
:05:00 Morning Prayer: The Minotaurs gather in the chapel to praise the Emperor. They also praise the High Lords of Terra. Any battle brother who prays to not have to kill other space marines is put in the "patience chamber".
:06:00 Morning Firing Rituals: The Minotaurs pull live space marines from the "patience chamber" to practice firing upon. Any battle brother whose shot kills the space marine instantly is put into the "patience chamber".
:08:00 Morning Battle Practice: The Minotaurs release captured prisoners within the "patience chamber." Imprisoned members include failed Minotaurs, rebellious Ultramarines (and successors), Marines Malevolent, Fallen, The <s>victims</s> participants are then forced to fight the entire chapter with substandard equipment.
:10:00 Morning Tactical Indoctrination: The Minotaurs finish off the last of their prisoners and gather together in the Great Hall to discuss strategy. Common tactics involve marching right through enemy fire, throwing allied units into enemy fire THEN marching through whats left, missile strikes on engaged melee units, and techniques to kill other space marines. Any battle brother who points out the faults in these tactics is put in the "patience chamber" (any actual faults are noted for later tactical refinement).
:11:00 Afternoon Prayer: The Minotaurs give thanks to the High Lords of Terra for allowing them to be such dicks. In a sacred ritual, each battle brother is required to kiss the butt of golden statues honoring the High Lords Of Terra. Any battle brother who claims this is gay is sent to the "patience chamber".
:12:00 Afternoon Meal: The Minotaurs gather to feast upon fine meats and food provided by their besties: the High Lords. Serfs rush quickly to ensure that each marine is fed to his heart's content. Those who don't clean their plates are sent to the "patience chamber".
:13:00 Afternoon Battle Practice: The Minotaurs descend to any number of worlds in order to hone their space marine killing skills. The Lamenters are the most frequent target, but Baal and Ultramar are also popular destinations. A number of the the targeted space marines are captured and put in the "patience chamber". The food stocks of enemy forces are taken for Evening Meal.
:15:00 Afternoon Firing Rites: The Minotaurs practice shooting at cutouts for once. These cutouts are usually painted [[Ultramarines|blue]], [[Lamenters|yellow]], or [[Grey Knights|grey]].
:16:00 Enhanced Tactical Indoctrine: The Minotaurs learn how to most effectively teamkill each army in the Imperium. During this time, they also will use artillery and vehicle simulators in order to practice causing the most possible destruction upon space marines fortifications such as: driving tanks straight through walls and orbital strikes on Astartes medical station.
:17:00 Recruitment: <s>Slaves</s> Fresh recruits arrive from Terra. These are force to either serve as serfs for the chapter, or begin the Minotaurs' <s>forced reprogramming</s> training process. Imperial Officials are ordered to turn a blind eye to this process, causing the Salamanders to [[RAGE]].
:18:00 Evening Meal: The Minotaurs feast once again, devouring the food stocks taken during Afternoon Battle Practice, infront of the survivors of who they took it from. Any brother who feels guilty about this is sent to the "patience chamber".
:20:00 Propaganda: Minotaurs gather in the Great Hall [[Bullshit|to listen to the brilliant, enlightened, sophisticated, and productive conversations that the High Lords partake in.]] Any battle brother who dozes off or claims the High Lords are full of shit is sent to the "patience chamber".
:22:00 Free time: The Minotaurs are granted free time. This mostly involves reading the excessive number of manuals on how to kill space marines, beating each other up as practice, and repainting wargear taken from other Chapters.
:23:00 Bed Time: The Minotaurs retire to their quarters for the evening. Before falling asleep, they beat up the space marine dummy again.

==Tabletop==

===Chapter Approved===
When the first Minotaurs were introduced as one of the Cursed Founding chapters, for +10 points per model, or +20 per dreadnought (on top of the regular costs) you could give your entire army Fearless and +1 Attack though they had to move towards and assault the nearest enemy they could (even if they had no chance of hurting it) and had to sweep advance, but nobody did it because painting them WAS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. Both because they had the most annoying colour scheme (worse than the quarter ones like the [[Howling Griffons]]) and because their colours made them look fucking ugly.

===6th Edition===
With the updates they got their own Chapter Tactics. Minotaurs Chapter Tactics models don't take morale checks from shooting attacks, and can re-roll failed pinning tests. In addition they have crusader USR, and +1 to charge distance when in the enemy deployment zone. Overall one of the [[fail|worst]] Chapter Tactics. Crusader certainly is nice to have, but ATSKNF makes re-rolling pinning and no morale checks from shooting pretty redundant. If you're gonna play Minotaurs you're gonna have to bring Moloc, who is a fucking monster in CC while gaining a VP per character executed in a challenge ''and'' giving your guys Prefered Enemy (Space Marines). So if you didn't get the memo, Minotaurs are meant to be run with Moloc as your Warlord against other Space Marine armies. If a friend of yours is running a really annoying Space Marine army, especially if he has Smashfucker, sic these guys on him and watch him cry.

===8th Edition===
How 8th Edition treated Forge World chapters is an issue of [[skub|intense debate]]. Sure, you can choose whatever tactic you want, but it still feels like an afterthought on the part of Games Workshop. That aside, Moloc and Aiakos came out of the update relatively unscathed, still being hard nuts to crack and very lethal overall, but with loss of initiative, and Moloc has lost the main thing he was taken for - the godsent army-wide Preferred enemy: Space Marines. Instead he can "do the wulfen" now. Ivanus, however, has lost all of his utility and is just an overpriced Chaplain with attacks and wounds of a captain, and no longer gains an extra attack from having two specialist weapons. Hecaton fell into category of Characters too fat to use Character rule and costs a little shy of a goddamn GALLANT KNIGHT but with Hero of the Chapter strategem can be a pain in the ass on a city map. Kraatos also no longer exists as of the FAQ, with Forge World telling you to just [[fail|use him as a regular devastator marine]]. ROC pattern Storm Eagle still rocks though.

===9th Edition===
As of the Imperial Armour Compendium, they play up the Minotaurs siege warfare specialization. Suggesting they be played using the Imperial Fists supplement, with the Stalwart and Duelist traits.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Minotaurs_Original_Scheme.jpg|[[Fail|Their original scheme]], just try and paint an entire Chapter of them.
File:Veteran_Brother_Isskar.PNG|Stylized red markings are used to identify [[Veteran Squad]]s...
File:Sternguard_Veteran_Thoul.PNG|...And sergeants
</gallery>

{{Marines-Official}}

Minotaurs

2021-06-25T07:46:02Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* ...and in with the new */

{{Infobox Spess Mahreen Chapter
|Name = Minotaurs
|Heraldry = [[File:Minotaurs Symbol.jpg|200px]]
|Number = N/A
|Battle Cry = That's a nice watch. (Presumably)
|Founding = [[21st Founding]] (Supposedly)
|Successors of = '''+++Classified by order of the [[High Lords]]+++''' (The original Minotaurs are unknown; the new Minotaurs are all but confirmed to use Iron Warriors geneseed. Hints that one of the two are chimeric, money's on the unstable psychopaths)
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = [[Asterion Moloc]]
|Primarch = Unknown; Angron (yellow/red Minotaurs "probably"); Perturabo (bronze Minotaurs)
|Homeworld = Fleet Based
|Specialty = (Old) Being psychotic [[Leeroy Jenkins]]; (New) Beating the shit out of other [[Space Marines]], taking their stuff, pissing off the [[Ultramarines]], siege warfare, and being the [[High Lords]]' personal army.
|Strength = 1000 (Officially)
|Allegiance = [[High Lords of Terra]]
|Colours = (old) Ketchup & Mustard stripes; (new) Bronze with a little Red.
}}
''If you are looking for the bull-headed beastmen from Greek mythology, see [[Minotaur]].''

==Out with the old...==
The '''Minotaurs''' (also known as the Moomarines) are a [[Chapter]] of [[Space Marine]]s and massive dicks. They were formed in the [[21st Founding|Cursed Founding]] as psychopathic berzerkers and were possibly successors to more stab-happy legions, like the [[Blood Angels]] (looking at you [[Flesh Tearers | Sanguine Berzerkers]]) or [[World Eaters]]. They first appeared in [[White Dwarf]] as one of the playable Chapters for the Chapter Approved Cursed founding article where they were also mentioned to have beaten the shit out of the [[Lamenters]] during the [[Badab War]], because the Lamenters chose the wrong side and the Minotaurs wanted an excuse to [[RIP AND TEAR]]. Then they disappeared. (to everyone's relief). Their color scheme was also fucking atrocious.

==...and in with the new==
[[File:Minotaurs Tact. Marine.jpg|250px|thumb|left|The Minotaurs have many suits of MKVIII "errant" pattern Power Armor.]]
The Minotaurs later popped up in [[Imperial Armour#Volume Ten - The Badab War - Part Two|Imperial Armour Volume 10]] and had their lore (and thankfully colour scheme) overhauled. They're still massive dicks though. Now the psycho-Minotaurs apparently disappeared thousands of years before the [[Badab War]], instead its these cunts who stomp stomp the poor Lamenters (and also take their stuff). They now dress like [[Iron Warriors|ancient Greeks]] and their Chapter Master, one [[Asterion Moloc]], appears to have pilfered the prop department from 300 for his outfit. They no longer maintain the "psychopathic berzerkers' flavour; instead (while still liking melee combat) they make and execute detailed battle plans focusing on siege and attrition warfare, being brooding, paranoid about security protocols, and very pragmatic. Example of that last trait being in [[Imperial Armour Volume 12]] here they let a good chunk of the [[Imperial Navy]] fight and die before they stepped in to give themselves a better chance against the Necrons (what assholes). They are essentially Greek-ier [[Iron Warriors]], who steal shit like the [[Blood Ravens]] (but instead of hijacking your stuff when you aren't looking, they will just mug you and take it). This better explains why they stole the Lamenters' stuff like the school bully shaking down the class nerd for his lunch money, once the old fight between the Lamenters and Minotaurs was retconned to have happened with these Minotaurs instead.

The chapter has vast stores of incredibly rare wargear, which includes: shittons of Mk8 [[power armor]], as well as Arkonak & Tartaros-pattern [[Terminator]]s and several [[Spartan Assault Tank]]s, the most [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank]]s out of any chapter, loads of [[Dreadnoughts]] (including the rare Contemptor-pattern), [[Storm Eagle#Roc Pattern|their very own Storm Eagle variant]], and at least one [[AWESOME|power spear/lascannon combo]] that might have been <s>jacked</s> gifted from the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. When you combine the stuff given to them by their [[High Lords of Terra|sugar daddies on Terra]] and the cool wargear they have stolen from other Chapters, they have no shortage of the best toys available to the Astartes.

They also act as the attack dogs of the [[High Lords of Terra|High Lords']], often acting under their direct orders and telling anyone in their way to piss off. Oh, and the [[Administratum]] records are sealed (under direct order of the [[High Lords]]), so that not even [[inquisitor|Inquisitors]] can easily (if at all) access them. Which implies something about them (gee, wonder what?) has at least some Inquisitors worried.

They also seem to have little to no respect for anyone aside from the High Lords and The Emperor, though they do not extend this respect to His chosen, going so far as to bad mouth Custodes and Sisters of Silence to their faces. For another example, one of their [[Brother-Captain]]s is known to have insulted [[Marneus Calgar]] right in front of the [[Genesis Chapter]] (a 2nd founding [[Ultramarines]] descendant), basically telling them to stop sucking Calgar off 24/7; and the chapter later tore the [[Inceptors]] chapter (another Ultramarines successor) apart and stole all their stuff, formally pissing off the [[Ultramarines]] and all of their successors. The Ultramarines got so salty about this they even perma-banned the Minotaurs from entering [[Ultramar]] (as if the Minotaurs cared). The chapter also may or may not have shot down a [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight]] strike cruiser for trying to swoop in and steal all the glory of taking down a renegade chapter the Minotaurs had been hunting and fighting for awhile. Essentially they've told both of [[Matt Ward]]'s special snowflakes to go raw dog a plasma gun.

Needless to say, [[/tg/]] thinks they're pretty cool (and they are still massive dicks).

==Current Events==
During later M41 - early M42, the [[Death Guard]] directly besieged their space-borne [[Fortress-Monastery]] and poisoned their gene stocks beyond repair, forcing the Minotaurs to race towards [[Terra]] to restock their gene-vaults.

At least, that was the ''official'' reason, and as noted by [[Valerian]] in ''The Regent's Shadow'', no one was fooled by this, especially since the Daedalos Krata was ''right there''. The real reason for their return would be made clear very soon, however.

Once at Terra, the Chapter was tasked to work alongside the [[Imperial Fists]], [[Sisters of Silence]], and [[Adeptus Custodes]] in quelling a rebellion growing on Terra itself. During the course of the investigations they had to teach the Imperial Fists what they think of someone trying to steal their glory. i.e. the Imperial Fists tried to investigate a cultist kill-site cleared by the Minotaurs, aka the Imperial Fists were trying to steal the Minotaur's intel and get to the cultists first, and in response the Minotaurs killed the two Imperial Fists sent to investigate (after the Minotaurs warned them, and were promptly ignored by the Imperial Fists). An Imperial Fist got salty at this and tried to blow up at a Minotaur back at HQ. Said Imperial Fist got the shit beaten out of him by the Minotaur and made a fuckawful mess of the nice lady's house they were fighting in (that's actually not a joke). Their brawl continued until a Custodian interposed himself between the two, warning the Minotaur to calm the fuck down unless he wanted to try his luck with a Talon of the Emperor. The Minotaur called the Custodian some mean names but recognizing that he was outclassed, instead simply stormed out, while the grumpy Imperial Fist didn't even bother to thank the Custodian. [[Dick]].

Eventually the HQ of the cultists was discovered, and the Minotaurs were the first ones there. Launching a '''SIEGE''' of the enemy's HQ while the Imperial Fists and Custodes were just then managing to figure out where it was. It turns out the rebellions were caused by the former members of the High Lords who had since been exiled by the now revived Guilliman. At first it seemed that the Minotaurs had sided with the rebellious former High Lords, with Moloc himself standing by the former Master of the Administatium, Haemotalion. However, with the actual leaders of the rebellion sniffed out, assassins from the Vindicare Temple killed them all except for the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum (who wasn't actually a traitor, instead having infiltrated the traitors as part of the plan to find/kill them) and Moloc (who had "conveniently" left the room just before the kill order was given). In very short order, all hell broke loose. With no one being aware of who was on whose side, the Minotaurs came into direct combat with a small contingent of Custodes and Sisters of Silence. They killed a few Sisters of Silence, and even one of the Custodes (poor bastard was mobbed by multiple Minotaurs), but they suffered far greater losses themselves (as if they cared). Eventually though, a lot more Minotaurs showed up and started surrounding the Custodes and the Sisters, who had formed a perimeter around the Grandmaster of the Assassinorum to protect him (as the Minotaurs weren't told he wasn't actually one of the traitors). Moloc himself was about to 1v1 Custodes Shield-Captain Valerian (with Moloc making the Custodes feel as close to afraid as a Custodes could possibly be. Sort of. Bear in mind that in combat, the Custodes size up their adversaries and determine how to most efficiently kill them in milliseconds, effectively killing them before they've even crossed blades. In this case however, Valerian admitted he saw no flaw in Moloc's battle form, armour, or anything to exploit, and thus had 0 idea how to beat him before combat was begun, meaning he'd have to wing it, which Valerian REALLY didn't like.), before the actual, non-deposed Master of the Administratum (Violeta Roskavler, who had been promoted by Guilliman), teleported in and (whispering to Moloc) ordered the Minotaurs to stand down. Apparently this whole mess, for the most part, was [[Just As Planned]], as the Minotaurs later departed for Guilliman's [[Indomitus Crusade]] without any form of issues.

During the Indomitus Crusade, the Minotaurs put on their good ass-stomping boots to deal with some Thousand Sons who had taken over a space station.

==Chapter History and Geneseed Confusion==
There is a significant amount of [[DERP]] surrounding who their daddy is, how long they've been around, or if these are even all the same group of dicks. Like the [[Fire Angels]], the Minotaurs are an example of two chapters sharing the same name, even the sourcebooks point out that the [[Cursed Founding]] Minotaurs and the bronzy Minotaurs are so different that it's a possibility there are multiple chapters who have the same name. There isn't much of a question around only "a" Minotaurs chapter being made during the [[Cursed Founding]] in M36, the same books leaves it ambiguous by alluding to there having been different Minotaurs chapters (essentially keeping the ketchup-mustard-psycho Minotaurs canon alongside the "new" Minotaurs). Pulling things like having records of the "Minotaurs" being around as far back as back in M32 (tag teaming a bunch of Chaos-spark rebellions with some other Chapters, and noticably not just wiping their asses with the battle plans before bolting hell-for-leather into melee range), even tho psycho "Minotaurs" chapter is listed as M36 [[Cursed Founding]]; pointing out that "chimeric" geneseed Astartes (especially from the [[Cursed Founding]]) tend to be mentally/physically unstable, but the "new" Minotaurs are about as stable as you can get (the "old" Minotaurs tho....yeah); and highlighting the difference in behavior, look, and combat doctrines of the bronze colored Minotaurs compared to records of the yellow/red Minotaurs.

Given the yellow/red Minotaurs tendencies to absolutely annihilate whatever is in their way, completely forgo any sort of intel gathering or battle plans, and a [[Rip and tear|psychotic need to just rage rush the enemy to get their stabby-stab on]], it's certainly possible for them be successors to one (or more) of the more bloodthirsty legions such as the [[Blood Angels]] or [[World Eaters]]. A chimeric blend with another gene-line would certainly make sense with their [[Cursed Founding]] origins and batshit insanity.

The bronze Minotaurs being the chimeric ones makes markedly less sense, since they are pretty much free of any mutations and have in fact one of the highest [[gene-seed]] acceptance rates of any Chapter (a classic Iron Warriors trait). Given their "brooding, maligned, paranoid, and pragmantic" behaviors; obsessive and meticulous data-analysis; noted mastery of siege and attrition warfare (with a secondary preference for close range combat); and heavy ancient Greek theme, they are a near 1-1 match of the [[Iron Warriors]]. Their 5th/6th/7th edition chapter tactics are even the same as the 30k Iron Warriors Legiones Astartes rules. This makes sense, given their depiction in the [[Imperial Armour]] books basically being [[Iron Warriors]] with a bronze color scheme.

If the bronzy Minotaurs are [[Iron Warriors]] successors, it would go a long way in explaining why the [[High Lords]] keep their records well and far away from the [[Ordo Hereticus]].

According to Eadwin Brown, one of the developers of the Badab War: The current incarnation of the Minotaurs was formed by a garrison of [[Iron Warriors]] who were allowed to rejoin the Imperium (but put on a short leash by the High Lords) back during the [[Great Scouring]]. The reason for their lack of/confusing history (including a different chapter getting the same name) being a mix of deliberate actions of the [[High Lords]] not wanting to lose their personal pet Astartes and the difficulty of the Administratium's already shitty record keeping. Or maybe the Cursed Founding World Eater chimera Minotaurs were explicitly set up to fail in a deniable fashion that allowed the High Lords to get the Iron Warrior Minotaurs quietly formalised. If this is true, this raises all sorts of questions as to whether the Cursed Founding was deliberate to cover this up. It also means that there are probably many other Chapters like the Minotaurs from traitor legions. The Chapters that seem free of High Lord control but blatantly from traitor legions likely descend from those badass loyalists among the traitor legions. The Chapters held on a short leash by the High Lords are probably descended from traitor legion stock whose founders were of questionable loyalty, such as a surrendering garrison. Evidence of this might even be the excellent equipment they posses. After all, wouldn’t it be exactly like those dumb fucks to heavily equip possible traitors instead of loyal Chapters just so they can pretend to actually control them?

==Other Information==
[[File:Minotaurs Tartaros.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The Chapter has many Tartaros pattern suits and other relics.]]While the Minotaurs are strict followers of the [[Codex Astartes]], they're almost never seen as small groups or even individual companies. Every time they're deployed its always been at full Chapter strength. Their incredible effectiveness just goes to prove the Codex is awesome at a Chapter level and above. It isn’t like Guilliman didn’t study his brothers’ tactics, too. They fight in only one war zone at a time with the entire chapter fighting together. This makes them essentially a massive fucking beatstick that the High Lords call upon when shit hits the fan. They also have an unusual preference for killing other Space Marines, which made them feel right at home during the Badab War. Given their fancy new gear, their borderline omnicidal tendencies, and always operating as a full chapter, it would seem that the job of the "Emperor's Executioners" no longer falls upon the [[Space Wolves]]. They were probably created for fighting Chaos and renegade Marines and just sorta turned out pretty handy for forcing idiot [[Chapter]]s into line.

To the High Lord’s credit, the Minotaurs seem to not be an abuse of power. The Chapters they beat up are let go if they flee or surrender early instead of digging in. Those that keep fighting are curbstomped, but not exterminated. And when they beat on Marines, it’s hard to argue that the receivers of said beating didn’t deserve it (save in [[Lamenters|very specific instances]] and even then, the blame for THAT falls squarely on the High Lords paranoia and [[Lugft Huron]] being an arrogant dickass).

Unlike most Chapters, the Minotaurs appear to be able to replenish their numbers at an accelerated rate, to the point that they could recover from losses in a fraction of the time it would take other Chapters a century or two to fully recover from. This allows them to quickly rebuild their force to full Chapter strength, even after suffering what would normally be unsustainable causalities. Imperial observers during the Antigonis campaign theorized that this may have something to do with the heavy use of hypnotherapy and neuro-cerebral therapy used in the training of neophytes and frequently "refreshed" with the help of Apothecaries in the Chapter. This has proven to have some unpleasant side-effects- the Minotaurs are highly xenophobic and paranoid, even by the high standards of the Imperium. These are bonus perks in a galaxy in which not being sufficiently xenophobic and paranoid gets you or your soul eaten.

There's also a good chance that they recruit from [[Terra]] itself thanks to their connections with the High Lords, giving them a massive recruit pool, as the Imperial Fists are also able to replenish losses equally fast thanks to having billions of potential candidates. This is mostly due to the Imperial Fists building recruitment posts on every world they rescue from invasion. Even then they request permission first as Dorn said he "...want recruits, not vassals". The Black Templars also do this and benefit greatly from this method. And since the Minotaurs gene-seed tithes are locked away nice and tight, no one is sure who their progenitors are.

Aside from the hideous old ketchup-and-mustard motherfuckers and the Greek muggers, there are also a pair of Chapters called the [[Brazen Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs wearing the [[Taurans]]' chapter badge) and [[White Minotaurs]] (looks like the Minotaurs but with a white Tauran bullhead badge). There isn't much fluff on them, being two of those Chapters with a name and a color design and nothing else.

==(In)famous Campaigns==
*'''[[Solar Rebellion]]''' - The Chapter is listed among the Imperial Forces tasked with bulldozing the many [[Chaos Cults]] sparked by the [[World Eaters]], [[Iron Warriors]], and [[Night Lords]] within the western Segmentum Solar. The interesting part is, [[Time of Rebirth|this was in M32...]] the [[Cursed Founding]] was in M36...
*'''[[Macharian Heresy]]''' - The Chapter is called to deal with the petty star empires created by the former generals of [[Lord Solar Macharius]]. They crush one after the other, following all of the High Lord's orders without question, and causing a lot of collateral damage in the process.
*'''Euxine Incident''' - ''The'' action that earned the Chapter their reputation. Still during the [[Macharian Heresy]], the [[Inceptors]] Chapter got involved in a fight with the Doom Warriors. They were supposedly drinking buddies before-hand but their friendship was broken over [[Lawful Stupid|matters of "honor"]]. The Imperium, not wanting ''more bullshit'', sent in the Minotaurs to beat some sense into them. The Chapter, in it's [[rape|usual style]], hit both chapters at once. The Doom Warriors, having some sense gained from this initial strike, left the Euxine system. The Inceptors did not leave. Instead they dug in and fought the Minotaurs like men. They lost, and the 100 surviving Inceptors were forced to surrender at barrel point. After they surrendered, [[That Guy|the Minotaurs robbed their relics, jacked Battle-Barge, and left.]] The [[Ultramarines]], seeing at how one of their own [[second founding]] successors got treated like shit, declared that the Minotaurs were permabanned from [[Ultramar]]. Nothing like punishing a loyalist Chapter for beating up civil war mongering renegades to prove your own loyalty.
*'''Defense of Hermetica''' - The heavily-fortified capital of a sector located in the [[Segmentum]] Solar finds itself overwhelmed when the [[Word Bearers]] suddenly dropped from a warp rift in a motherfucking [[Space Hulk]] filled to the brim with [[Mutant]]s. The Minotaurs are the first imperial force to respond: they track the [[Dark Apostle]] into the main cathedral, and decide to blast their way in with orbital bombardement and tanks regardless of civilian casualties. [[Asterion Moloc]] and his [[Terminator]]s slaugther their way into the catacombs, but the Dark Apostle escapes before he can be dealt the killing blow.
*'''[[Badab War]]''' - You know this one: [[Lugft Huron]] declares independance from the [[High Lords of Terra]], and a fuckton of chapters are sent his way to remind him why that is not a thing. The Minotaurs gained several important victories during this time, but would be more infamously remembered for the shit they did to the poor [[Lamenters]]. (The same thing they did to the [[Inceptors]]) Suffice to say, if anyone had any doubts on their behavior before, those doubts were quickly dispelled after that.
*'''Battle of Rynn's World''' - The Minotaurs saw action on Rynn's World during the attempt to reclaim the [[Crimson Fists]]' homeworld from the [[Orks]]. Shockingly, they didn't attempt anything like scavenging the ruins of the Crimson Fists [[Fortress-Monastery]]. Maybe it has something to do with [[Alexis Polux|who founded the Crimson Fists]]....and a certain friendship he had with [[Barabas Dantioch|a particular loyal Iron Warrior]].
*'''Harrowing of the Night Reapers''' The aforementionned [[Chapter]] had been sent on penitent crusade to the a dengerous backwater nebula as punishment for abandoning a Shrine World to the forces of Chaos. They went radio silent after a while, and steadly started to deviate from [[Codex]] doctrine, tactics, and equipment. Six years after last contact and many suspicious raids in the area, irrefutable proof of their attack on a [[Rogue Trader]] vessel earned them an ''Excommunicate Traitoris''. Four companies of the [[Avenging Sons]] went after them, but that chapter can't do anything right and got ambushed by the Night Reapers, who captured one of their [[Space Marine Strike Cruiser|Star Cruisers]] and mauled another. They blamed their humilliating defeat on "Warp flame weapons" that bypassed [[Void shields]], so the High Lords had to send someone who could actually [[get shit done]]: The Minotaurs and the [[Red Hunters]]. (now we're talking) The two Chapters fought the Night Reapers and their heretekal Xeno-tech across a dozen star systems until they cornered them at a pre-human space wreck so massive it had it's own athmosphere and ecosystem. The Night Reapers were searching for a weapon that they beleived would allow them to defeat the Imperials, when a [[Grey Knights]] ship showed up demanding all Imperial forces to pull back. The Minotaurs, naturally, didn't give a fuck and kept fighting. The Knights of Titan had to launch their teleport assault in the midst of the battle. Shortly after, something happened that caused everyone to get BTFO to kingdom come: Minotaurs, Night Reapers, and Grey Knights alike. The Grey Knight's strike cruise was somehow damaged by the blast....and it somehow killed everyone onboard. [[Asterion Moloc]] was [[Phoenix Lord|the only survivor]].
*'''[[Orphean War]]''' - Karma finally starts catching up to the Chapter's douchebaggery when they have to face the Necrons of the [[Maynarkh Dynasty]]. They lose their stolen ships in the desperate assault against the necron fleet over Amarah Prime, and take many casualties that would be sorely felt later in their race back to [[Terra]]. Moloc <s>dies</s> [[Phoenix Lord|almost dies]] again, this time by achieving a mutual KO against the Maynarkh [[Necron Overlord|Overlord]] Makthlan Kutlakh the World Killer.

==Daily Rituals==
This is before roboute guillimans return

:04:00 Wake Up: The Minotaurs arise from their beds (each Minotaur has their own king-sized bed with luxury mattress and comforter). They make sure to beat up a dummy space marine before leaving.
:05:00 Morning Prayer: The Minotaurs gather in the chapel to praise the Emperor. They also praise the High Lords of Terra. Any battle brother who prays to not have to kill other space marines is put in the "patience chamber".
:06:00 Morning Firing Rituals: The Minotaurs pull live space marines from the "patience chamber" to practice firing upon. Any battle brother whose shot kills the space marine instantly is put into the "patience chamber".
:08:00 Morning Battle Practice: The Minotaurs release captured prisoners within the "patience chamber." Imprisoned members include failed Minotaurs, rebellious Ultramarines (and successors), Marines Malevolent, Fallen, The <s>victims</s> participants are then forced to fight the entire chapter with substandard equipment.
:10:00 Morning Tactical Indoctrination: The Minotaurs finish off the last of their prisoners and gather together in the Great Hall to discuss strategy. Common tactics involve marching right through enemy fire, throwing allied units into enemy fire THEN marching through whats left, missile strikes on engaged melee units, and techniques to kill other space marines. Any battle brother who points out the faults in these tactics is put in the "patience chamber" (any actual faults are noted for later tactical refinement).
:11:00 Afternoon Prayer: The Minotaurs give thanks to the High Lords of Terra for allowing them to be such dicks. In a sacred ritual, each battle brother is required to kiss the butt of golden statues honoring the High Lords Of Terra. Any battle brother who claims this is gay is sent to the "patience chamber".
:12:00 Afternoon Meal: The Minotaurs gather to feast upon fine meats and food provided by their besties: the High Lords. Serfs rush quickly to ensure that each marine is fed to his heart's content. Those who don't clean their plates are sent to the "patience chamber".
:13:00 Afternoon Battle Practice: The Minotaurs descend to any number of worlds in order to hone their space marine killing skills. The Lamenters are the most frequent target, but Baal and Ultramar are also popular destinations. A number of the the targeted space marines are captured and put in the "patience chamber". The food stocks of enemy forces are taken for Evening Meal.
:15:00 Afternoon Firing Rites: The Minotaurs practice shooting at cutouts for once. These cutouts are usually painted [[Ultramarines|blue]], [[Lamenters|yellow]], or [[Grey Knights|grey]].
:16:00 Enhanced Tactical Indoctrine: The Minotaurs learn how to most effectively teamkill each army in the Imperium. During this time, they also will use artillery and vehicle simulators in order to practice causing the most possible destruction upon space marines fortifications such as: driving tanks straight through walls and orbital strikes on Astartes medical station.
:17:00 Recruitment: <s>Slaves</s> Fresh recruits arrive from Terra. These are force to either serve as serfs for the chapter, or begin the Minotaurs' <s>forced reprogramming</s> training process. Imperial Officials are ordered to turn a blind eye to this process, causing the Salamanders to [[RAGE]].
:18:00 Evening Meal: The Minotaurs feast once again, devouring the food stocks taken during Afternoon Battle Practice, infront of the survivors of who they took it from. Any brother who feels guilty about this is sent to the "patience chamber".
:20:00 Propaganda: Minotaurs gather in the Great Hall [[Bullshit|to listen to the brilliant, enlightened, sophisticated, and productive conversations that the High Lords partake in.]] Any battle brother who dozes off or claims the High Lords are full of shit is sent to the "patience chamber".
:22:00 Free time: The Minotaurs are granted free time. This mostly involves reading the excessive number of manuals on how to kill space marines, beating each other up as practice, and repainting wargear taken from other Chapters.
:23:00 Bed Time: The Minotaurs retire to their quarters for the evening. Before falling asleep, they beat up the space marine dummy again.

==Tabletop==

===Chapter Approved===
When the first Minotaurs were introduced as one of the Cursed Founding chapters, for +10 points per model, or +20 per dreadnought (on top of the regular costs) you could give your entire army Fearless and +1 Attack though they had to move towards and assault the nearest enemy they could (even if they had no chance of hurting it) and had to sweep advance, but nobody did it because painting them WAS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE. Both because they had the most annoying colour scheme (worse than the quarter ones like the [[Howling Griffons]]) and because their colours made them look fucking ugly.

===6th Edition===
With the updates they got their own Chapter Tactics. Minotaurs Chapter Tactics models don't take morale checks from shooting attacks, and can re-roll failed pinning tests. In addition they have crusader USR, and +1 to charge distance when in the enemy deployment zone. Overall one of the [[fail|worst]] Chapter Tactics. Crusader certainly is nice to have, but ATSKNF makes re-rolling pinning and no morale checks from shooting pretty redundant. If you're gonna play Minotaurs you're gonna have to bring Moloc, who is a fucking monster in CC while gaining a VP per character executed in a challenge ''and'' giving your guys Prefered Enemy (Space Marines). So if you didn't get the memo, Minotaurs are meant to be run with Moloc as your Warlord against other Space Marine armies. If a friend of yours is running a really annoying Space Marine army, especially if he has Smashfucker, sic these guys on him and watch him cry.

===8th Edition===
How 8th Edition treated Forge World chapters is an issue of [[skub|intense debate]]. Sure, you can choose whatever tactic you want, but it still feels like an afterthought on the part of Games Workshop. That aside, Moloc and Aiakos came out of the update relatively unscathed, still being hard nuts to crack and very lethal overall, but with loss of initiative, and Moloc has lost the main thing he was taken for - the godsent army-wide Preferred enemy: Space Marines. Instead he can "do the wulfen" now. Ivanus, however, has lost all of his utility and is just an overpriced Chaplain with attacks and wounds of a captain, and no longer gains an extra attack from having two specialist weapons. Hecaton fell into category of Characters too fat to use Character rule and costs a little shy of a goddamn GALLANT KNIGHT but with Hero of the Chapter strategem can be a pain in the ass on a city map. Kraatos also no longer exists as of the FAQ, with Forge World telling you to just [[fail|use him as a regular devastator marine]]. ROC pattern Storm Eagle still rocks though.

===9th Edition===
As of the Imperial Armour Compendium, they play up the Minotaurs siege warfare specialization. Suggesting they be played using the Imperial Fists supplement, with the Stalwart and Duelist traits.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Minotaurs_Original_Scheme.jpg|[[Fail|Their original scheme]], just try and paint an entire Chapter of them.
File:Veteran_Brother_Isskar.PNG|Stylized red markings are used to identify [[Veteran Squad]]s...
File:Sternguard_Veteran_Thoul.PNG|...And sergeants
</gallery>

{{Marines-Official}}

Sisters of Silence

2021-06-25T07:39:34Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* History */

[[image:Sisters of Silence art.jpg|right|250px|thumb|They're as bitchin' as they look.]]
{{Topquote|That's their function... Aside from the fact that they fight like bastards. Got the pariah gene in 'em.|[[Leman Russ]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Space Wolves]], on the Sisters of Silence}}

The '''Sisters of Silence''' are an elite all-female order created by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] to man the [[Black Ships]] and round up a planet's renegade [[psyker]]s. They, the [[Adeptus Custodes]], and the Ordo Sinister together form the '''Talons of the Emperor'''.

==History==
[[image:Sisters of silence.jpeg|right|250px|thumb|The Sisters of Silence. NOT ELDAR! It's like reverse eldar, anti psykers that have the near same outfits...]]
Near the onset of the [[Great Crusade]], the Emperor formed them as a counter-measure against untrained psykers, whose numbers had increased at the start of the [[Age of Strife]]. To do this, the Emperor ensured that they were all [[Blank|pariah]]s, human beings with no presence in the [[Warp]]; one has to wonder though whether they had to compete with the [[Officio Assassinorum]] for recruits (probably not, seeing as the Culexus Assassins are primarily males). As such, a psyker's abilities would have no effect on them, being cancelled out when they got close enough to the Sisters. In one of his stranger decisions, the Emperor explicitly had the Sisters take literal vows of silence upon becoming full Sisters. They could communicate via several sign languages (including [[Space Marines|Astartes]] battle-sign) but would not speak a word upon completion of their training. To ensure communication between other branches of the [[Imperium of Man]], Sisters-in-training would serve as communicators.

Given recent revelations about the nature of the Emperor, this [[skub|may or may not]] have been to stop them blabbing [[Neckbeard|what they saw]] under his glamours. It's revealed that what a Sister sees when she looks at a warp entity is not the same as what a regular being will see; Tannau Aleya describes Bloodthirsters for example as being disgusting, contemptible creatures but that's it, rather than as the spooky monsters the masses see. Speaking of daemons, recent fluff from the ''Horus Heresy''/''Siege Of Terra'' novels, as well as in the more current era ''Dark Imperium'' entries have really expanded on just how much the neverborn fear these ladies. Even the likes of Drach'nyen and Ku'Gath (among others), excessively powerful greater daemons both, have outright stated that to be struck down by one of the Sisters will result not in merely getting banished back to the warp, but in a ''true death''.

The Sisters of Silence are also consummate warriors. Actually, that's something of an understatement; don't make the mistake of assuming they're comparable to the Sisters of Battle, who occupy a space somewhere between Guardsman and Astartes. They are not. It's not hyperbole to say that even the most elite of the Sisters of Battle are completely eclipsed by just an "average" Null Maiden. The Sisters of Silence operate alongside The Custodes, and what's more, are able to ''keep up with them'', which probably says more about their prowess than anything else could. The Silent Sisterhood are trained to at least the same levels as the old Space Marine Legions and are more than capable of taking down enemy astartes on their own. Using similar wargear to the Space Marines, such as [[bolter]]s and [[power weapon]]s, they are typically clad in SoB-like power armour, but made of golden Auramite (basically the 40k equivalent of Beskar), a distinction which they share with only The Custodes; theirs typically lacks an armored helmet or other head protection aside from the bevor that hides their mouths, which leads to a lot of deaths from headshots during the burning of [[Prospero]]. As a military force, they are formidable; during the Burning of Prospero, they were deployed to augment the [[Space Wolves]] and the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. While this was more because the pariah gene would neutralize the [[Thousand Sons]]' psyker abilities, they were more than capable of fighting against the Astartes. They would also in turn augment the Custodes, the [[Imperial Fists]], the [[Blood Angels]], and the [[White Scars]] during the [[Siege of Terra]], where the pariah gene became a boon fighting the [[Daemon]]s unleashed by the traitors.

===After the Horus Heresy===
For the longest time, the fate of the Sisters of Silence following the [[Horus Heresy]] had been an object of much speculation in the fandom. It is only recently that what they've been doing has been brought to light, and while some of the theories have been surprisingly spot on (that many Sisters were absorbed into the Inquisition to man their Black Ships), others... didn't quite hit the mark. Thanks to their own mini-codex, as well as the [[War of the Beast]] series and ''Watchers of the Throne'' and ''Dark Imperium'', a somewhat clearer picture of ''what'' happened to the Sisters can be reconstructed.

It turns out that the Sisters were never "officially" disbanded by the [[Administratum]]. However in the wake of the Emperor's internment within the Golden Throne, the surviving Sisters suddenly found themselves without direct support from the Imperial Bureaucracy. This made a lot of the surviving Sisters bitter obviously, but a number of them shrugged, and decided to continue with their Emperor-given mandate anyway... just with less resources than they're used to. In all honesty this is downright unbelievable beyond 40K’s standards. This is the Emperor’s personal witch-hunters and responsible for collecting the Imperium’s psykers as well as part of his revered talons. It’s just as ridiculous and downright IMPOSSIBLE for them to be cut off as it is the freaking CUSTODES. Just ignore this as it is...well it’s genuinely impossible (but perhaps them being the blanks - the creatures who's presence is extremely uncomfortable - is the big factor of it).

As previously mentioned, some Sisters were absorbed into the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] to crew its [[Black Ships]], or served as retinues to important [[Inquisitor]] Lords. Many others, however dispersed, back into the general populace, settling down to have normal lives, and in doing so passed down the Pariah gene down to their descendants. Lastly, some quietly found secret Convents in out-of-way worlds, far from view of the average Imperial citizen. It is one of these Convents that [[Slaughter Koorland]] approached and convinced to aid the Imperium in the [[War of the Beast]].

By M32, the Sisters of Silence refused to recognize the Imperium in its political form, seeing it as a corrupted simulacrum of what the Emperor actually intended, but they still acknowledge the Emperor as the focus of their loyalty. Thus, when their services are required again, they accept the calling and return to Terra, where they are granted an audience with the Emperor in his sanctum, a privilege that not even the High Lords are afforded. [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Just how exactly that would've worked is a mystery, given how the Emperor can presumably only communicate psychically at this point, which probably wouldn't work at all on a group of nulls.]] Of course, blanks/nulls/whatever have been overpowered by strong psykers before, so it wouldn’t take the Emperor any real effort. Or he sent Astropaths to deliver messages via secretaries or something.

Although that particular Convent was wiped out slaying the Beast, many more survived through the millennia, and by the end of the 41st Millennium, the number of Sisters had swelled into the tens of thousands. And it was just as well too, as the Imperium would need their aid really REALLY soon.

===Returning to the Fray: The Rise of the Primarch===
[[image:Sister-of-silence.jpg|right|250px|thumb|You, Psyker. Yeah You. Fuck You.]]

Shortly after the reappearance of [[Magnus the Red]] during the [[Fenris]] campaign, the High Lords of Terra issued a writ that would summon the Sisterhood back to Terra, where they would be used once again. It transpired that [[Trajann Valoris]], Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] had pre-empted this decree and had quietly been collecting disparate Sisters to Terra in advance, knowing that the time may come when they were needed again; the knee-jerk response of the High Lords to Terra simply rendered it legal.

Some of the exiled Sisters resented this greatly, having been ignored for millennia. In the novel ''Watchers of the Throne'', one particular sister, the previously mentinoed Tannau Aleya, spends most of the book (quietly) raging about how her convent was left without support for so long, especially how the Custodes seemed to be "pampered" by comparison, despite being stuck on Terra for nearly ten millennia. Aleya also "talks" a fair bit about the mentality of the Silent Sisters, stating that the Sisters ironically crave human fellowship, as it temporarily fills the void they feel inside due to their nature as blanks. This also leads to extremely strong bonds between the Sisters described as a fierce almost desperate love, due to sharing such a unique bond and having been reviled and hated by most of the people they'd ever come across. The sisters also seem to grow close to the Custodes they fought with during the Great Crusade, to the extent Custodes could tell what a sister was trying to convey without her even having to sign it to him, something that later made one sister immediately realize Drach'nyen was impersonating a Custodes. If Valerian and Aleya are any indication this bond between Custodes and Sisters is likely to reemerge in the 41st millennium. They also never entirely get used to the reaction they cause in others, with every twitch and every appalled expression twisting the knife every time they see that reaction.

Overall they come across as rather tragic, as they spend their lives protecting a species that can't even stand to be in the same room as them, and hates them without even being able to articulate why.

The Sisters' first "official" action was to deploy with the Custodes on Luna to save a recently resurrected Lord Guilliman from being used by Magnus to mop the floor, and they later helped fight back against a [[Khorne]] daemon invasion of Terra directly. When Guilliman returned from his audience with the Emperor, he dissolved the standing order that restricted the Custodians to Terra, and he ordered the Sisterhood to coordinate with them and join the front lines.

Still, no matter how hurt or angry they are, they still answered the call to defend humanity from Chaos again.

==Emperor Worship==

By the 41st Millennium it turns out that some Sisters had converted to the worship of the Emperor, even describing the Emperor as "holy" right in front of Lord Commander [[Roboute Guilliman]], while considering the Primarch to be his divine messenger and demigod son. Though this is not entirely new information, as even during the Horus Heresy, there were some Sisters who had already started to consider the Emperor as a god, and were willing to break their vows of tranquility. Some had even "read the book" ''(the Lectitio Divinitatus)'' according to [[Knights-Errant|Kyril Sinderman]], and allowed the faithful to escape custody from the Somnus Citadel on Luna so that they could continue to spread the word.

Since most of ''Dark Imperium'' was about Guilliman trying to come to terms with what humanity had become since the Heresy, it was all Guilliman could do to not [[Blam|eat his own bolter]] then and there. However, giving the appearance of converting to the faith is the easiest way to integrate themselves with the Imperium without getting grief from the other branches. This is definitely true for at least one convent; Aleya's was said to have had "sham" shrines and it's implied that those Sisters feigned their faith to avoid being persecuted as heretics. There is also a difference between those sisters that manned the [[Black Ships]] versus those that were outside of the Imperium's control, with those that were aboard the black ships having closer ties and a lot more loyalty towards the [[High Lords of Terra|Imperium's leadership]], to the extent that Aleya didn't trust them to do what was needed without waiting for permission. It's possible the Emperor-worshiping Sisters are those that were recruited and controlled by the Imperium for the black ships, while those outside of Imperial control and influence managed to keep their old ways.

==Notable Sisters==
* '''Jenetia Krole:''' AKA the "Soulless Queen of the Imperium" was the Knight Commander of the Sisters of silence and the single most terrifying woman in the entire human race. No, Really. (NOT confirmed to be a redhead.) She could be placed in a staring contest with an entire Convent of [[Sisters of Battle]], [[Inquisitor Greyfax]], A warband of [[Night Lords]] and a FUCKING Dark Eldar [[Haemonculus]] and she would stare them all down until they ran away with their tails between their legs. Her Pariah aura was so strong and distracting she caused members of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] to avert their eyes because it pained them to look at Her. To most beings, her anti-soul aura was so strong that they simply couldn't see her. When Big E needed the [[Thousand Sons]] "disciplined" she challenged the legions most powerful sorcerers to duels and Killed them, and then she Killed a Daemon just for good measure. She then fought in the Webway and survived the retreat to the Imperial Palace losing 3 fingers on the way, not really seeming to care about her lost digits. She used a Zwei-hander sword dubbed "Veracity" that was used by [[The Emperor]] during the unification wars, so yeah, that's cool too. She finally dies while fighting [[Khârn]] during the Siege of Terra, right after she took out a fuckton of named World Eaters.

*'''Amendera Kendel''' - A former Sister of Silence turned ''[[Knights-Errant|Agentia Tercius]]'' to Malcador. She is still a Pariah of course, but she gave up her vow of silence to become one of the first members of Malcador's [[Inquisition|band of merry travellers]]. She is quite possibly the first "True" Inquisitor, by virtue of her background as a Witch-Hunter and the later development of her character which shows her radically using the authority granted to her by the Sigillite to get shit done: Co-opting Space Marines from the survivors of the ''Eisenstein'' into her retinue, and later ordering a battle-barge to enact ''[[Exterminatus]]'' on a planet turned renegade, despite the fact that <u>no-one</u> other than a Primarch or the Emperor himself had ever ordered such an act before her.

* '''Tannau Aleya:''' One of the (previously mentioned) POV characters for ''Watchers of the Throne''. A Sister from the convent located on Araissa, she becomes its sole survivor when it is attacked by the [[Black Legion]] while she was away hunting down cultists on another world. Hot-headed and very opinionated, Aleya spends most of the book bitter at the Imperium for ignoring the Sisters for so long, and infuriated that [[Shield-Captain]] Valerian (the ''other'' POV character of the book) seems impossible to goad into anger, but takes her duties as a Sister very seriously, and was willing to lay down her life at even a chance to cave in some Black Legion heads. Started out using a heavy flamer to do her work, before turning it in for a greatsword once she got picked up by Navradaan on the way to Terra. She is also an absolute badass, winning a firefight that was 5-1 and taking on a Chaos Marine in close quarters alone and WINNING, then removing his helmet and spitting in his face for killing her sisters. The updated rules for the Talons of The Emperor make her not just in fluff but also in-game a battle couple with Valerian, another proof tsunderism and animu is slowly infecting 40k's updated setting.

==Mini-Codex and Moving Forward==

A common rumor is that they will be added into some upcoming [[Sisters of Battle]] relaunch. If so, that would be an interesting revision; on the one hand, the Sisters of Battle, despite being designated witch-hunters, are lacking in the anti-psyker department. On the other hand, the Sisters of Silence, much like the Space Marines, are big believers in the Great Crusade era of the Imperium, and likely won't mesh well with the [[Ecclesiarchy]]. On the other hand, Dark Imperium implies they fully converted to the Imperial Cult over time so their ideology would likely mesh together well. So, in conclusion, the most probable thing that GW can do with the SoS is to say that the Adepta Sororitas in its current form can trace its origins to the M36 '''Daughters of the Emperor''' as well as offshoots of the original [[Sisters of Silence]] and find some way to reconcile them both.

As of 2018, any news on them has been slow and via the Horus Heresy Team at Forge World. They stated that there would at least be some 8th edition rules for Talons (which includes Grey Knights apparently) coming eventually while they're not working on all these other Horus Heresy, Titanicus, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl projects. So far nothing on Sisters but Custodians at least got a handful of new kit.

Why they weren't simply added to the Custodes codex, only GW knows.

As of 2020, during Nurgle's Pandemic, it's been all but confirmed by GW that Sisters of Silence and Custodes will be merged together in the second-to-last chapter of the Psychic Awakening, "War of the Spider", as the Talons of the Emperor. Coupled with the new Black Library models that feature a Shield Captain and SoS in a single unit with that as a faction keyword, there is a lot of evidence that supports this.

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Talons_of_the_Emperor_(30k)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) Horus Heresy Tactics]]
*[[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Talons of the Emperor (9E)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) 40k Tactics]]

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
SoS vs. TS Dred.jpg|Being in a Dreadnought does not make you safe from these chicks.
SoS vs. EC Noise Marines.jpg|Even ''these'' bastards are having a hard time dealing with them.
Sister_of_silence_by_n924.jpg|As scary as they are, they can still be the cutest sweethearts of the Emprah.
Jenetia Krole.jpg|Jenetia Krole, She's not staring into your soul, she's staring through it.
</gallery>
</center>

{{Template:Sisters-of-Silence}}

{{Imperium}}

Sisters of Silence

2021-06-25T07:37:20Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* History */

[[image:Sisters of Silence art.jpg|right|250px|thumb|They're as bitchin' as they look.]]
{{Topquote|That's their function... Aside from the fact that they fight like bastards. Got the pariah gene in 'em.|[[Leman Russ]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Space Wolves]], on the Sisters of Silence}}

The '''Sisters of Silence''' are an elite all-female order created by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] to man the [[Black Ships]] and round up a planet's renegade [[psyker]]s. They, the [[Adeptus Custodes]], and the Ordo Sinister together form the '''Talons of the Emperor'''.

==History==
[[image:Sisters of silence.jpeg|right|250px|thumb|The Sisters of Silence. NOT ELDAR! It's like reverse eldar, anti psykers that have the near same outfits...]]
Near the onset of the [[Great Crusade]], the Emperor formed them as a counter-measure against untrained psykers, whose numbers had increased at the start of the [[Age of Strife]]. To do this, the Emperor ensured that they were all [[Blank|pariah]]s, human beings with no presence in the [[Warp]]; one has to wonder though whether they had to compete with the [[Officio Assassinorum]] for recruits (probably not, seeing as the Culexus Assassins are primarily males). As such, a psyker's abilities would have no effect on them, being cancelled out when they got close enough to the Sisters. In one of his stranger decisions, the Emperor explicitly had the Sisters take literal vows of silence upon becoming full Sisters. They could communicate via several sign languages (including [[Space Marines|Astartes]] battle-sign) but would not speak a word upon completion of their training. To ensure communication between other branches of the [[Imperium of Man]], Sisters-in-training would serve as communicators.

Given recent revelations about the nature of the Emperor, this [[skub|may or may not]] have been to stop them blabbing [[Neckbeard|what they saw]] under his glamours. It's revealed that what a Sister sees when she looks at a warp entity is not the same as what a regular being will see; Tannau Aleya describes Bloodthirsters for example as being disgusting, contemptible creatures but that's it, rather than as the spooky monsters the masses see. Speaking of daemons, recent fluff from the ''Horus Heresy''/''Siege Of Terra'' novels, as well as in the more current era ''Dark Imperium'' entries have really expanded on just how much the neverborn fear these ladies. Even the likes of Drach'nyen and Ku'Gath (among others), excessively powerful greater daemons both, have outright stated that to be struck down by one of the Sisters will result not in merely getting banished back to the warp, but in a ''true death''.

The Sisters of Silence are also consummate warriors. Actually, that's something of an understatement; don't make the mistake of assuming they're comparable to the Sisters of Battle, who occupy a space somewhere between Guardsman and Astartes. They are not. It's not hyperbole to say that even the most elite of the Sisters of Battle are completely eclipsed by just an "average" Null Maiden. The Sisters of Silence operate alongside The Custodes, and what's more, are able to ''keep up with them'', which probably says more about their prowess than anything else could. The Silent Sisterhood are trained to at least the same levels as the old Space Marine Legions and are more than capable of taking down enemy astartes on their own. Using similar wargear to the Space Marines, such as [[bolter]]s and [[power weapon]]s, they are typically clad in SoB-like power armour, but made of golden Auramite (basically the 40k equivalent of Beskar), a distinction which they share with only the Custodes; theirs typically lacks an armored helmet or other head protection aside from the bevor that hides their mouths, which leads to a lot of deaths from headshots during the burning of [[Prospero]]. As a military force, they are formidable; during the Burning of Prospero, they were deployed to augment the [[Space Wolves]] and the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. While this was more because the pariah gene would neutralize the [[Thousand Sons]]' psyker abilities, they were more than capable of fighting against the Astartes. They would also in turn augment the Custodes, the [[Imperial Fists]], the [[Blood Angels]], and the [[White Scars]] during the [[Siege of Terra]], where the pariah gene became a boon fighting the [[Daemon]]s unleashed by the traitors.

===After the Horus Heresy===
For the longest time, the fate of the Sisters of Silence following the [[Horus Heresy]] had been an object of much speculation in the fandom. It is only recently that what they've been doing has been brought to light, and while some of the theories have been surprisingly spot on (that many Sisters were absorbed into the Inquisition to man their Black Ships), others... didn't quite hit the mark. Thanks to their own mini-codex, as well as the [[War of the Beast]] series and ''Watchers of the Throne'' and ''Dark Imperium'', a somewhat clearer picture of ''what'' happened to the Sisters can be reconstructed.

It turns out that the Sisters were never "officially" disbanded by the [[Administratum]]. However in the wake of the Emperor's internment within the Golden Throne, the surviving Sisters suddenly found themselves without direct support from the Imperial Bureaucracy. This made a lot of the surviving Sisters bitter obviously, but a number of them shrugged, and decided to continue with their Emperor-given mandate anyway... just with less resources than they're used to. In all honesty this is downright unbelievable beyond 40K’s standards. This is the Emperor’s personal witch-hunters and responsible for collecting the Imperium’s psykers as well as part of his revered talons. It’s just as ridiculous and downright IMPOSSIBLE for them to be cut off as it is the freaking CUSTODES. Just ignore this as it is...well it’s genuinely impossible (but perhaps them being the blanks - the creatures who's presence is extremely uncomfortable - is the big factor of it).

As previously mentioned, some Sisters were absorbed into the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] to crew its [[Black Ships]], or served as retinues to important [[Inquisitor]] Lords. Many others, however dispersed, back into the general populace, settling down to have normal lives, and in doing so passed down the Pariah gene down to their descendants. Lastly, some quietly found secret Convents in out-of-way worlds, far from view of the average Imperial citizen. It is one of these Convents that [[Slaughter Koorland]] approached and convinced to aid the Imperium in the [[War of the Beast]].

By M32, the Sisters of Silence refused to recognize the Imperium in its political form, seeing it as a corrupted simulacrum of what the Emperor actually intended, but they still acknowledge the Emperor as the focus of their loyalty. Thus, when their services are required again, they accept the calling and return to Terra, where they are granted an audience with the Emperor in his sanctum, a privilege that not even the High Lords are afforded. [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Just how exactly that would've worked is a mystery, given how the Emperor can presumably only communicate psychically at this point, which probably wouldn't work at all on a group of nulls.]] Of course, blanks/nulls/whatever have been overpowered by strong psykers before, so it wouldn’t take the Emperor any real effort. Or he sent Astropaths to deliver messages via secretaries or something.

Although that particular Convent was wiped out slaying the Beast, many more survived through the millennia, and by the end of the 41st Millennium, the number of Sisters had swelled into the tens of thousands. And it was just as well too, as the Imperium would need their aid really REALLY soon.

===Returning to the Fray: The Rise of the Primarch===
[[image:Sister-of-silence.jpg|right|250px|thumb|You, Psyker. Yeah You. Fuck You.]]

Shortly after the reappearance of [[Magnus the Red]] during the [[Fenris]] campaign, the High Lords of Terra issued a writ that would summon the Sisterhood back to Terra, where they would be used once again. It transpired that [[Trajann Valoris]], Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] had pre-empted this decree and had quietly been collecting disparate Sisters to Terra in advance, knowing that the time may come when they were needed again; the knee-jerk response of the High Lords to Terra simply rendered it legal.

Some of the exiled Sisters resented this greatly, having been ignored for millennia. In the novel ''Watchers of the Throne'', one particular sister, the previously mentinoed Tannau Aleya, spends most of the book (quietly) raging about how her convent was left without support for so long, especially how the Custodes seemed to be "pampered" by comparison, despite being stuck on Terra for nearly ten millennia. Aleya also "talks" a fair bit about the mentality of the Silent Sisters, stating that the Sisters ironically crave human fellowship, as it temporarily fills the void they feel inside due to their nature as blanks. This also leads to extremely strong bonds between the Sisters described as a fierce almost desperate love, due to sharing such a unique bond and having been reviled and hated by most of the people they'd ever come across. The sisters also seem to grow close to the Custodes they fought with during the Great Crusade, to the extent Custodes could tell what a sister was trying to convey without her even having to sign it to him, something that later made one sister immediately realize Drach'nyen was impersonating a Custodes. If Valerian and Aleya are any indication this bond between Custodes and Sisters is likely to reemerge in the 41st millennium. They also never entirely get used to the reaction they cause in others, with every twitch and every appalled expression twisting the knife every time they see that reaction.

Overall they come across as rather tragic, as they spend their lives protecting a species that can't even stand to be in the same room as them, and hates them without even being able to articulate why.

The Sisters' first "official" action was to deploy with the Custodes on Luna to save a recently resurrected Lord Guilliman from being used by Magnus to mop the floor, and they later helped fight back against a [[Khorne]] daemon invasion of Terra directly. When Guilliman returned from his audience with the Emperor, he dissolved the standing order that restricted the Custodians to Terra, and he ordered the Sisterhood to coordinate with them and join the front lines.

Still, no matter how hurt or angry they are, they still answered the call to defend humanity from Chaos again.

==Emperor Worship==

By the 41st Millennium it turns out that some Sisters had converted to the worship of the Emperor, even describing the Emperor as "holy" right in front of Lord Commander [[Roboute Guilliman]], while considering the Primarch to be his divine messenger and demigod son. Though this is not entirely new information, as even during the Horus Heresy, there were some Sisters who had already started to consider the Emperor as a god, and were willing to break their vows of tranquility. Some had even "read the book" ''(the Lectitio Divinitatus)'' according to [[Knights-Errant|Kyril Sinderman]], and allowed the faithful to escape custody from the Somnus Citadel on Luna so that they could continue to spread the word.

Since most of ''Dark Imperium'' was about Guilliman trying to come to terms with what humanity had become since the Heresy, it was all Guilliman could do to not [[Blam|eat his own bolter]] then and there. However, giving the appearance of converting to the faith is the easiest way to integrate themselves with the Imperium without getting grief from the other branches. This is definitely true for at least one convent; Aleya's was said to have had "sham" shrines and it's implied that those Sisters feigned their faith to avoid being persecuted as heretics. There is also a difference between those sisters that manned the [[Black Ships]] versus those that were outside of the Imperium's control, with those that were aboard the black ships having closer ties and a lot more loyalty towards the [[High Lords of Terra|Imperium's leadership]], to the extent that Aleya didn't trust them to do what was needed without waiting for permission. It's possible the Emperor-worshiping Sisters are those that were recruited and controlled by the Imperium for the black ships, while those outside of Imperial control and influence managed to keep their old ways.

==Notable Sisters==
* '''Jenetia Krole:''' AKA the "Soulless Queen of the Imperium" was the Knight Commander of the Sisters of silence and the single most terrifying woman in the entire human race. No, Really. (NOT confirmed to be a redhead.) She could be placed in a staring contest with an entire Convent of [[Sisters of Battle]], [[Inquisitor Greyfax]], A warband of [[Night Lords]] and a FUCKING Dark Eldar [[Haemonculus]] and she would stare them all down until they ran away with their tails between their legs. Her Pariah aura was so strong and distracting she caused members of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] to avert their eyes because it pained them to look at Her. To most beings, her anti-soul aura was so strong that they simply couldn't see her. When Big E needed the [[Thousand Sons]] "disciplined" she challenged the legions most powerful sorcerers to duels and Killed them, and then she Killed a Daemon just for good measure. She then fought in the Webway and survived the retreat to the Imperial Palace losing 3 fingers on the way, not really seeming to care about her lost digits. She used a Zwei-hander sword dubbed "Veracity" that was used by [[The Emperor]] during the unification wars, so yeah, that's cool too. She finally dies while fighting [[Khârn]] during the Siege of Terra, right after she took out a fuckton of named World Eaters.

*'''Amendera Kendel''' - A former Sister of Silence turned ''[[Knights-Errant|Agentia Tercius]]'' to Malcador. She is still a Pariah of course, but she gave up her vow of silence to become one of the first members of Malcador's [[Inquisition|band of merry travellers]]. She is quite possibly the first "True" Inquisitor, by virtue of her background as a Witch-Hunter and the later development of her character which shows her radically using the authority granted to her by the Sigillite to get shit done: Co-opting Space Marines from the survivors of the ''Eisenstein'' into her retinue, and later ordering a battle-barge to enact ''[[Exterminatus]]'' on a planet turned renegade, despite the fact that <u>no-one</u> other than a Primarch or the Emperor himself had ever ordered such an act before her.

* '''Tannau Aleya:''' One of the (previously mentioned) POV characters for ''Watchers of the Throne''. A Sister from the convent located on Araissa, she becomes its sole survivor when it is attacked by the [[Black Legion]] while she was away hunting down cultists on another world. Hot-headed and very opinionated, Aleya spends most of the book bitter at the Imperium for ignoring the Sisters for so long, and infuriated that [[Shield-Captain]] Valerian (the ''other'' POV character of the book) seems impossible to goad into anger, but takes her duties as a Sister very seriously, and was willing to lay down her life at even a chance to cave in some Black Legion heads. Started out using a heavy flamer to do her work, before turning it in for a greatsword once she got picked up by Navradaan on the way to Terra. She is also an absolute badass, winning a firefight that was 5-1 and taking on a Chaos Marine in close quarters alone and WINNING, then removing his helmet and spitting in his face for killing her sisters. The updated rules for the Talons of The Emperor make her not just in fluff but also in-game a battle couple with Valerian, another proof tsunderism and animu is slowly infecting 40k's updated setting.

==Mini-Codex and Moving Forward==

A common rumor is that they will be added into some upcoming [[Sisters of Battle]] relaunch. If so, that would be an interesting revision; on the one hand, the Sisters of Battle, despite being designated witch-hunters, are lacking in the anti-psyker department. On the other hand, the Sisters of Silence, much like the Space Marines, are big believers in the Great Crusade era of the Imperium, and likely won't mesh well with the [[Ecclesiarchy]]. On the other hand, Dark Imperium implies they fully converted to the Imperial Cult over time so their ideology would likely mesh together well. So, in conclusion, the most probable thing that GW can do with the SoS is to say that the Adepta Sororitas in its current form can trace its origins to the M36 '''Daughters of the Emperor''' as well as offshoots of the original [[Sisters of Silence]] and find some way to reconcile them both.

As of 2018, any news on them has been slow and via the Horus Heresy Team at Forge World. They stated that there would at least be some 8th edition rules for Talons (which includes Grey Knights apparently) coming eventually while they're not working on all these other Horus Heresy, Titanicus, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl projects. So far nothing on Sisters but Custodians at least got a handful of new kit.

Why they weren't simply added to the Custodes codex, only GW knows.

As of 2020, during Nurgle's Pandemic, it's been all but confirmed by GW that Sisters of Silence and Custodes will be merged together in the second-to-last chapter of the Psychic Awakening, "War of the Spider", as the Talons of the Emperor. Coupled with the new Black Library models that feature a Shield Captain and SoS in a single unit with that as a faction keyword, there is a lot of evidence that supports this.

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Talons_of_the_Emperor_(30k)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) Horus Heresy Tactics]]
*[[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Talons of the Emperor (9E)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) 40k Tactics]]

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
SoS vs. TS Dred.jpg|Being in a Dreadnought does not make you safe from these chicks.
SoS vs. EC Noise Marines.jpg|Even ''these'' bastards are having a hard time dealing with them.
Sister_of_silence_by_n924.jpg|As scary as they are, they can still be the cutest sweethearts of the Emprah.
Jenetia Krole.jpg|Jenetia Krole, She's not staring into your soul, she's staring through it.
</gallery>
</center>

{{Template:Sisters-of-Silence}}

{{Imperium}}

Sisters of Silence

2021-06-25T07:22:59Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* History */

[[image:Sisters of Silence art.jpg|right|250px|thumb|They're as bitchin' as they look.]]
{{Topquote|That's their function... Aside from the fact that they fight like bastards. Got the pariah gene in 'em.|[[Leman Russ]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Space Wolves]], on the Sisters of Silence}}

The '''Sisters of Silence''' are an elite all-female order created by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] to man the [[Black Ships]] and round up a planet's renegade [[psyker]]s. They, the [[Adeptus Custodes]], and the Ordo Sinister together form the '''Talons of the Emperor'''.

==History==
[[image:Sisters of silence.jpeg|right|250px|thumb|The Sisters of Silence. NOT ELDAR! It's like reverse eldar, anti psykers that have the near same outfits...]]
Near the onset of the [[Great Crusade]], the Emperor formed them as a counter-measure against untrained psykers, whose numbers had increased at the start of the [[Age of Strife]]. To do this, the Emperor ensured that they were all [[Blank|pariah]]s, human beings with no presence in the [[Warp]]; one has to wonder though whether they had to compete with the [[Officio Assassinorum]] for recruits (probably not, seeing as the Culexus Assassins are primarily males). As such, a psyker's abilities would have no effect on them, being cancelled out when they got close enough to the Sisters. In one of his stranger decisions, the Emperor explicitly had the Sisters take literal vows of silence upon becoming full Sisters. They could communicate via several sign languages (including [[Space Marines|Astartes]] battle-sign) but would not speak a word upon completion of their training. To ensure communication between other branches of the [[Imperium of Man]], Sisters-in-training would serve as communicators.

Given recent revelations about the nature of the Emperor, this [[skub|may or may not]] have been to stop them blabbing [[Neckbeard|what they saw]] under his glamours. It's revealed that what a Sister sees when she looks at a warp entity is not the same as what a regular being will see; Tannau Aleya describes Bloodthirsters for example as being disgusting, contemptible creatures but that's it, rather than as the spooky monsters the masses see. Speaking of daemons, recent fluff from the ''Horus Heresy''/''Siege Of Terra'' novels, as well as in the more current era ''Dark Imperium'' entries have really expanded on just how much the neverborn fear these ladies. Even the likes of Drach'nyen and Ku'Gath (among others), excessively powerful greater daemons both, have outright stated that to be struck down by one of the Sisters will result not in merely getting banished back to the warp, but in a ''true death''.

The Sisters of Silence are also consummate warriors. Actually, that's something of an understatement; don't make the mistake of assuming they're comparable to the Sisters of Battle, who occupy a space somewhere between Guardsman and Astartes. They are not. It's not hyperbole to say that even the most elite of the Sisters of Battle are completely eclipsed by just an "average" Null Maiden. The Sisters of Silence operate alongside The Custodes, and what's more, are able to ''keep up with them'', which probably says more about their prowess than anything else could. The Silent Sisterhood are trained to at least the same levels as the Space Marine Legions and using similar wargear, such as [[bolter]]s and [[power weapon]]s, as well as being covered in gold, SoB-like power armour; theirs typically lacks an armored helmet or other head protection aside from the bevor that hides their mouths, which leads to a lot of deaths from headshots during the burning of [[Prospero]]. As a military force, they are formidable; during the Burning of Prospero, they were deployed to augment the [[Space Wolves]] and the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. While this was more because the pariah gene would neutralize the [[Thousand Sons]]' psyker abilities, they were more than capable of fighting against the Astartes. They would also in turn augment the Custodes, the [[Imperial Fists]], the [[Blood Angels]], and the [[White Scars]] during the [[Siege of Terra]], where the pariah gene became a boon fighting the [[Daemon]]s unleashed by the traitors.

===After the Horus Heresy===
For the longest time, the fate of the Sisters of Silence following the [[Horus Heresy]] had been an object of much speculation in the fandom. It is only recently that what they've been doing has been brought to light, and while some of the theories have been surprisingly spot on (that many Sisters were absorbed into the Inquisition to man their Black Ships), others... didn't quite hit the mark. Thanks to their own mini-codex, as well as the [[War of the Beast]] series and ''Watchers of the Throne'' and ''Dark Imperium'', a somewhat clearer picture of ''what'' happened to the Sisters can be reconstructed.

It turns out that the Sisters were never "officially" disbanded by the [[Administratum]]. However in the wake of the Emperor's internment within the Golden Throne, the surviving Sisters suddenly found themselves without direct support from the Imperial Bureaucracy. This made a lot of the surviving Sisters bitter obviously, but a number of them shrugged, and decided to continue with their Emperor-given mandate anyway... just with less resources than they're used to. In all honesty this is downright unbelievable beyond 40K’s standards. This is the Emperor’s personal witch-hunters and responsible for collecting the Imperium’s psykers as well as part of his revered talons. It’s just as ridiculous and downright IMPOSSIBLE for them to be cut off as it is the freaking CUSTODES. Just ignore this as it is...well it’s genuinely impossible (but perhaps them being the blanks - the creatures who's presence is extremely uncomfortable - is the big factor of it).

As previously mentioned, some Sisters were absorbed into the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] to crew its [[Black Ships]], or served as retinues to important [[Inquisitor]] Lords. Many others, however dispersed, back into the general populace, settling down to have normal lives, and in doing so passed down the Pariah gene down to their descendants. Lastly, some quietly found secret Convents in out-of-way worlds, far from view of the average Imperial citizen. It is one of these Convents that [[Slaughter Koorland]] approached and convinced to aid the Imperium in the [[War of the Beast]].

By M32, the Sisters of Silence refused to recognize the Imperium in its political form, seeing it as a corrupted simulacrum of what the Emperor actually intended, but they still acknowledge the Emperor as the focus of their loyalty. Thus, when their services are required again, they accept the calling and return to Terra, where they are granted an audience with the Emperor in his sanctum, a privilege that not even the High Lords are afforded. [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Just how exactly that would've worked is a mystery, given how the Emperor can presumably only communicate psychically at this point, which probably wouldn't work at all on a group of nulls.]] Of course, blanks/nulls/whatever have been overpowered by strong psykers before, so it wouldn’t take the Emperor any real effort. Or he sent Astropaths to deliver messages via secretaries or something.

Although that particular Convent was wiped out slaying the Beast, many more survived through the millennia, and by the end of the 41st Millennium, the number of Sisters had swelled into the tens of thousands. And it was just as well too, as the Imperium would need their aid really REALLY soon.

===Returning to the Fray: The Rise of the Primarch===
[[image:Sister-of-silence.jpg|right|250px|thumb|You, Psyker. Yeah You. Fuck You.]]

Shortly after the reappearance of [[Magnus the Red]] during the [[Fenris]] campaign, the High Lords of Terra issued a writ that would summon the Sisterhood back to Terra, where they would be used once again. It transpired that [[Trajann Valoris]], Captain-General of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] had pre-empted this decree and had quietly been collecting disparate Sisters to Terra in advance, knowing that the time may come when they were needed again; the knee-jerk response of the High Lords to Terra simply rendered it legal.

Some of the exiled Sisters resented this greatly, having been ignored for millennia. In the novel ''Watchers of the Throne'', one particular sister, the previously mentinoed Tannau Aleya, spends most of the book (quietly) raging about how her convent was left without support for so long, especially how the Custodes seemed to be "pampered" by comparison, despite being stuck on Terra for nearly ten millennia. Aleya also "talks" a fair bit about the mentality of the Silent Sisters, stating that the Sisters ironically crave human fellowship, as it temporarily fills the void they feel inside due to their nature as blanks. This also leads to extremely strong bonds between the Sisters described as a fierce almost desperate love, due to sharing such a unique bond and having been reviled and hated by most of the people they'd ever come across. The sisters also seem to grow close to the Custodes they fought with during the Great Crusade, to the extent Custodes could tell what a sister was trying to convey without her even having to sign it to him, something that later made one sister immediately realize Drach'nyen was impersonating a Custodes. If Valerian and Aleya are any indication this bond between Custodes and Sisters is likely to reemerge in the 41st millennium. They also never entirely get used to the reaction they cause in others, with every twitch and every appalled expression twisting the knife every time they see that reaction.

Overall they come across as rather tragic, as they spend their lives protecting a species that can't even stand to be in the same room as them, and hates them without even being able to articulate why.

The Sisters' first "official" action was to deploy with the Custodes on Luna to save a recently resurrected Lord Guilliman from being used by Magnus to mop the floor, and they later helped fight back against a [[Khorne]] daemon invasion of Terra directly. When Guilliman returned from his audience with the Emperor, he dissolved the standing order that restricted the Custodians to Terra, and he ordered the Sisterhood to coordinate with them and join the front lines.

Still, no matter how hurt or angry they are, they still answered the call to defend humanity from Chaos again.

==Emperor Worship==

By the 41st Millennium it turns out that some Sisters had converted to the worship of the Emperor, even describing the Emperor as "holy" right in front of Lord Commander [[Roboute Guilliman]], while considering the Primarch to be his divine messenger and demigod son. Though this is not entirely new information, as even during the Horus Heresy, there were some Sisters who had already started to consider the Emperor as a god, and were willing to break their vows of tranquility. Some had even "read the book" ''(the Lectitio Divinitatus)'' according to [[Knights-Errant|Kyril Sinderman]], and allowed the faithful to escape custody from the Somnus Citadel on Luna so that they could continue to spread the word.

Since most of ''Dark Imperium'' was about Guilliman trying to come to terms with what humanity had become since the Heresy, it was all Guilliman could do to not [[Blam|eat his own bolter]] then and there. However, giving the appearance of converting to the faith is the easiest way to integrate themselves with the Imperium without getting grief from the other branches. This is definitely true for at least one convent; Aleya's was said to have had "sham" shrines and it's implied that those Sisters feigned their faith to avoid being persecuted as heretics. There is also a difference between those sisters that manned the [[Black Ships]] versus those that were outside of the Imperium's control, with those that were aboard the black ships having closer ties and a lot more loyalty towards the [[High Lords of Terra|Imperium's leadership]], to the extent that Aleya didn't trust them to do what was needed without waiting for permission. It's possible the Emperor-worshiping Sisters are those that were recruited and controlled by the Imperium for the black ships, while those outside of Imperial control and influence managed to keep their old ways.

==Notable Sisters==
* '''Jenetia Krole:''' AKA the "Soulless Queen of the Imperium" was the Knight Commander of the Sisters of silence and the single most terrifying woman in the entire human race. No, Really. (NOT confirmed to be a redhead.) She could be placed in a staring contest with an entire Convent of [[Sisters of Battle]], [[Inquisitor Greyfax]], A warband of [[Night Lords]] and a FUCKING Dark Eldar [[Haemonculus]] and she would stare them all down until they ran away with their tails between their legs. Her Pariah aura was so strong and distracting she caused members of the [[Adeptus Custodes]] to avert their eyes because it pained them to look at Her. To most beings, her anti-soul aura was so strong that they simply couldn't see her. When Big E needed the [[Thousand Sons]] "disciplined" she challenged the legions most powerful sorcerers to duels and Killed them, and then she Killed a Daemon just for good measure. She then fought in the Webway and survived the retreat to the Imperial Palace losing 3 fingers on the way, not really seeming to care about her lost digits. She used a Zwei-hander sword dubbed "Veracity" that was used by [[The Emperor]] during the unification wars, so yeah, that's cool too. She finally dies while fighting [[Khârn]] during the Siege of Terra, right after she took out a fuckton of named World Eaters.

*'''Amendera Kendel''' - A former Sister of Silence turned ''[[Knights-Errant|Agentia Tercius]]'' to Malcador. She is still a Pariah of course, but she gave up her vow of silence to become one of the first members of Malcador's [[Inquisition|band of merry travellers]]. She is quite possibly the first "True" Inquisitor, by virtue of her background as a Witch-Hunter and the later development of her character which shows her radically using the authority granted to her by the Sigillite to get shit done: Co-opting Space Marines from the survivors of the ''Eisenstein'' into her retinue, and later ordering a battle-barge to enact ''[[Exterminatus]]'' on a planet turned renegade, despite the fact that <u>no-one</u> other than a Primarch or the Emperor himself had ever ordered such an act before her.

* '''Tannau Aleya:''' One of the (previously mentioned) POV characters for ''Watchers of the Throne''. A Sister from the convent located on Araissa, she becomes its sole survivor when it is attacked by the [[Black Legion]] while she was away hunting down cultists on another world. Hot-headed and very opinionated, Aleya spends most of the book bitter at the Imperium for ignoring the Sisters for so long, and infuriated that [[Shield-Captain]] Valerian (the ''other'' POV character of the book) seems impossible to goad into anger, but takes her duties as a Sister very seriously, and was willing to lay down her life at even a chance to cave in some Black Legion heads. Started out using a heavy flamer to do her work, before turning it in for a greatsword once she got picked up by Navradaan on the way to Terra. She is also an absolute badass, winning a firefight that was 5-1 and taking on a Chaos Marine in close quarters alone and WINNING, then removing his helmet and spitting in his face for killing her sisters. The updated rules for the Talons of The Emperor make her not just in fluff but also in-game a battle couple with Valerian, another proof tsunderism and animu is slowly infecting 40k's updated setting.

==Mini-Codex and Moving Forward==

A common rumor is that they will be added into some upcoming [[Sisters of Battle]] relaunch. If so, that would be an interesting revision; on the one hand, the Sisters of Battle, despite being designated witch-hunters, are lacking in the anti-psyker department. On the other hand, the Sisters of Silence, much like the Space Marines, are big believers in the Great Crusade era of the Imperium, and likely won't mesh well with the [[Ecclesiarchy]]. On the other hand, Dark Imperium implies they fully converted to the Imperial Cult over time so their ideology would likely mesh together well. So, in conclusion, the most probable thing that GW can do with the SoS is to say that the Adepta Sororitas in its current form can trace its origins to the M36 '''Daughters of the Emperor''' as well as offshoots of the original [[Sisters of Silence]] and find some way to reconcile them both.

As of 2018, any news on them has been slow and via the Horus Heresy Team at Forge World. They stated that there would at least be some 8th edition rules for Talons (which includes Grey Knights apparently) coming eventually while they're not working on all these other Horus Heresy, Titanicus, Necromunda, and Blood Bowl projects. So far nothing on Sisters but Custodians at least got a handful of new kit.

Why they weren't simply added to the Custodes codex, only GW knows.

As of 2020, during Nurgle's Pandemic, it's been all but confirmed by GW that Sisters of Silence and Custodes will be merged together in the second-to-last chapter of the Psychic Awakening, "War of the Spider", as the Talons of the Emperor. Coupled with the new Black Library models that feature a Shield Captain and SoS in a single unit with that as a faction keyword, there is a lot of evidence that supports this.

==See Also==
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Talons_of_the_Emperor_(30k)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) Horus Heresy Tactics]]
*[[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Talons of the Emperor (9E)|Sisters of Silence (AKA Talons of the Emperor) 40k Tactics]]

==Gallery==
<center>
<gallery>
SoS vs. TS Dred.jpg|Being in a Dreadnought does not make you safe from these chicks.
SoS vs. EC Noise Marines.jpg|Even ''these'' bastards are having a hard time dealing with them.
Sister_of_silence_by_n924.jpg|As scary as they are, they can still be the cutest sweethearts of the Emprah.
Jenetia Krole.jpg|Jenetia Krole, She's not staring into your soul, she's staring through it.
</gallery>
</center>

{{Template:Sisters-of-Silence}}

{{Imperium}}

Zahariel

2021-06-25T07:16:01Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* 41st Millennium? */

[[File:Zahariel.png|300px|right|thumb|He looks familiar...]]
'''Zahariel''' was a [[Awesome|bad-ass]] [[Librarian]] of the [[Dark Angels|First Legion]] during the [[Great Crusade]] and later joined [[Luther]] in exile on [[Caliban]] due to inexplicable orders of their [[Primarch]] [[Lion El'Jonson]], despite being one of the most [[Noblebright|idealistic]] [[Space Marines]] you'll ever find.

Also; ''if you believe half the forums on the internet'' a potential candidate for the secret identity of the [[Fallen Angels|Fallen Angel]] [[Cypher]] ''(more on that below)''

No model or rules yet exist for him in [[Forgeworld]]s [[Horus Heresy]] series, and may never exist, but we can only hope.

He does exist in the [[The Horus Heresy: Legions]] as the first Warlord to be released in the Defenders of Caliban set.

==Back Story==
Before the [[Imperium]] turned up, as a child of about seven years old he and his cousin ''Nemiel'' joined the '''The Order''' ''(a [[Paladin|knightly]] order where [[Lion El'Jonson]] was grand master)'' after spending a night stood to attention without moving, outside of their fortress walls... without shoes or a coat... ON A [[Death World|DEATH WORLD]].

After a few year and a cliche training montage, he loses his mentor and hero to a [[Chaos Spawn|Beast of the Forest]], so naturally he goes on an EPIC QUEST FOR VENGEANCE!

On the road discovers [[Watchers in the Dark]] who of course tell him "BEWARE", "THE FORESTS ARE HAUNTED", "TURN BACK", "YOU HAVE A SECRET HIDDEN POWER" and all that cliched shit, he continues on his merry way and eventually slays the beast.

Oh... the beast happens to be a [[Chaos Spawn|Calibanite Lion]]; the biggest, nastiest [[Chaos Spawn|beast]] on the planet, and only the [[Lion El'Jonson|Lion]] has ever killed a Lion before. Zahariel could only accomplish this by using his [[psyker|INNER POWER]] where he managed to slow down time enough that he wouldn't get chomped to bits and was able to phase through the thing to hit its weak point for massive damage.

Suffice to say this makes him a bit special, so he returns home the cliche hero and gets a sword made out of one of the Lion's teeth, and the [[Lion El'Jonson|Lion]] makes a few pointed remarks about him being the only other one to have a ''lion sword'' just like it.

Then they do a bit more [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|war]] and eventually take over the planet [[Just as Planned]]. Also wiping out the conservative Knights of Lupus on the way, who wanted to keep the beasts around to keep their knightly way of life relevant (but apparently tried to work with [[Chaos]] after all).

Then the [[Emperor]] turns up, shit breaks loose and he becomes embroiled in a taliban plot to bomb the parade. Zahariel is innocent though and uncovers the plot before it happens, gaining himself a personal audience with the Emperor, which he subsequently forgets due to mind wipe bullshit.

Then he and his cousin get drafted into the [[Dark Angels]] of course, Zahariel being one of the very first new Calibanite space marines... perhaps the first actually guaranteed to be admitted entry due to his psychic powers.

Zahariel becomes a [[Librarian]] while Nemiel becomes a [[Chaplain]] and all was well.

... Then he got sent home with [[Luther]] and a bunch of [[Fallen Angels|other brothers]], becoming more important, eventually sort of becoming Luther's second in command, along with the Lord [[Cypher]] (which was originally a post within the Order).

Shortly afterwards however, Nemiel gets his head punched off by his Primarch for having a minor disagreement over whether the legion can use [[Librarian]]s or not (during a FUCKING DAEMON INVASION I MIGHT ADD). ''Not that it stopped Zahariel using his powers back home anyway.''

So then, after much social and warp upheaval back home, Zahariel meets the [[Watchers in the Dark]] again who tell him how fucked up Caliban went, since humans killed all the [[Chaos Spawn|beasts]] in the forest that were guarding (and soaking up the energies of) the [[Chaos|tainted]] locations cause the planet had been hiding a dark secret since the beginning of time apparently (it is really close to the Eye of Terror), and now that shit (the Ouroboros) was waking up.

Luther ''(who in the mean time had been reading books from the [[Chaos|Knights of Lupus]] with encouragement from the then-current Lord Cypher, believed to be one of the Knights of Lupus)'' discovers some Terrans doing a ritual apparently to summon a daemon. He and Zahariel go to break that shit up. [[derp|Zahariel dies]] trying to kill it but learns its [[Daemon#True Names|True Name]] in the process.

BUT Luther [[What|brings him back from the dead]] using [[Chaos|"Advanced Medicine"]] just to ask him the creature's name so he can control it himself, using what he learned from the books of the Knights of Lupus.

Zahariel had been recovering for several months, and when he awoke from his post-death coma Luther revealed that he now knew the [[Horus Heresy]] was in full swing ''(the [[Knights-Errant]] must have come to Caliban at this time and let that knowledge out)'' and Luther's plan to free Caliban from the Imperium was about to be enacted. Therefore an uncertain Zahariel lies to Luther and says he doesn't know the creature's name after realising that the Terrans were, in fact, trying to [[Not as Planned|banish the creature instead of summon it.]]

Later, after following Cypher around for a bit to see where he's been sneaking off to, Zahariel realises that he didn't manage to kill the Ouroboros earlier, and it comes back with a bit of a vengeance. [[Cypher]] has a spastic attack and runs away.

'''''Angels of Caliban''''' follows immediately after this point, where Zahariel has been buried under a cave of rubble and is treated to visions from the Ouroboros and comes to the conclusion that the Ouroboros is in fact the soul of Caliban, and takes a level up in power as he starts drawing from it.

His typically idealistic position starts changing at this point, where his position within Luther's circle of trust becomes the member who wants to see Caliban restored to its "pure" state, opposed to '''Astelan''' who sees only the glory days of the "First Legion" ''(distinct from the "Dark Angels" who came later)'' and separate from Luther's design for a resurgent "Order" ''(also distinct from the Dark Angels or the "First")'' or the Lord Cypher who -along with the Watchers- only wants to keep a lid on the Ouroboros.

When a fleet of transports arrives to finally collect the exiled Calibanites, he becomes a key part of the plot to root out sympathisers within the newly arrived Dark Angels and mentally influence them whilst Luther gives a stirring oratory. However, when it looks like things are going ''too well'', Zahariel takes issue with the lack of [[Chaos|conflict]], believing it will cause a stagnation of Luther's plan. So Zahariel kills that Dark Angel's commander Belath ''(Astelan's nemesis)'' and the party devolves into bloodshed.

He then chases down the Lord Cypher, who took the ensuing carnaged caused by the fighting to level a few plasma shots at Zahariel. They have a stand off where the Watchers in the Dark protect Cypher from Z's attacks, but back off when they realise he is being fueled by the Ouroboros and threatens to let it loose from the cage. Without the protection of the Watchers, Zahariel then kills the Lord Cypher. ''(we don't see the death in gory details, only Cypher's fall and the body being hidden by the Librarians)''

When no-one can find the body, Zahariel is then invested as the new Lord Cypher by Luther.

At some point later the [[Fallen Angels|Angels fall]] and Caliban explodes.

==41st Millennium?==
As the plot progresses, Zahariel is overwhelmed by the [[Ouroboros]] and becomes its vessel for its power, which he believes is the "Heart of Caliban", though it is strongly intimated that he does not really understand what he is dealing with. Zahariel kills the Lord Cypher of Luther's era and takes his place. This makes him a strong contender for the secret identity of [[Cypher]] in the 41st Millennium, especially considering that both figures have a strong connection to the Ouroboros device and are pretty much the only individuals outside of the [[Watchers in the Dark]] who are aware of its capabilities.

However, Luther points out that ''"his"'' Cypher was slain by Corswain during the battle over Caliban, though Luther only has hearsay to support this assumption, and it does not appear to fit the Dark Angels understanding of events.

The novel ''Pandorax'' threw an interesting spanner into the mix by introducing a [[derp|NOT-Fallen]] [[Fallen Angels|Fallen]]. ''Grand Master Epimetheus'' was one of the [[Grey Knight]] founders along with [[Knights-Errant|Janus, Khyron, etc]] and was trapped in stasis on Pandorax for ten thousand years. Grey Knights change their names to be anti-daemon, and 40k Epimetheus is very clearly a [[Psyker]] just as Zahariel was, unlike M41 [[Cypher]]. It is made quite clear in a conversation between Epimetheus and a [[Lord of Change]] that Epimetheus should not have existed in that timeline and that he somehow traded destinies with someone else. Though not actually ''Fallen'', this version of Epimetheus still considers himself "Fallen" since he really should have been, and so he avoids the 40k Dark Angels out of shame.

As an extension of this, the Lord of Change claims to be the one who corrupted half of the [[Dark Angels]] legion to become the [[Fallen Angels]], but remarks that Epimetheus was the one who "nearly spoiled everything." Epimetheus points out that he recognised this daemon even before it makes the claim of corrupting the legion proceeds to '''UNMAKE''' the fucker, true-deathing it into oblivion using its [[Truenamer|True Name]]. If a simple Lord of Change over a few pages of a much bigger storyline really was the entity that corrupted Luther's portion of the Legion, then it means that Zahariel and the Ouroboros are just one more party in the Fallen/Loyalist war that inevitably destroyed the planet. Luther was definitely summoning what appeared to be [[Horror|Blue Horrors]] without Zahariel's knowledge during his exile on Caliban, so there appear to by myriad factions of the Fallen. It also means that even though Zahariel was a pawn of the Ouroboros, he was not necessarily knowingly in league with one ''(or aware of)'' of the four chaos powers.

Therefore there are several things to consider regarding what happens to Zahariel:
*As the only currently identified Lord-Cypher in the fluff, Zahariel is unlikely to be the 40k Cypher, because it spoils the mystery of his identity. [[Gav Thorpe]] has pointed out that GW consider Cypher's origins to be as shrouded as the Two Missing Primarchs, because the revelation rarely matches the expectation. So Zahariel is either dead, or he bestowed the position on someone else prior to the fall of Caliban and moved on.
*Someone traded places with Epimetheus and whoever assumed the identity had significant knowledge of the Fallen; and later became imprisoned in the Damnation Cache on Pandorax. Unfortunately the fate and identity of ''EITHER'' individual is left unspoken, though the '''Nemean Reaver''' is name dropped by Nathaniel Garro when the first Grand Masters are selected.
**The point of the switch is left uncertain. Though considering that Epimetheus from the Damnation Cache was somehow the one who ''"nearly spoiled everything"'' is must have been at a crucial point. If someone switched prior to the Fall and Epimetheus has always been the "true" Epimetheus, then this places the Grey Knights on Caliban during Luther's uprising. The alternative is that a psyker with first-hand knowledge of the Fall of Caliban came into contact with the Grey Knights and then replaced Epimetheus.
*According to the Lord of Change, Epimetheus was not supposed to exist in that time or place and was thrown off by the unexpected revelation. Only the [[Watchers in the Dark]] and the [[Ouroboros]] itself have ever been shown or implied to have the capability of altering timelines and put fear into daemons by their mere proximity. This would mean that Epimetheus' presence on Pandorax is a paradox, but because of Zahariel's interaction with both the Ouroboros and the Watchers he is still the stronger candidate.

No matter who ends up becoming Epimetheus, the Grey Knight's "end" is to be captured by [[Abaddon]] during the Pandorax campaign and eventually be handed over to [[Fulgrim]] to gain his allegiance for the upcoming [[13th Black Crusade]] - wherein Epimetheus was to be used an an [[Noblebright|"unblemished receptacle"]] to become the [[What|Avatar]] of [[Slaanesh]]. This also makes Epimetheus a contender for the role of the '''Knight in Silver''' trapped in Slaanesh's realm that is sometimes associated with [[Kaldor Draigo]]. In fact Epimetheus was MORE POWERFUL than Draigo and even knew what was in his future, though wouldn't tell him.

A vision received by [[Ezekiel]] told a possible future in which he, [[Azrael]], [[Asmodai]], and some other Dark Angels went into the [[Eye of Terror]] and joined force with [[Kaldor Draigo]] to rescue Epimetheus. This new plotline has started to be developed, with Asmodai even making deals with the [[Relictors]] Chapter to capture a member of the Black Legion, all so he could ask him where Epimethius was, meaning the identity of the Grey Knight is potentially going to be revealed soon.

{{Marines-Characters}}

[[Category:Dark Angels]]
[[Category:Fallen Angels]]
[[Category:Grey Knights]]

Fallen Angels

2021-06-25T07:10:21Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Grey Knights */

{{Heresy}}
[[File:FallenHeader.jpg|center|600px|]]
{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = The Fallen
|Heraldry = [[Image:Fallen angel.jpg|250px]]
|Battle Cry = Unknown
|Successors of = Dark Angels
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = Originally Luther, now ''possibly'' [[Cypher]]
|Primarch = [[Lion El'Jonson]]
|Original Homeworld = [[Caliban]], [[Terra]]
|Current Homeworld = Various/none
|Champion = ''possibly'' either [[Cypher]] or Luther.
|Specialty = Evading/trolling the Unforgiven
|Strength = Potentially thousands ''(Luther had ~45,000 on Caliban during the Horus Heresy)''
|Allegiance = Various (see below)
|Colours = Pre-Heresy Dark Angel black}}
REQUESTING DATA ACCESS, security_clearance: '''INQUISITOR'''. Processing...

''Database error #0754339867'', access: DENIED

''Greetings Inquisitor Yzaguirre, the information which you are attempting to access is classified and may no longer exist. Your service record and citizen number have been logged and recorded, any further interest in this subject on your behalf may result in the unfortunate early termination of your career.''

REQUESTING DATA ACCESS, security_clearance: '''INNER_CIRCLE'''. Processing...

Adeptus Astartes DNA ''confirmed'', scanning... chapter: [[Disciples of Caliban]], rank: Company Master, access: GRANTED

''Welcome son of Lion El'Jonson, here is the latest intel on the movements of the Fallen ones. As always this information is'' FOR THE EYES OF THE UNFORGIVEN ONLY ''and takes precedence over all other duties, no matter how urgent. For the Emperor and the Lion!

Exloading datasquirt...

The '''Fallen Angels''' are renegade members of the [[Dark Angels]] Legion who turned on [[Lion El'Jonson]] during the [[Horus Heresy]]. They have a thousand contradictory stories and a thousand contradictory motivations, from full on Chaos worship to acting on Luthor's lies to political shenanigans. To those Dark Angels who know of their existence, they are simply known as "the Fallen".

==History of The Fallen==
[[Image:Casting a shadow.jpg|250px|left|]]
Okay, so after the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] found [[Caliban]], Lion was made commander of the Dark Angels, and they began recruiting from Caliban's population, including taking on many of the Knights that served in the Order with Lion, amongst whom was his friend and mentor [[Luther]]. After some time had passed in the [[Great Crusade]], a cadre of 500 Astartes made up of a mixture of both Calibanite and Terran Dark Angels were relegated to garrison duty on Caliban while Lion went off and fought in the Crusade with the larger bulk of his legion. This apparently caused no small amount of discontent among the garrisoned Angels, many of whom were once high ranking [[Chapter Master]]s and [[Brother-Captain|Captains]] who were now under the command of Luther, who was not even a Space Marine. In addition, Luther and many others felt abandoned by their Primarch or they felt that the old Calibanite way of life was being eradicated by the takeover of the Imperium. For their part, the Terran Dark Angels saw the Calibanites clinging to old traditions and oaths, ''noting that, amongst other things, instead of swearing "For the Emperor", they would swear "For Caliban"'', and saw them as being insubordinate. [[Chaos]] was quick to take advantage of their resentment and convinced them to betray their [[Primarch]].

Over the course of the Horus Heresy, the garrisoned Dark Angels had no idea that the galaxy was at war around them; this was partly because events on Caliban, such as noble uprisings and daemonic cults, prevented them from looking outwards, but also because Luther had taken control of planetary communications and [[Cypher]] was doing his best to keep Luther either [[Skub|distracted OR prepared]] for something ''(the jury is still out on that one)'', so Luther wasn't paying enough attention until some [[Knights-Errant]] showed up to determine his loyalties, which accidentally let the cat out of the bag.

By mid-Heresy, Luther had enlarged the garrison up to a sizable force, all trained in the traditions of the old ''Order of Caliban'', managing to reduce training cycles for new Astartes from eight years down to an optimal 24 months ''(two years)'' and seemingly could produce around 5000 marines per cycle. As of the time Luther and Zahariel become aware of the Ouroboros, Luther cancels further deployment of these marines until further notice. When Belath comes to collect them whilst the [[Horus Heresy]] was in full swing, Luther has a force of around 45,000 warriors on Caliban ''(Belath came with enough transports for 30,000 men, then Astelan points out that it would leave less than half that number on Caliban)'' plus the six or more Fortress-Fleets that were scattered around the Imperium, of which ''at least'' one was loyal to Luther prior to his declaration of independence.

At some point after the Siege of [[Earth|Terra]] and the long aftermath referred to as the ''Scouring'', Lion El'Jonson returned to Caliban, and the Dark Angels garrison opened fire on his fleet. Heading to their fortress-monastery, Lion fought Luther in single combat whilst the Dark Angels continued their orbital bombardment. Unfortunately, Caliban was never really tectonically stable, and the force of the bombardment caused the planet to break apart... somehow. The only thing to survive was the fortress-monastery. By the time Lion's loyalists got in, Luther was [[Chaos Spawn|a gibbering wreck]] and Lion was nowhere to be seen. The garrisoned Dark Angels were apparently thrown through the [[Warp]] and scattered across the stars. Ever since, the Dark Angels have hunted for the Fallen Angels to restore their honor in the eyes of the Emperor.

However, things are a bit more complicated than that...

===Further Analysis===
[[Image:Fallen-angel.jpg|250px|right|]]
It has been shown that not all of the fallen angels are followers of [[Chaos]], and many (possibly even most) of them regret their pre-Heresy actions and realize that they were wrong; these members of the Fallen have gone into exile and try to blend into the local population and live a "normal" life, although quite how a seven-foot tall post-human with enough muscle to tear a bear limb from limb and the external ports from his Black Carapace poking through his skin is supposed to just "blend in" with anyone outside of the [[Blackshield|Deathwatch]] is anyone's guess.

[[File:Fallen angels.jpg|250px|thumb|right|A rare sighting of three fallen angels working together]]

Not only that, but the Fallen were said to be fighting among themselves before the Lion even arrived in orbit; as mentioned previously, many of the Terran legionnaires (and some Calibanite Dark Angels too) were uncomfortable with the way that Luther was comporting himself and tried to get a message out to Terra or the Lion to inform them of what was happening to their planet. They managed to amass a force of several thousand Astartes and tried to storm one of the astropathic relays but were double-crossed by one of the First Legionnaires, '''Astelan''', ''a guy who was one of the first 5000 space marines EVER and remembered the [[Thunder Warriors]]'', who sought his own advancement and was unhappy with the way that the Lion commanded the legion that "used" to be mostly his before the Lion showed up. These Imperial-Loyalist forces were all rounded up and placed into dungeons underneath the Rock. Which is kinda strange since Astelan had to have known there was no chance in Hell of winning against the Lion and his fleet. So, he'd lose everything. On the bright side [[Noblebright|maybe those loyalists ironically survived the destruction of Caliban due to being imprisoned deep within/under the Fortress Monestary, getting the last laugh when their brothers freed them.]] It's also possible those "Fallen" who were actually loyalists that appear are where those mysteriously appearing Chapters of the First Legion come from.
*It is a testament to Astelan's over-bloated sense of self-worth that he believes the Dark Angels would be better off under his command, especially considering that despite being one of the first 5000 Astartes ever created he did not rise to the position of chapter master until after the Lion took control of the legion. His attitude towards the Lion and the newer Dark Angels is very similar to that of the Custodians in ''Master of Mankind'', viewing all those that came after as below him; after all, he was one of the first, and was directly commanded by the Emperor in person; why should he take orders from a lesser being? He is very much a mercenary at heart, and as long as you remain the biggest kid on the playground then he will be your best friend, but as soon as an even bigger kid shows up you can bet that Astelan will do what is best for Astelan.
*In his defense though, things only really turned sour when he actually tried to uphold the initial values of the Great Crusade as set forth by Big.E. (i.e. integrate lost human civilizations into the Imperium instead of [[exterminatus|bombing them into oblivion with extreme prejudice]]) and a Caliban-born Dark Angel, Belath, manipulated events so the planet had to be [[rape|forcefully subdued]] and (insult to injury) made him look incompetent in the process. Doesn't excuse his actions after that, but it does give him a reason as to why he believed Johnson & co were just self-serving opportunists waiting to see who'd win during the Heresy.

Therefore as the Heresy has progressed several different factions of Dark Angels emerged:
:*The [[Dark Angels]] who follow the [[Lion_El'Jonson|Lion]], either accompanying him to [[Imperium Secundus]] on the far side of the Galaxy, or who are accompanying his Paladin Corswain on the other side of the Ruinstorm.
:*The [[Dark Angels]] who were on [[Caliban]] and remained loyal to the [[Lion_El'Jonson|Lion]] and [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|the Emperor]], but who were ambushed and imprisoned beneath [[the Rock]].
:*The ''Order'', who rejects their Primarch and Emperor, who follow [[Luther]] and yearn for a return to the glory days of a free and independent Caliban regardless of whether Horus or the Emperor win the Heresy. To ensure Caliban’s “freedom and glory” Luther and the Order decided it would be a good idea to expand upon their power base by conquering… did I say conquering? I meant '''liberating''' all the nearby inhabited systems thus bringing them under Luther’s command. But you know, conquering and subjugating entire populations in order to accelerate your own personal agenda is only a bad thing when the Imperium does it; when the Order takes control of your home by military force it’s all in the name of “freedom”… yeah, this is not going to end well. (This would also make the Dark Angels' big secret a lot worse; if in their rage and grief they had to “'''deal'''” with these renegade systems that had knowledge of what had happened on Caliban… just think about it). Luther would later encounter Typhon in the Zaramund system, which gives further support to the idea that the Fallen's influence was no longer confined to one planet, but was, in fact spreading out over multiple systems. As the Heresy raged around them Luther and his buddies were busy carving out their own anti-imperium galactic empire (no wonder the Dark Angels at the time freaked out and tried to cover the whole thing up).
:*The ''First'' who follow '''Astelan''', who reject the Lion as an unworthy liege but at least put lip service to the idea that the Emperor is their true master. At the current point in the storyline, Astelan supports Luther out of political convenience. (Not all the "First" follow Astelan; many sided with the Lion and are imprisoned with the others beneath the Rock.)
:*[[Zahariel]]'s ''Mystai'', who have secretly fallen under the influence of the [[Ouroboros]] and want to see it freed from its prison buried within Caliban. Closet Chaos worshippers even if they don't realise it yet.
:*The Watchers, and the (possibly former/deceased) Lord Cypher, who have their own agenda that no other faction really knows about, but who know the truth about Chaos and the Ouroboros and want to keep it contained.
:*The current Cypher (who may or may not be Zahariel), whose motives are a complete mystery.

Over the years, some of the captured Fallen have claimed that it was Lion El'Jonson who was the traitor and took his sweet time to get to Terra, implying that Lion El'Jonson was trying to wait and see who would win the civil war and side with the victor. This is probably the Fallen lying, as they would have no way of knowing what the Lion was actually doing at all, considering he and his Legion would have been scattered across the Galaxy and never called home to see how things were going. The Lion certainly had reason to be displeased with the Emperor ''([[Horus]] correctly suspected that he resented not being chosen as Warmaster, as he was the "First" [[Primarch]] as well as the Primarch most renowned for his [[Creed|tactical genius]])'', however the consensus viewpoint amongst fa/tg/uys seems to be that these are just the ramblings of tortured Fallen repeating lies told to them by Luther and that the Lion's ABSOLUTE LOYALTY remains intact. Whatever the truth is, only the Emperor knows, and he isn't talking. Mostly because [[Horus]] ripped out his tongue and his vocal cords have faded to dust, but that's beside the point. The book ''Fallen Angels'' did note that El'Jonson supplied [[Perturabo]] with extra siege weaponry before the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V in exchange for the Iron Lord supporting him as the new Warmaster when Horus was slain. He didn't realize that the [[Iron Warriors]] were traitors until it was too late. Similarly, one confrontation between the Lion and [[Konrad Curze]] ended with the latter correctly predicting that the Lion's attempts at pursuing him and the [[Night Lords]] would be used against him as evidence of his disloyalty. Which, in usual Grimdark fashion, makes sense only to the most retarded of trolls. Since most people reading this know that fighting against a traitor legion (while sending most of his legion to fight other traitor legions) is not going to be seen as disloyalty. What is he supposed to do? ''Not'' fight the traitors? On top of that, while everyone else was being rapidly pushed back by the traitor legions, Lion was rapidly ''retaking'' traitor-conquered territory. From an outside perspective, Horus's rush to Terra could be viewed as him [[Awesome|running away from the Lion]].

However, the rantings of the captured Fallen Angels when they accuse the Lion, the Imperium or each other of misdeeds has to be taken with copious amounts of salt:
# They cannot be represented as a picture of the whole truth, especially in that there were Loyalist-Fallen & Traitor-Fallen fighting EACH OTHER on Caliban before the Lion showed up, so they do not represent the views of a unified group.
# Many Fallen are simply liars who will say anything to protect their own skins. '''Astelan''' in particular is now ''confirmed'' to be a liar and that he is as culpable a traitor as any other (just not a capital T Traitor; he's disgusted by Chaos) despite his protests in 40k that he was actually a loyal subject of the Emperor ''(if not the Lion)''.

There are even reports that some members of the Fallen may be [[Alpha Legion|Closet Loyalists]] attempting to subvert Chaos from within by drawing the Dark Angels' attention to where it is needed most only to disappear once the Dark Angels arrive leaving them free to battle the true threat to the Imperium, [[just as planned]]. Although, [[Derp|this does come at the cost of fluffing ''against'' the Unforgiven's habit of ignoring everything or abandoning wars just to hunt down even a single Fallen]]. But leaving the Fallen to focus on the real threat ''does'' fit with the Lion's knightly everything. He was secretive, not disloyal or prone to putting his honor above his duty nor shying away from punishment. That same behavior would make sense for his sons (and does show in a way with Azrael and the Unforgiven standing down when Guilliman shows up, ready to accept extermination without even trying to defend themselves).

Amongst the known Fallen Angels the most famous is [[Cypher]] whom [[Games Workshop]] just gave a dataslate full of AWESOME AND WIN. Check this shit out, the only guy with a BS of 10! He's more of a sniper than a sniper!

It is also highly possible that the Death Watch commander Israfil (the only Black Shield commander in the history of Death Watch named in lore) was in fact the Fallen ex-Chief Librarian Israfael (the one who recognized [[Zahariel]] was a psyker); this suspicion is fed not only by their similar names, but also by the strange death of Israfil during a xenocidal campaign which also involved Dark Angels forces and the inability to recover his body.

Some other Fallen decided to make the most of their shit sandwich and pledged themselves to Chaos. Among these were an Astartes named Vortigern and his Lost Lions warband, who joined the Black Legion when it was in its infancy. Vortigern became part of its ruling council, the Ezekarion, and it's partly down to him that they're still intact. When the First Battle of Cadia saw the Black Legion caught between the Black Templars and a surprise attack by a heap of Nine Legions ships, Vortigern was the first to get a decent number of Black Legion vessels to safety.

In summary: There are the guys who followed Lion directly (loyalist), the guys who wanted to do that but were imprisoned on the Rock (loyalist), Luther's non-Chaos Calibanite Seperatists (lowercase t traitor), Astelan's group (itself further divided to those who backed up Luther out of convenience and those imprisoned with the Lion followers) (members loyalist, leaders lowercase t traitor), Zahariel's unwitting Ouroboros puppets (capital T Chaos Traitor), Cypher (who knows) and survivors of Luther's group who joined Chaos to make the best of what they had (capital T Chaos Traitor). In the 42nd millenium, Zahariel and Astelan's groups are extinct and any remaining seperatists are either helping mankind, if not the Imperium (or at least the Imperial Government), undercover or have joined Chaos fully. Luther also woke up and is said to be gathering them for an unknown purpose. Everyone else are modern Dark Angels and successors in the Unforgiven, some Dark Angels sucessors who are not in the Unforgiven due to diplomatic fractures but are loyalists, Dark Angels and sucessors who have fallen after Luther's treachery and are thus ordinary heretics and finally Cypher again.

===What counts as Fallen?===
[[File:Fallen DAMarine.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Unforgiven have no mercy for the fallen, regardless of their origins.]]
While the Unforgiven put all of their focus on hunting their wayward brethren, there is an important distinction between "true" Fallen and just another traitorous space marine. In '''Pandorax''', one of the major villains is a [[Chaos Space Marine|renegade]] [[Consecrators]] Space Marine, who refers to himself as Fallen and has even had contact with [[Cypher]].

Once he was caught, he refused to be broken and repent in the dungeons of the Rock and claimed that he would escape if they did not kill him. To which [[Azrael]] & [[Asmodai]] laughed in his face. (YES, '''ASMODAI''' ACTUALLY LAUGHED!) Then they told him that the "true Fallen" were led unknowingly by Luther into rebellion and can still be saved if they repent, while ''his'' descent into heresy was his own fault and he was not led astray, finding [[Chaos]] because of his own selfish desires whatever they may have been. So Dark Angels simply consider other more recent [[Chaos Space Marine|renegades]] as traitors [[grimdark|worthy of only death]].

So they decapitate him.

The latest codex supplement (9ed) for the Dark Angels reveals that some Fallen warbands have replenished their casualties and created new space marines to join their ranks. Apparently, some of those marines involved in recruitment on Caliban made it off planet and picked up where they left off. The present Dark Angels consider these "new" Fallen to be just as legitimate as those who were present on Caliban and will treat them the same as their older brothers.

==Ophidium Gulf Crusade incident==

The precise details of this incident are somewhat sketchy, not being helped by the fact that Games Workshop have released [[derp|several seemingly conflicting versions of the event]]. What they all agree upon however is that the [[Black Templar]] [[Imperial_Navy#Cruiser|Strike Cruiser]] ''Ophidium Gulf'' disappeared in mysterious circumstances shortly after making contact with a larger Dark Angel force and taking captive a Fallen Angel in a "joint" operation. Initially reluctant to comply with the Dark Angels' demand to hand over their prisoner, they realise that the Dark Angels aren't messing about when their ships start powering up their weapons and, greatly outmatched, are left with no choice but to relent. After handing over the prisoner they make a single astropathic communication on way to the system jump point but are never heard from again, the implication being that the Dark Angels ambushed them to prevent the secret of The Fallen from becoming public. Which is stupid of the Dark Angels. Everyone would assume that Cypher was the only renegade Dark Angel and would shrug off the threat delivered to the Black Templar ship as the Dark Angels protecting their honor by wanting to be the ones to deal with the traitor(?) to their <s>Legion</s> CHAPTER, FOR THE DARK ANGELS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS ARE DEVOUT FOLLOWERS OF GUILLIMAN'S CODEX! Instead, their actions blew the whole thing out of proportion.

There are several interesting notes we can take from this:

*This is the first (known) time that any chapter outside of the Unforgiven has had contact with the Fallen; the Black Templars immediately realized that the individual was an [[Space Marine|Astartes]] however they chose to take him prisoner rather than execute him as a heretic giving some credence to reports that not all Fallen are Chaos worshipers.

*In the story as told in White Dwarf 312, the Fallen taken prisoner is none other than Cypher, who remarks upon seeing the Templars "You are not the lapdogs of the Lion... how curious"; the Templars agree to meet the Dark Angels at a pre-arranged point for a prisoner transfer but are never heard from again afterwards and Cypher mysteriously and inexplicably vanishes from his cell, thus proving he is [[awesome]]! Other versions of the story have the prisoner as wearing ancient [[Power_armor#Mark_I:_Thunder_Armour|Mark 1 Power Armour]] and seemingly being rescued by other Fallen masquerading as Dark Angels before the real Dark Angels presumably turn up to destroy the ''Ophidium Gulf'' to stop the story leaking out.

*When the Unforgiven say that they're willing to do ''anything'' to keep their secret safe, they're not kidding; murdering brother Astartes is pretty fucked up by the moral compass of most loyalist Chapters, for the Dark Angels however it's not something which they will hesitate to do or agonize about later as long as they keep their secret safe and "honour" intact. In fact, it's probably not too big a stretch to say that no other loyalist Chapter is as close to being excommunicated from the Imperium as the First Legion and it may even have already been so were they not tolerated due to their strength and importance.

*The Black Templars have not forgotten about this incident, and have strong suspicions as to the eventual fate of their battle brothers; despite their apparent mutual affinity for entering battle dressed in robes, the Dark Angels (whom were already regarded with suspicion by the Templars' for their rampant secrecy) are now openly distrusted even more than the Templars distrust any Chapter who aren't sons of [[Rogal Dorn]], which is saying a lot as the Templars distrust pretty much everyone anyway. Seeing as how the Templars are well above Chapter strength, could probably count on support from the [[Space Wolves]] who are also above Codex strength (though how above both are is a matter of debate) and whose not-so-friendly rivalry ''(depending on which codex you read)'' with the sons of Lion El'Johnson has on occasion spilled into open conflict, we could make the supposition that if the combined Unforgiven (the Dark Angels and whichever successors they call in) weren't impressively powerful then the Templars and Space Vikings might have tired of waiting for the [[Inquisition]] to dig up the Dark Angels secrets and taken matters into their own hands. The Dark Angels sure do like making powerful enemies! They also requested that the Inquisition make a formal investigation, which has been indefinitely suspended after the Inquisitor in charge of the investigation "disappeared". Though, since they were trying to levy accusations of betrayal against 1) a Legion, 2) a Legion who is the ''master'' of '''every other Legions' specialties''' and 3) has no fluff saying they don't still use the Dark Age and Strife technology the Emperor gave them including things that fuck reality and '''''enslaved Men of Iron''''' it's safe to say that the Imperium may well have gotten rid of that Inquisitor just to avoid pissing off the Dark Angels. Oh, and the fact the Emperor gave the First Legion technologies specifically capable of and intended for ''killing everyone in the galaxy so humanity could expand across a clean slate'' in case the Great Crusade failed. '''Don't Fuck With Them.'''

*A recent event (as in its form the new Iyanden supplement) reveals Dark Angels only seem to care about the Imperium finding out their little secret, as a similar event happened when Iyanden was fighting a chaos mini-empire ruled by a Fallen. Only here the Dark Angels didn't hunt down and kill the Eldar (granted it may be due to their use of the Webway). Meaning they're more willing to trust and work with Xeno Scum than Imperial forces, except that the Inquisition are a rightfully feared threat to ANY space marine chapter. Of course, it's not like the Eldar are going to tell anyone in the Imperium (or be believed if they did) or would even understand the concept, or know about the Dark Angel paranoia. Of course seeing how the Eldar only turned him over because they've read their minds... (It's implied that the Eldar let them take the Fallen, because they knew he would suffer more at the hands of the Dark Angels. Grimdark.) The Eldar mind-reading may or may not have also seen the aforementioned Dark Age and Long Night technologies the First Legion has and decided not to give them a reason to erase Iyanden.

*Strangely however, the Ophidium Gulf Incident isn't mentioned in later editions nor has it been expanded upon since. In fact, it seems to have been retcon'd out. Between the Battle of Piscina IV (997.M41), the Third War for Armageddon (998.M41), and the events of ''Master of Sanctity''/''The Unforgiven'' (999.M41), the Dark Angels chapter wouldn't have any Battle Barges or Strike Cruiser Squadrons anywhere near the Ophidium Gulf during the supposed Incident (also 998.M41). Oh, and in ''Master of Sanctity'', Cypher - who I'll remind you, was the Fallen captive at Ophidium - just walks right up to the Dark Angels anyway ''to deliver a warning'', meaning he would have little reason to run away at Ophidium. So... ''who the fuck were the Dark Angels who attacked the Ophidium Gulf?'' It seems some dickery is afoot...

Ironically in the recent Fallen comic series, the Dark Angels strike force commander, Captain Seraphus, is insistent on his refusal to fire on the Grey Knights & Inquisitorial vessels, helmed by Justicar Leofric and Inquisitor Sabbathiel, in Calaphrax Cluster in M41 when the latter demand permission to board and investigate the Dark Angels for signs of heresy (whether his refusal to shoot is either out of knowledge that doing so is heretical suicide despite the Dark Angels battlebarge' superior size and firepower or due to the distaste of shooting fellow loyalists is up to debate). In the other hand, he was more than willing to dispatch a boarding party led by Veliath while they are distracted by a battle with Iron Warriors to board the Inquisitor's vessel and discern if she knew too much and if she must be "dealt with" appropriately. So, he probably just didn't want to attack fellow Astartes but didn't give a damn about killing everyone else if necessary.

==Grey Knights==
More than any other Chapter, the Dark Angels and the Unforgiven fear what would happen if the [[Grey Knights]] should become involved with a hunt for the Fallen Angels. Making Inquisitors or even fellow Space Marines "disappear" or "dying due to battle circumstances we couldn't have prevented" is one thing. Trying to do the same to Space Marines from a Chapter designed to fight and kill [[Daemon]]s? Near suicidal, even by 40k standards. However, as revealed in the novel ''Pandorax'', it's irrelevant. When the [[Black Legion]] attempted to open an ancient warp portal the Grey Knights were sent to the planet Pythos in order to seal the breach and deal with the demonic incursion, Supreme Grand Master Draigo was unable to wait for reinforcements from among his own forces due to his Chapter being scattered around the Imperium in response to a myriad of daemonic threats, instead he opted to enact an old oath sworn to the Grey Knights by the Dark Angels. [[Azrael]] had initially refused to honour the pact, considering it to be tantamount to blackmail. His mind was soon changed when Draigo revealed an interesting nugget of information gleaned from interrogating a Traitor Astartes prisoner who revealed that he knew about Traitor Space Marines the Dark Angels had captured and now kept up on [[the Rock]]. Draigo was well aware that the Dark Angels would go to great lengths to protect their secrets and although he was unaware of the reasons why they would have such a vested interest in those imprisoned beneath the Rock he could still make an informed guess as to the nature of those secrets. It was not the possible knowledge of the Fallen that had motivated Azrael and his chapter, but rather the Grey Knight's knowledge of the methods employed by the Dark Angels to keep their secrets hidden, that ultimately ensured they honoured the ancient pact struck with the Grey Knights. And so the leader of the Dark Angels committed his entire Chapter to the Pandorax campaign, operational superiority the Grey Knight’s sole concession in exchange for cooperation. Though they were nominally allies, the relationship between the two Chapters had always been fractious, never spilling over into confrontation but coming near on more than one occasion. Being forced to operate so closely together would put that to the test once again, more so in light of the circumstances of their alliance. Several times in the book, Draigo warns Azrael that the Dark Angels will not interfere in his operations, or he will go straight to the [[High Lords of Terra]] and tell the High Lords about what the Dark Angels are doing. Azrael considers the threat so real that he commits the ''entire'' Dark Angels chapter (over nine hundred Astartes and nearly one hundred Neophyte Scouts) to the threat. However, that being said, let's be real here: for all the weight the word of the Grey Knights and Draigo's in particular may carry, the chances of the High Lords taking any meaningful action against a First Founding chapter are miniscule, and the Dark Angels are the '''FIRST''' of the First Founding, which only increases the un-likelihood. Many would likely see such actions as defying the will of the Emperor himself, and they wouldn't be unjustified for believing so. The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that Draigo is high on narcotics.

So yes, the Grey Knights ''"should"'' already be aware of the touchy history of Caliban, but for all intents and purposes, they don't care or haven't actually figured out what it all means yet. Kaldor Draigo never actually claimed to know about the Fallen or about what happened on Caliban. In fact at the end of the Pandorax campaign, Draigo is seen screaming in Azrael's face demanding to know who these mysterious prisoners are and why the Dark Angels are so interested in them. Though to Azrael's credit, he ''actually'' doesn't have a clue why Draigo is so upset, since the Dark Angels didn't actually know about the particular Fallen Angel in question, who turned out to be an [[Zahariel#Not_Cypher.3F_If_then_Who.3F|original]] Grey Knight Founder and was kidnapped by [[Abaddon]] instead.

At the end of the day (or the Imperium, as fluff would have it) it's hilarious. In a [[grimdark]] laugh-or-you'll-cry sort of way. But also almost justified, as the Inquisition have ex-communicated [non-First Founding] chapters for less before.

==Who knows what?==
At the close of the 41st Millennium, the Changeling managed to worm its way on to the Rock and unleash some prisoners, nearly reaching Luther's own cell before being repelled by one of the [[Watchers in the Dark]], then was later banished by [[Azrael]], [[Ragnar Blackmane]], and [[Arvann Stern]]. Though the prisoners and their specific natures were not seen by the outsiders, parts of the dungeons were, though the Grey Knights knew about them anyway. The fact that several prisoners escaped no doubt set the Dark Angel's Hunt back several centuries at the very least, considering how rare it is to capture one of them.

With the current state of the Imperium, members of the Fallen have been publicly outed by appearing on Terra in the company of a freshly reborn [[Roboute Guilliman]] and would have been viewed ''(marching alongside the Grey Knights no less)'' by the teeming masses of humanity. Though what this means is mostly a matter for conjecture, since very few people ever get to see Space Marines in the flesh and not be destroyed by them; they might have just assumed they were [[Ravenwing|normal Dark Angels]] [[Consecrators|wearing]] [[Angels of Vengeance|black]]. In any case, without specific knowledge of the Fallen ''(or the Grey Knights for that matter)'' the space marines in the company of the first Primarch the Imperium has seen in about eight thousand years would probably have been relegated to a side-show or a curious talking point.

More significant is the fact that said Fallen Angels were arrested by the [[Adeptus Custodes]] on the orders of Guilliman at the arrival to the doors of the throne room, and were placed in a Custodian prison that no-one had ever escaped from, though [[Troll|Cypher escapes in the following sentence]]. These prisoners would undoubtedly have tales to tell, though over a hundred years later, '''nothing seems to have come of it''', and the Dark Angels were reinforced with [[Primaris Marines]] in the [[Ultima Founding]], new Chapters were raised using their Gene-Seed, and they were permitted to keep their [[Deathwing]] and [[Ravenwing]] formations after petitioning Guilliman himself.

So the question becomes, who knows what?

So far we know:
*The [[High Lords of Terra]] have long believed that the Dark Angels were guilty of Legion-Building, but are unaware of the reasons (because there is rarely a massive enemy force requiring such an organization). Hence why they were reluctant to utilise their gene-seed in new Foundings despite their relative genetic purity.
*The [[Grey Knights]] knew the Dark Angels were taking prisoners back to the Rock, but were unaware of who they were, but agreed to keep this knowledge from the High Lords as a condition of Azrael accompanying the Grey Knights on the Pandorax campaign. However, the Grey Knights were seemingly unaware of any cooperation between the Unforgiven Chapters and found their close-knit way of speaking about each other odd.
*The [[Black Templars]] captured a prisoner and transferred him over to the Dark Angels at gunpoint. Those Black Templars were never seen again, though that incident may have been retconned.
*Thanks to the Fenris campaign and the four way parlay ''(Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Inquisition)'' taking place on the Rock, the [[Inquisition]] now has members embedded throughout the fleet of the Dark Angels. Even if they don't have access to the deeper levels, the cells or the libraries, it does mean that they can monitor fleet movements and activities from now on. Y'know, if the Dark Angels magically became stupid and careless and didn't spend ten thousand years mastering secrecy and counter-espionage.
**The Inquisition is also aware that a former Dark Angel: '''Vortigern''' was once a high-ranking member of the [[Black Legion]], though they might only suspect Vortigern was one of the Astartes who individually defected to Horus during the Heresy.
*The [[Adeptus Custodes]] have Guilliman's prisoners under lock-and-key. Although their track record for gauging loyalty is spotty at best ''(they did imprison the Crusader Host and not manage to sort out their loyalties all that quickly, though a Blood Angel and Iron Hand were set free)'' and tend to take a "you're all a threat" approach. Through the magic of Plot Armour Cypher and his fallen escaped the most secure prison in the Imperium, well apart from the even more secure prisions the Custodes have holding horrors of Old Night. They apparently gave up no information.
*Guilliman has had direct contact with [[Cypher]], knows that he carries the Lion's sword, and knows he desires to meet the Emperor face-to-face. Guilliman is also one of the few living beings with first hand knowledge of the Lion and the Dark Angels pre-, mid- and post-heresy, so will already have no reason to believe any Fallen claiming that "the Lion was a traitor". (Hell, one of the Horus Heresy books has Lion kneel and beg to Guilliman for help in granting the Emperor the highest chance of survival; as far as Guilliman is concerned, the Fallen are outright delusional). That being said he doesn't know they exist. He likely thinks of the Fallen he encountered as modern Black Shields or something similar and any anti-Imperium Fallen as [[Alpha Legion]] Psy-Ops to try to fuck with him and the Dark Angels.

It could be said that if they all sat down together, they could probably figure out what was going on. Though the different agencies of the Imperium don't tend to have a habit of sharing information, various individuals might have an idea of what's going on, but not the whole picture. Since the Dark Angels typically don't leave witnesses to their actions there isn't much hard evidence to be laid down at their feet other than some hearsay, rumour and a few wrecked planets where they purged some "heretics" ''wink wink''. This is probably not helped by the fact the [[Cypher]] managed to delete the Imperium's incriminating records on the chapter in mid M38, meaning the Imperium's ability to use hindsight has been massively curtailed. Even more so than usual.

Complicating things further still is the discovery that Luther himself has escaped his cell following an attack by the Fallen Angel turned Daemon Prince Marbas on the Rock. Azrael believes that he is planning to re-create his old Legion and has linked him to rumors of a massive gathering of Fallen somewhere in the Imperium Nihilus.

Painful irony is, as usual, quite common in 40k. In this case the fact a few (relative to a Legion) Astartes turned rogue would be so mundane and stupid a reason for the Dark Angels' behavior that the High Lords might not even believe it. They would not be able to comprehend why an entire ''Legion'' would devote itself to spending ''ten thousand years'' hunting drips and drops of their renegades showing up or why a Legion would even hide the fact it had renegades in the first place since all the Legions did. In other words, '''''they don't really have a reason for the secrecy.''''' As for dishonor, it doesn't matter if you cover it up, a dishonorable act is a dishonorable act. In fact, covering up ''adds to'' the dishonor.

To make things WORSE many Fallen Angels have joined the ranks of the Black Legion. Heck, one of them is a member of Abaddon's inner circle

==New Rules==
In Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch there are new rules for the fallen, Cypher and new missions and tactical objectives for playing them against loyalists. This book also encourages combining mark IV Space Marines, Dark Angel upgrades and Dark Angel Veterans to convert Fallen.
[[File:Fallen Champions n1.png|thumb|right|Cypher and his Fallen Champions are ready for business.]]

Vigilus Ablaze includes a specialist detachment to allow Chaos Rhinos and Chaos Sorcerers to lose their option for a Mark of Chaos in exchange for getting FALLEN as their LEGION and IMPERIUM to boot. This is seperate from using Cypher to stratagem in an Imperial Assassin into your Chaos force using recent White Dwarf rules.

The Fallen Angels are special in that they have an ''upper limit''. As in, if you start a Fallen Angels army, you can actually finish it; there's a finish line, an end point above which you cannot go higher. As of the time of writing, the largest Fallen army you can build is:

Cypher, of course. Never not take Cypher in a Fallen list.
One Chaos Sorcerer with Jump Pack, Force Axe and Thunder Hammer. Granted, there's zero reason at all to take both the Axe and Hammer, but we're theorycrafting for largest possible here.
Three squads of Fallen with power fist and combi-melta on the Champion, four guys with Thunder Hammers, Boltguns and Bolt Pistols, one guy with a Lascannon and four more Boltgun guys. Thanks to Rule of Three, there's no way to take more than three Fallen squads, and no way to take less than three either because you have to fill a Vanguard Detachment because of your limited options.
Five Chaos Rhinos with Combi-Meltas and Havoc Launchers.

This nets you a total points cost of 1,341; pretty respectable, all in all. Generally, you'll want to not do a hammer or axe on the Sorcerer; Force Swords'll do you fine, and you'll probably want a good ranged weapon (like a combi-plasma for MEQ-slaying) instead. Your Sorcerer's your Mortal Wound source, not your beatstick, generally. The most expensive Fallen squads are actually a pretty decent loadout; the Lascannons give some good anti-tank punch, and the hammers and fist make it so they can punch tanks to death if they need to. You get a couple extra potshots with the combi-melta, and you get a few models of chaff per squad before you start taking real damage. That said, you can run a Fallen squad with five plasma guns and a combi-plasma. This is fun and fluffy - and let's face it, if you're running Fallen, you've already decided being competitive isn't what you're doing today. Author recommends you use a Mark IV plastic Tactical kit and one of the resin Plasma Gun official bit kits everyone forgets about for each squad. Take a fist on the Sergeant, run them up in a Rhino (which, for cohesion, I'd also recommend doing a Combi-Plasma on; there's no Rhino combi-plasma bit, so I'd recommend modelling it as just a guy out the top of the Rhino with a combi-plasma) pop them out, overcharge if you're suicidal and ruin some MEQ or vehicle's day. Use meltas or flamers to taste depending on what you're facing down. Since you can take up to five Rhinos, you can throw Cypher and (if you don't take a Jump Pack) the Sorcerer in one and have them tag along with the 30 angry Horus Heresy veterans with energy weapons.
[[File:I am Cypher.png|thumb|centre|"''Cypher ghosts through the shadows amidst his fellow Fallen.''" Riiiight.]]

==Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2==

{{Topquote| I don't understand. What.... <br> I don't understand, not any of it|[[Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II|Admiral Spire]], caught in the crossfire between the Dark Angels and The Fallen}}
{{Topquote| Treasure your ignorance, it may yet shield you|Master Osmadiel, The Fallen to Admiral Spire}}

In the Imperium campaign, after Admiral Spire defeated Zagthean the broken one of Abaddon's chosen, a "Dark Angels" named Osmadiel broadcast a message throughout the Imperium for any loyalist good bois to help them Nova Cannon'ed some heretic scum in Caliban space. Spire being the Imperium hero he is, helped him only to be confronted by the REAL Dark Angels fleet master Koraheal, who accused Spire of follow the wrong path for aiding Osmadiel, The Fallen and tells him to destroy him in order for his folly to be forgotten. There are two options to choose from however, where you get to destroy the Fallen or running away and not giving a shit about Dark Angels and their secret police. Spire's reaction to Dark Angels' secret enemy like any non-Dark Angels would, confusion and wtf. If sided with the Dark Angels, Koraheal and his fleet will join Spire who will forget this whole conspiracy conflict. Koraheal agrees with Spire that the Imperium would stand better united but says he can't reveal more. If sided with the Fallen Spire and his fleet depart from the field without engaging anyone, Osmadiel will tell Spire to treasure his ignorance for it may shield him and will return to aid Spire in the final battle against Abbadon. Regardless of the path taken the game is not canon so it doesn't really matter.
{{Fallen-Angels}}

[[Category:Dark Angels]]

Fallen Angels

2021-06-25T07:07:16Z

2603:8001:6940:E836:A517:53B2:B0BB:C7EB: /* Grey Knights */

{{Heresy}}
[[File:FallenHeader.jpg|center|600px|]]
{{Infobox Traitor Legion
|Name = The Fallen
|Heraldry = [[Image:Fallen angel.jpg|250px]]
|Battle Cry = Unknown
|Successors of = Dark Angels
|Successor Chapters = None
|Chapter Master = Originally Luther, now ''possibly'' [[Cypher]]
|Primarch = [[Lion El'Jonson]]
|Original Homeworld = [[Caliban]], [[Terra]]
|Current Homeworld = Various/none
|Champion = ''possibly'' either [[Cypher]] or Luther.
|Specialty = Evading/trolling the Unforgiven
|Strength = Potentially thousands ''(Luther had ~45,000 on Caliban during the Horus Heresy)''
|Allegiance = Various (see below)
|Colours = Pre-Heresy Dark Angel black}}
REQUESTING DATA ACCESS, security_clearance: '''INQUISITOR'''. Processing...

''Database error #0754339867'', access: DENIED

''Greetings Inquisitor Yzaguirre, the information which you are attempting to access is classified and may no longer exist. Your service record and citizen number have been logged and recorded, any further interest in this subject on your behalf may result in the unfortunate early termination of your career.''

REQUESTING DATA ACCESS, security_clearance: '''INNER_CIRCLE'''. Processing...

Adeptus Astartes DNA ''confirmed'', scanning... chapter: [[Disciples of Caliban]], rank: Company Master, access: GRANTED

''Welcome son of Lion El'Jonson, here is the latest intel on the movements of the Fallen ones. As always this information is'' FOR THE EYES OF THE UNFORGIVEN ONLY ''and takes precedence over all other duties, no matter how urgent. For the Emperor and the Lion!

Exloading datasquirt...

The '''Fallen Angels''' are renegade members of the [[Dark Angels]] Legion who turned on [[Lion El'Jonson]] during the [[Horus Heresy]]. They have a thousand contradictory stories and a thousand contradictory motivations, from full on Chaos worship to acting on Luthor's lies to political shenanigans. To those Dark Angels who know of their existence, they are simply known as "the Fallen".

==History of The Fallen==
[[Image:Casting a shadow.jpg|250px|left|]]
Okay, so after the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]] found [[Caliban]], Lion was made commander of the Dark Angels, and they began recruiting from Caliban's population, including taking on many of the Knights that served in the Order with Lion, amongst whom was his friend and mentor [[Luther]]. After some time had passed in the [[Great Crusade]], a cadre of 500 Astartes made up of a mixture of both Calibanite and Terran Dark Angels were relegated to garrison duty on Caliban while Lion went off and fought in the Crusade with the larger bulk of his legion. This apparently caused no small amount of discontent among the garrisoned Angels, many of whom were once high ranking [[Chapter Master]]s and [[Brother-Captain|Captains]] who were now under the command of Luther, who was not even a Space Marine. In addition, Luther and many others felt abandoned by their Primarch or they felt that the old Calibanite way of life was being eradicated by the takeover of the Imperium. For their part, the Terran Dark Angels saw the Calibanites clinging to old traditions and oaths, ''noting that, amongst other things, instead of swearing "For the Emperor", they would swear "For Caliban"'', and saw them as being insubordinate. [[Chaos]] was quick to take advantage of their resentment and convinced them to betray their [[Primarch]].

Over the course of the Horus Heresy, the garrisoned Dark Angels had no idea that the galaxy was at war around them; this was partly because events on Caliban, such as noble uprisings and daemonic cults, prevented them from looking outwards, but also because Luther had taken control of planetary communications and [[Cypher]] was doing his best to keep Luther either [[Skub|distracted OR prepared]] for something ''(the jury is still out on that one)'', so Luther wasn't paying enough attention until some [[Knights-Errant]] showed up to determine his loyalties, which accidentally let the cat out of the bag.

By mid-Heresy, Luther had enlarged the garrison up to a sizable force, all trained in the traditions of the old ''Order of Caliban'', managing to reduce training cycles for new Astartes from eight years down to an optimal 24 months ''(two years)'' and seemingly could produce around 5000 marines per cycle. As of the time Luther and Zahariel become aware of the Ouroboros, Luther cancels further deployment of these marines until further notice. When Belath comes to collect them whilst the [[Horus Heresy]] was in full swing, Luther has a force of around 45,000 warriors on Caliban ''(Belath came with enough transports for 30,000 men, then Astelan points out that it would leave less than half that number on Caliban)'' plus the six or more Fortress-Fleets that were scattered around the Imperium, of which ''at least'' one was loyal to Luther prior to his declaration of independence.

At some point after the Siege of [[Earth|Terra]] and the long aftermath referred to as the ''Scouring'', Lion El'Jonson returned to Caliban, and the Dark Angels garrison opened fire on his fleet. Heading to their fortress-monastery, Lion fought Luther in single combat whilst the Dark Angels continued their orbital bombardment. Unfortunately, Caliban was never really tectonically stable, and the force of the bombardment caused the planet to break apart... somehow. The only thing to survive was the fortress-monastery. By the time Lion's loyalists got in, Luther was [[Chaos Spawn|a gibbering wreck]] and Lion was nowhere to be seen. The garrisoned Dark Angels were apparently thrown through the [[Warp]] and scattered across the stars. Ever since, the Dark Angels have hunted for the Fallen Angels to restore their honor in the eyes of the Emperor.

However, things are a bit more complicated than that...

===Further Analysis===
[[Image:Fallen-angel.jpg|250px|right|]]
It has been shown that not all of the fallen angels are followers of [[Chaos]], and many (possibly even most) of them regret their pre-Heresy actions and realize that they were wrong; these members of the Fallen have gone into exile and try to blend into the local population and live a "normal" life, although quite how a seven-foot tall post-human with enough muscle to tear a bear limb from limb and the external ports from his Black Carapace poking through his skin is supposed to just "blend in" with anyone outside of the [[Blackshield|Deathwatch]] is anyone's guess.

[[File:Fallen angels.jpg|250px|thumb|right|A rare sighting of three fallen angels working together]]

Not only that, but the Fallen were said to be fighting among themselves before the Lion even arrived in orbit; as mentioned previously, many of the Terran legionnaires (and some Calibanite Dark Angels too) were uncomfortable with the way that Luther was comporting himself and tried to get a message out to Terra or the Lion to inform them of what was happening to their planet. They managed to amass a force of several thousand Astartes and tried to storm one of the astropathic relays but were double-crossed by one of the First Legionnaires, '''Astelan''', ''a guy who was one of the first 5000 space marines EVER and remembered the [[Thunder Warriors]]'', who sought his own advancement and was unhappy with the way that the Lion commanded the legion that "used" to be mostly his before the Lion showed up. These Imperial-Loyalist forces were all rounded up and placed into dungeons underneath the Rock. Which is kinda strange since Astelan had to have known there was no chance in Hell of winning against the Lion and his fleet. So, he'd lose everything. On the bright side [[Noblebright|maybe those loyalists ironically survived the destruction of Caliban due to being imprisoned deep within/under the Fortress Monestary, getting the last laugh when their brothers freed them.]] It's also possible those "Fallen" who were actually loyalists that appear are where those mysteriously appearing Chapters of the First Legion come from.
*It is a testament to Astelan's over-bloated sense of self-worth that he believes the Dark Angels would be better off under his command, especially considering that despite being one of the first 5000 Astartes ever created he did not rise to the position of chapter master until after the Lion took control of the legion. His attitude towards the Lion and the newer Dark Angels is very similar to that of the Custodians in ''Master of Mankind'', viewing all those that came after as below him; after all, he was one of the first, and was directly commanded by the Emperor in person; why should he take orders from a lesser being? He is very much a mercenary at heart, and as long as you remain the biggest kid on the playground then he will be your best friend, but as soon as an even bigger kid shows up you can bet that Astelan will do what is best for Astelan.
*In his defense though, things only really turned sour when he actually tried to uphold the initial values of the Great Crusade as set forth by Big.E. (i.e. integrate lost human civilizations into the Imperium instead of [[exterminatus|bombing them into oblivion with extreme prejudice]]) and a Caliban-born Dark Angel, Belath, manipulated events so the planet had to be [[rape|forcefully subdued]] and (insult to injury) made him look incompetent in the process. Doesn't excuse his actions after that, but it does give him a reason as to why he believed Johnson & co were just self-serving opportunists waiting to see who'd win during the Heresy.

Therefore as the Heresy has progressed several different factions of Dark Angels emerged:
:*The [[Dark Angels]] who follow the [[Lion_El'Jonson|Lion]], either accompanying him to [[Imperium Secundus]] on the far side of the Galaxy, or who are accompanying his Paladin Corswain on the other side of the Ruinstorm.
:*The [[Dark Angels]] who were on [[Caliban]] and remained loyal to the [[Lion_El'Jonson|Lion]] and [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|the Emperor]], but who were ambushed and imprisoned beneath [[the Rock]].
:*The ''Order'', who rejects their Primarch and Emperor, who follow [[Luther]] and yearn for a return to the glory days of a free and independent Caliban regardless of whether Horus or the Emperor win the Heresy. To ensure Caliban’s “freedom and glory” Luther and the Order decided it would be a good idea to expand upon their power base by conquering… did I say conquering? I meant '''liberating''' all the nearby inhabited systems thus bringing them under Luther’s command. But you know, conquering and subjugating entire populations in order to accelerate your own personal agenda is only a bad thing when the Imperium does it; when the Order takes control of your home by military force it’s all in the name of “freedom”… yeah, this is not going to end well. (This would also make the Dark Angels' big secret a lot worse; if in their rage and grief they had to “'''deal'''” with these renegade systems that had knowledge of what had happened on Caliban… just think about it). Luther would later encounter Typhon in the Zaramund system, which gives further support to the idea that the Fallen's influence was no longer confined to one planet, but was, in fact spreading out over multiple systems. As the Heresy raged around them Luther and his buddies were busy carving out their own anti-imperium galactic empire (no wonder the Dark Angels at the time freaked out and tried to cover the whole thing up).
:*The ''First'' who follow '''Astelan''', who reject the Lion as an unworthy liege but at least put lip service to the idea that the Emperor is their true master. At the current point in the storyline, Astelan supports Luther out of political convenience. (Not all the "First" follow Astelan; many sided with the Lion and are imprisoned with the others beneath the Rock.)
:*[[Zahariel]]'s ''Mystai'', who have secretly fallen under the influence of the [[Ouroboros]] and want to see it freed from its prison buried within Caliban. Closet Chaos worshippers even if they don't realise it yet.
:*The Watchers, and the (possibly former/deceased) Lord Cypher, who have their own agenda that no other faction really knows about, but who know the truth about Chaos and the Ouroboros and want to keep it contained.
:*The current Cypher (who may or may not be Zahariel), whose motives are a complete mystery.

Over the years, some of the captured Fallen have claimed that it was Lion El'Jonson who was the traitor and took his sweet time to get to Terra, implying that Lion El'Jonson was trying to wait and see who would win the civil war and side with the victor. This is probably the Fallen lying, as they would have no way of knowing what the Lion was actually doing at all, considering he and his Legion would have been scattered across the Galaxy and never called home to see how things were going. The Lion certainly had reason to be displeased with the Emperor ''([[Horus]] correctly suspected that he resented not being chosen as Warmaster, as he was the "First" [[Primarch]] as well as the Primarch most renowned for his [[Creed|tactical genius]])'', however the consensus viewpoint amongst fa/tg/uys seems to be that these are just the ramblings of tortured Fallen repeating lies told to them by Luther and that the Lion's ABSOLUTE LOYALTY remains intact. Whatever the truth is, only the Emperor knows, and he isn't talking. Mostly because [[Horus]] ripped out his tongue and his vocal cords have faded to dust, but that's beside the point. The book ''Fallen Angels'' did note that El'Jonson supplied [[Perturabo]] with extra siege weaponry before the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V in exchange for the Iron Lord supporting him as the new Warmaster when Horus was slain. He didn't realize that the [[Iron Warriors]] were traitors until it was too late. Similarly, one confrontation between the Lion and [[Konrad Curze]] ended with the latter correctly predicting that the Lion's attempts at pursuing him and the [[Night Lords]] would be used against him as evidence of his disloyalty. Which, in usual Grimdark fashion, makes sense only to the most retarded of trolls. Since most people reading this know that fighting against a traitor legion (while sending most of his legion to fight other traitor legions) is not going to be seen as disloyalty. What is he supposed to do? ''Not'' fight the traitors? On top of that, while everyone else was being rapidly pushed back by the traitor legions, Lion was rapidly ''retaking'' traitor-conquered territory. From an outside perspective, Horus's rush to Terra could be viewed as him [[Awesome|running away from the Lion]].

However, the rantings of the captured Fallen Angels when they accuse the Lion, the Imperium or each other of misdeeds has to be taken with copious amounts of salt:
# They cannot be represented as a picture of the whole truth, especially in that there were Loyalist-Fallen & Traitor-Fallen fighting EACH OTHER on Caliban before the Lion showed up, so they do not represent the views of a unified group.
# Many Fallen are simply liars who will say anything to protect their own skins. '''Astelan''' in particular is now ''confirmed'' to be a liar and that he is as culpable a traitor as any other (just not a capital T Traitor; he's disgusted by Chaos) despite his protests in 40k that he was actually a loyal subject of the Emperor ''(if not the Lion)''.

There are even reports that some members of the Fallen may be [[Alpha Legion|Closet Loyalists]] attempting to subvert Chaos from within by drawing the Dark Angels' attention to where it is needed most only to disappear once the Dark Angels arrive leaving them free to battle the true threat to the Imperium, [[just as planned]]. Although, [[Derp|this does come at the cost of fluffing ''against'' the Unforgiven's habit of ignoring everything or abandoning wars just to hunt down even a single Fallen]]. But leaving the Fallen to focus on the real threat ''does'' fit with the Lion's knightly everything. He was secretive, not disloyal or prone to putting his honor above his duty nor shying away from punishment. That same behavior would make sense for his sons (and does show in a way with Azrael and the Unforgiven standing down when Guilliman shows up, ready to accept extermination without even trying to defend themselves).

Amongst the known Fallen Angels the most famous is [[Cypher]] whom [[Games Workshop]] just gave a dataslate full of AWESOME AND WIN. Check this shit out, the only guy with a BS of 10! He's more of a sniper than a sniper!

It is also highly possible that the Death Watch commander Israfil (the only Black Shield commander in the history of Death Watch named in lore) was in fact the Fallen ex-Chief Librarian Israfael (the one who recognized [[Zahariel]] was a psyker); this suspicion is fed not only by their similar names, but also by the strange death of Israfil during a xenocidal campaign which also involved Dark Angels forces and the inability to recover his body.

Some other Fallen decided to make the most of their shit sandwich and pledged themselves to Chaos. Among these were an Astartes named Vortigern and his Lost Lions warband, who joined the Black Legion when it was in its infancy. Vortigern became part of its ruling council, the Ezekarion, and it's partly down to him that they're still intact. When the First Battle of Cadia saw the Black Legion caught between the Black Templars and a surprise attack by a heap of Nine Legions ships, Vortigern was the first to get a decent number of Black Legion vessels to safety.

In summary: There are the guys who followed Lion directly (loyalist), the guys who wanted to do that but were imprisoned on the Rock (loyalist), Luther's non-Chaos Calibanite Seperatists (lowercase t traitor), Astelan's group (itself further divided to those who backed up Luther out of convenience and those imprisoned with the Lion followers) (members loyalist, leaders lowercase t traitor), Zahariel's unwitting Ouroboros puppets (capital T Chaos Traitor), Cypher (who knows) and survivors of Luther's group who joined Chaos to make the best of what they had (capital T Chaos Traitor). In the 42nd millenium, Zahariel and Astelan's groups are extinct and any remaining seperatists are either helping mankind, if not the Imperium (or at least the Imperial Government), undercover or have joined Chaos fully. Luther also woke up and is said to be gathering them for an unknown purpose. Everyone else are modern Dark Angels and successors in the Unforgiven, some Dark Angels sucessors who are not in the Unforgiven due to diplomatic fractures but are loyalists, Dark Angels and sucessors who have fallen after Luther's treachery and are thus ordinary heretics and finally Cypher again.

===What counts as Fallen?===
[[File:Fallen DAMarine.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Unforgiven have no mercy for the fallen, regardless of their origins.]]
While the Unforgiven put all of their focus on hunting their wayward brethren, there is an important distinction between "true" Fallen and just another traitorous space marine. In '''Pandorax''', one of the major villains is a [[Chaos Space Marine|renegade]] [[Consecrators]] Space Marine, who refers to himself as Fallen and has even had contact with [[Cypher]].

Once he was caught, he refused to be broken and repent in the dungeons of the Rock and claimed that he would escape if they did not kill him. To which [[Azrael]] & [[Asmodai]] laughed in his face. (YES, '''ASMODAI''' ACTUALLY LAUGHED!) Then they told him that the "true Fallen" were led unknowingly by Luther into rebellion and can still be saved if they repent, while ''his'' descent into heresy was his own fault and he was not led astray, finding [[Chaos]] because of his own selfish desires whatever they may have been. So Dark Angels simply consider other more recent [[Chaos Space Marine|renegades]] as traitors [[grimdark|worthy of only death]].

So they decapitate him.

The latest codex supplement (9ed) for the Dark Angels reveals that some Fallen warbands have replenished their casualties and created new space marines to join their ranks. Apparently, some of those marines involved in recruitment on Caliban made it off planet and picked up where they left off. The present Dark Angels consider these "new" Fallen to be just as legitimate as those who were present on Caliban and will treat them the same as their older brothers.

==Ophidium Gulf Crusade incident==

The precise details of this incident are somewhat sketchy, not being helped by the fact that Games Workshop have released [[derp|several seemingly conflicting versions of the event]]. What they all agree upon however is that the [[Black Templar]] [[Imperial_Navy#Cruiser|Strike Cruiser]] ''Ophidium Gulf'' disappeared in mysterious circumstances shortly after making contact with a larger Dark Angel force and taking captive a Fallen Angel in a "joint" operation. Initially reluctant to comply with the Dark Angels' demand to hand over their prisoner, they realise that the Dark Angels aren't messing about when their ships start powering up their weapons and, greatly outmatched, are left with no choice but to relent. After handing over the prisoner they make a single astropathic communication on way to the system jump point but are never heard from again, the implication being that the Dark Angels ambushed them to prevent the secret of The Fallen from becoming public. Which is stupid of the Dark Angels. Everyone would assume that Cypher was the only renegade Dark Angel and would shrug off the threat delivered to the Black Templar ship as the Dark Angels protecting their honor by wanting to be the ones to deal with the traitor(?) to their <s>Legion</s> CHAPTER, FOR THE DARK ANGELS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS ARE DEVOUT FOLLOWERS OF GUILLIMAN'S CODEX! Instead, their actions blew the whole thing out of proportion.

There are several interesting notes we can take from this:

*This is the first (known) time that any chapter outside of the Unforgiven has had contact with the Fallen; the Black Templars immediately realized that the individual was an [[Space Marine|Astartes]] however they chose to take him prisoner rather than execute him as a heretic giving some credence to reports that not all Fallen are Chaos worshipers.

*In the story as told in White Dwarf 312, the Fallen taken prisoner is none other than Cypher, who remarks upon seeing the Templars "You are not the lapdogs of the Lion... how curious"; the Templars agree to meet the Dark Angels at a pre-arranged point for a prisoner transfer but are never heard from again afterwards and Cypher mysteriously and inexplicably vanishes from his cell, thus proving he is [[awesome]]! Other versions of the story have the prisoner as wearing ancient [[Power_armor#Mark_I:_Thunder_Armour|Mark 1 Power Armour]] and seemingly being rescued by other Fallen masquerading as Dark Angels before the real Dark Angels presumably turn up to destroy the ''Ophidium Gulf'' to stop the story leaking out.

*When the Unforgiven say that they're willing to do ''anything'' to keep their secret safe, they're not kidding; murdering brother Astartes is pretty fucked up by the moral compass of most loyalist Chapters, for the Dark Angels however it's not something which they will hesitate to do or agonize about later as long as they keep their secret safe and "honour" intact. In fact, it's probably not too big a stretch to say that no other loyalist Chapter is as close to being excommunicated from the Imperium as the First Legion and it may even have already been so were they not tolerated due to their strength and importance.

*The Black Templars have not forgotten about this incident, and have strong suspicions as to the eventual fate of their battle brothers; despite their apparent mutual affinity for entering battle dressed in robes, the Dark Angels (whom were already regarded with suspicion by the Templars' for their rampant secrecy) are now openly distrusted even more than the Templars distrust any Chapter who aren't sons of [[Rogal Dorn]], which is saying a lot as the Templars distrust pretty much everyone anyway. Seeing as how the Templars are well above Chapter strength, could probably count on support from the [[Space Wolves]] who are also above Codex strength (though how above both are is a matter of debate) and whose not-so-friendly rivalry ''(depending on which codex you read)'' with the sons of Lion El'Johnson has on occasion spilled into open conflict, we could make the supposition that if the combined Unforgiven (the Dark Angels and whichever successors they call in) weren't impressively powerful then the Templars and Space Vikings might have tired of waiting for the [[Inquisition]] to dig up the Dark Angels secrets and taken matters into their own hands. The Dark Angels sure do like making powerful enemies! They also requested that the Inquisition make a formal investigation, which has been indefinitely suspended after the Inquisitor in charge of the investigation "disappeared". Though, since they were trying to levy accusations of betrayal against 1) a Legion, 2) a Legion who is the ''master'' of '''every other Legions' specialties''' and 3) has no fluff saying they don't still use the Dark Age and Strife technology the Emperor gave them including things that fuck reality and '''''enslaved Men of Iron''''' it's safe to say that the Imperium may well have gotten rid of that Inquisitor just to avoid pissing off the Dark Angels. Oh, and the fact the Emperor gave the First Legion technologies specifically capable of and intended for ''killing everyone in the galaxy so humanity could expand across a clean slate'' in case the Great Crusade failed. '''Don't Fuck With Them.'''

*A recent event (as in its form the new Iyanden supplement) reveals Dark Angels only seem to care about the Imperium finding out their little secret, as a similar event happened when Iyanden was fighting a chaos mini-empire ruled by a Fallen. Only here the Dark Angels didn't hunt down and kill the Eldar (granted it may be due to their use of the Webway). Meaning they're more willing to trust and work with Xeno Scum than Imperial forces, except that the Inquisition are a rightfully feared threat to ANY space marine chapter. Of course, it's not like the Eldar are going to tell anyone in the Imperium (or be believed if they did) or would even understand the concept, or know about the Dark Angel paranoia. Of course seeing how the Eldar only turned him over because they've read their minds... (It's implied that the Eldar let them take the Fallen, because they knew he would suffer more at the hands of the Dark Angels. Grimdark.) The Eldar mind-reading may or may not have also seen the aforementioned Dark Age and Long Night technologies the First Legion has and decided not to give them a reason to erase Iyanden.

*Strangely however, the Ophidium Gulf Incident isn't mentioned in later editions nor has it been expanded upon since. In fact, it seems to have been retcon'd out. Between the Battle of Piscina IV (997.M41), the Third War for Armageddon (998.M41), and the events of ''Master of Sanctity''/''The Unforgiven'' (999.M41), the Dark Angels chapter wouldn't have any Battle Barges or Strike Cruiser Squadrons anywhere near the Ophidium Gulf during the supposed Incident (also 998.M41). Oh, and in ''Master of Sanctity'', Cypher - who I'll remind you, was the Fallen captive at Ophidium - just walks right up to the Dark Angels anyway ''to deliver a warning'', meaning he would have little reason to run away at Ophidium. So... ''who the fuck were the Dark Angels who attacked the Ophidium Gulf?'' It seems some dickery is afoot...

Ironically in the recent Fallen comic series, the Dark Angels strike force commander, Captain Seraphus, is insistent on his refusal to fire on the Grey Knights & Inquisitorial vessels, helmed by Justicar Leofric and Inquisitor Sabbathiel, in Calaphrax Cluster in M41 when the latter demand permission to board and investigate the Dark Angels for signs of heresy (whether his refusal to shoot is either out of knowledge that doing so is heretical suicide despite the Dark Angels battlebarge' superior size and firepower or due to the distaste of shooting fellow loyalists is up to debate). In the other hand, he was more than willing to dispatch a boarding party led by Veliath while they are distracted by a battle with Iron Warriors to board the Inquisitor's vessel and discern if she knew too much and if she must be "dealt with" appropriately. So, he probably just didn't want to attack fellow Astartes but didn't give a damn about killing everyone else if necessary.

==Grey Knights==
More than any other Chapter, the Dark Angels and the Unforgiven fear what would happen if the [[Grey Knights]] should become involved with a hunt for the Fallen Angels. Making Inquisitors or even fellow Space Marines "disappear" or "dying due to battle circumstances we couldn't have prevented" is one thing. Trying to do the same to Space Marines from a Chapter designed to fight and kill [[Daemon]]s? Near suicidal, even by 40k standards. However, as revealed in the novel ''Pandorax'', it's irrelevant. When the [[Black Legion]] attempted to open an ancient warp portal the Grey Knights were sent to the planet Pythos in order to seal the breach and deal with the demonic incursion, Supreme Grand Master Draigo was unable to wait for reinforcements from among his own forces due to his Chapter being scattered around the Imperium in response to a myriad of daemonic threats, instead he opted to enact an old oath sworn to the Grey Knights by the Dark Angels. [[Azrael]] had initially refused to honour the pact, considering it to be tantamount to blackmail. His mind was soon changed when Draigo revealed an interesting nugget of information gleaned from interrogating a Traitor Astartes prisoner who revealed that he knew about Traitor Space Marines the Dark Angels had captured and now kept up on [[the Rock]]. Draigo was well aware that the Dark Angels would go to great lengths to protect their secrets and although he was unaware of the reasons why they would have such a vested interest in those imprisoned beneath the Rock he could still make an informed guess as to the nature of those secrets. It was not the possible knowledge of the Fallen that had motivated Azrael and his chapter, but rather the Grey Knight's knowledge of the methods employed by the Dark Angels to keep their secrets hidden, that ultimately ensured they honoured the ancient pact struck with the Grey Knights. And so the leader of the Dark Angels committed his entire Chapter to the Pandorax campaign, operational superiority the Grey Knight’s sole concession in exchange for cooperation. Though they were nominally allies, the relationship between the two Chapters had always been fractious, never spilling over into confrontation but coming near on more than one occasion. Being forced to operate so closely together would put that to the test once again, more so in light of the circumstances of their alliance. Several times in the book, Draigo warns Azrael that the Dark Angels will not interfere in his operations, or he will go straight to the [[High Lords of Terra]] and tell the High Lords about what the Dark Angels are doing. Azrael considers the threat so real that he commits the ''entire'' Dark Angels chapter (over nine hundred Astartes and nearly one hundred Neophyte Scouts) to the threat. However, that being said, let's be real here: for all the weight the word of the Grey Knights and Draigo's in particular may carry, the chances of the High Lords taking any meaningful action against a First Founding chapter are miniscule, and the Dark Angels are the '''FIRST''' of the First Founding, which only increases the un-likelihood. Many would likely see such actions as defying the will of the Emperor himself, and they wouldn't be unjustified for believing so. The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that Draigo is high on narcotics.

So yes, the Grey Knights ''"should"'' already be aware of the touchy history of Caliban, but for all intents and purposes, they don't care or haven't actually figured out what it all means yet. Kaldor Draigo never actually claimed to know about the Fallen or about what happened on Caliban. In fact at the end of the Pandorax campaign, Draigo is seen screaming in Azrael's face demanding to know who these mysterious prisoners are and why the Dark Angels are so interested in them. Though to Azrael's credit, he ''actually'' doesn't have a clue why Draigo is so upset, since the Dark Angels didn't actually know about the particular Fallen Angel in question, who turned out to be an [[Zahariel#Not_Cypher.3F_If_then_Who.3F|original]] Grey Knight Founder and was kidnapped by [[Abaddon]] instead.

At the end of the day (or the Imperium, as fluff would have it) it's hilarious. In a [[grimdark]] laugh-or-you'll-cry sort of way. But also almost justified, as the Inquisition have ex-communicated chapters for less before.

==Who knows what?==
At the close of the 41st Millennium, the Changeling managed to worm its way on to the Rock and unleash some prisoners, nearly reaching Luther's own cell before being repelled by one of the [[Watchers in the Dark]], then was later banished by [[Azrael]], [[Ragnar Blackmane]], and [[Arvann Stern]]. Though the prisoners and their specific natures were not seen by the outsiders, parts of the dungeons were, though the Grey Knights knew about them anyway. The fact that several prisoners escaped no doubt set the Dark Angel's Hunt back several centuries at the very least, considering how rare it is to capture one of them.

With the current state of the Imperium, members of the Fallen have been publicly outed by appearing on Terra in the company of a freshly reborn [[Roboute Guilliman]] and would have been viewed ''(marching alongside the Grey Knights no less)'' by the teeming masses of humanity. Though what this means is mostly a matter for conjecture, since very few people ever get to see Space Marines in the flesh and not be destroyed by them; they might have just assumed they were [[Ravenwing|normal Dark Angels]] [[Consecrators|wearing]] [[Angels of Vengeance|black]]. In any case, without specific knowledge of the Fallen ''(or the Grey Knights for that matter)'' the space marines in the company of the first Primarch the Imperium has seen in about eight thousand years would probably have been relegated to a side-show or a curious talking point.

More significant is the fact that said Fallen Angels were arrested by the [[Adeptus Custodes]] on the orders of Guilliman at the arrival to the doors of the throne room, and were placed in a Custodian prison that no-one had ever escaped from, though [[Troll|Cypher escapes in the following sentence]]. These prisoners would undoubtedly have tales to tell, though over a hundred years later, '''nothing seems to have come of it''', and the Dark Angels were reinforced with [[Primaris Marines]] in the [[Ultima Founding]], new Chapters were raised using their Gene-Seed, and they were permitted to keep their [[Deathwing]] and [[Ravenwing]] formations after petitioning Guilliman himself.

So the question becomes, who knows what?

So far we know:
*The [[High Lords of Terra]] have long believed that the Dark Angels were guilty of Legion-Building, but are unaware of the reasons (because there is rarely a massive enemy force requiring such an organization). Hence why they were reluctant to utilise their gene-seed in new Foundings despite their relative genetic purity.
*The [[Grey Knights]] knew the Dark Angels were taking prisoners back to the Rock, but were unaware of who they were, but agreed to keep this knowledge from the High Lords as a condition of Azrael accompanying the Grey Knights on the Pandorax campaign. However, the Grey Knights were seemingly unaware of any cooperation between the Unforgiven Chapters and found their close-knit way of speaking about each other odd.
*The [[Black Templars]] captured a prisoner and transferred him over to the Dark Angels at gunpoint. Those Black Templars were never seen again, though that incident may have been retconned.
*Thanks to the Fenris campaign and the four way parlay ''(Dark Angels, Space Wolves, Grey Knights, Inquisition)'' taking place on the Rock, the [[Inquisition]] now has members embedded throughout the fleet of the Dark Angels. Even if they don't have access to the deeper levels, the cells or the libraries, it does mean that they can monitor fleet movements and activities from now on. Y'know, if the Dark Angels magically became stupid and careless and didn't spend ten thousand years mastering secrecy and counter-espionage.
**The Inquisition is also aware that a former Dark Angel: '''Vortigern''' was once a high-ranking member of the [[Black Legion]], though they might only suspect Vortigern was one of the Astartes who individually defected to Horus during the Heresy.
*The [[Adeptus Custodes]] have Guilliman's prisoners under lock-and-key. Although their track record for gauging loyalty is spotty at best ''(they did imprison the Crusader Host and not manage to sort out their loyalties all that quickly, though a Blood Angel and Iron Hand were set free)'' and tend to take a "you're all a threat" approach. Through the magic of Plot Armour Cypher and his fallen escaped the most secure prison in the Imperium, well apart from the even more secure prisions the Custodes have holding horrors of Old Night. They apparently gave up no information.
*Guilliman has had direct contact with [[Cypher]], knows that he carries the Lion's sword, and knows he desires to meet the Emperor face-to-face. Guilliman is also one of the few living beings with first hand knowledge of the Lion and the Dark Angels pre-, mid- and post-heresy, so will already have no reason to believe any Fallen claiming that "the Lion was a traitor". (Hell, one of the Horus Heresy books has Lion kneel and beg to Guilliman for help in granting the Emperor the highest chance of survival; as far as Guilliman is concerned, the Fallen are outright delusional). That being said he doesn't know they exist. He likely thinks of the Fallen he encountered as modern Black Shields or something similar and any anti-Imperium Fallen as [[Alpha Legion]] Psy-Ops to try to fuck with him and the Dark Angels.

It could be said that if they all sat down together, they could probably figure out what was going on. Though the different agencies of the Imperium don't tend to have a habit of sharing information, various individuals might have an idea of what's going on, but not the whole picture. Since the Dark Angels typically don't leave witnesses to their actions there isn't much hard evidence to be laid down at their feet other than some hearsay, rumour and a few wrecked planets where they purged some "heretics" ''wink wink''. This is probably not helped by the fact the [[Cypher]] managed to delete the Imperium's incriminating records on the chapter in mid M38, meaning the Imperium's ability to use hindsight has been massively curtailed. Even more so than usual.

Complicating things further still is the discovery that Luther himself has escaped his cell following an attack by the Fallen Angel turned Daemon Prince Marbas on the Rock. Azrael believes that he is planning to re-create his old Legion and has linked him to rumors of a massive gathering of Fallen somewhere in the Imperium Nihilus.

Painful irony is, as usual, quite common in 40k. In this case the fact a few (relative to a Legion) Astartes turned rogue would be so mundane and stupid a reason for the Dark Angels' behavior that the High Lords might not even believe it. They would not be able to comprehend why an entire ''Legion'' would devote itself to spending ''ten thousand years'' hunting drips and drops of their renegades showing up or why a Legion would even hide the fact it had renegades in the first place since all the Legions did. In other words, '''''they don't really have a reason for the secrecy.''''' As for dishonor, it doesn't matter if you cover it up, a dishonorable act is a dishonorable act. In fact, covering up ''adds to'' the dishonor.

To make things WORSE many Fallen Angels have joined the ranks of the Black Legion. Heck, one of them is a member of Abaddon's inner circle

==New Rules==
In Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch there are new rules for the fallen, Cypher and new missions and tactical objectives for playing them against loyalists. This book also encourages combining mark IV Space Marines, Dark Angel upgrades and Dark Angel Veterans to convert Fallen.
[[File:Fallen Champions n1.png|thumb|right|Cypher and his Fallen Champions are ready for business.]]

Vigilus Ablaze includes a specialist detachment to allow Chaos Rhinos and Chaos Sorcerers to lose their option for a Mark of Chaos in exchange for getting FALLEN as their LEGION and IMPERIUM to boot. This is seperate from using Cypher to stratagem in an Imperial Assassin into your Chaos force using recent White Dwarf rules.

The Fallen Angels are special in that they have an ''upper limit''. As in, if you start a Fallen Angels army, you can actually finish it; there's a finish line, an end point above which you cannot go higher. As of the time of writing, the largest Fallen army you can build is:

Cypher, of course. Never not take Cypher in a Fallen list.
One Chaos Sorcerer with Jump Pack, Force Axe and Thunder Hammer. Granted, there's zero reason at all to take both the Axe and Hammer, but we're theorycrafting for largest possible here.
Three squads of Fallen with power fist and combi-melta on the Champion, four guys with Thunder Hammers, Boltguns and Bolt Pistols, one guy with a Lascannon and four more Boltgun guys. Thanks to Rule of Three, there's no way to take more than three Fallen squads, and no way to take less than three either because you have to fill a Vanguard Detachment because of your limited options.
Five Chaos Rhinos with Combi-Meltas and Havoc Launchers.

This nets you a total points cost of 1,341; pretty respectable, all in all. Generally, you'll want to not do a hammer or axe on the Sorcerer; Force Swords'll do you fine, and you'll probably want a good ranged weapon (like a combi-plasma for MEQ-slaying) instead. Your Sorcerer's your Mortal Wound source, not your beatstick, generally. The most expensive Fallen squads are actually a pretty decent loadout; the Lascannons give some good anti-tank punch, and the hammers and fist make it so they can punch tanks to death if they need to. You get a couple extra potshots with the combi-melta, and you get a few models of chaff per squad before you start taking real damage. That said, you can run a Fallen squad with five plasma guns and a combi-plasma. This is fun and fluffy - and let's face it, if you're running Fallen, you've already decided being competitive isn't what you're doing today. Author recommends you use a Mark IV plastic Tactical kit and one of the resin Plasma Gun official bit kits everyone forgets about for each squad. Take a fist on the Sergeant, run them up in a Rhino (which, for cohesion, I'd also recommend doing a Combi-Plasma on; there's no Rhino combi-plasma bit, so I'd recommend modelling it as just a guy out the top of the Rhino with a combi-plasma) pop them out, overcharge if you're suicidal and ruin some MEQ or vehicle's day. Use meltas or flamers to taste depending on what you're facing down. Since you can take up to five Rhinos, you can throw Cypher and (if you don't take a Jump Pack) the Sorcerer in one and have them tag along with the 30 angry Horus Heresy veterans with energy weapons.
[[File:I am Cypher.png|thumb|centre|"''Cypher ghosts through the shadows amidst his fellow Fallen.''" Riiiight.]]

==Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2==

{{Topquote| I don't understand. What.... <br> I don't understand, not any of it|[[Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II|Admiral Spire]], caught in the crossfire between the Dark Angels and The Fallen}}
{{Topquote| Treasure your ignorance, it may yet shield you|Master Osmadiel, The Fallen to Admiral Spire}}

In the Imperium campaign, after Admiral Spire defeated Zagthean the broken one of Abaddon's chosen, a "Dark Angels" named Osmadiel broadcast a message throughout the Imperium for any loyalist good bois to help them Nova Cannon'ed some heretic scum in Caliban space. Spire being the Imperium hero he is, helped him only to be confronted by the REAL Dark Angels fleet master Koraheal, who accused Spire of follow the wrong path for aiding Osmadiel, The Fallen and tells him to destroy him in order for his folly to be forgotten. There are two options to choose from however, where you get to destroy the Fallen or running away and not giving a shit about Dark Angels and their secret police. Spire's reaction to Dark Angels' secret enemy like any non-Dark Angels would, confusion and wtf. If sided with the Dark Angels, Koraheal and his fleet will join Spire who will forget this whole conspiracy conflict. Koraheal agrees with Spire that the Imperium would stand better united but says he can't reveal more. If sided with the Fallen Spire and his fleet depart from the field without engaging anyone, Osmadiel will tell Spire to treasure his ignorance for it may shield him and will return to aid Spire in the final battle against Abbadon. Regardless of the path taken the game is not canon so it doesn't really matter.
{{Fallen-Angels}}

[[Category:Dark Angels]]