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A Song of Ice and Fire

2022-11-11T20:14:03Z

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[[image:Game_of_Thrones_Title-DVD.png|300px|thumb|WIENER PARTY! WIENER PARTY!]]

{{Spoilers}}
{{Grimdark}}
{{Sick|Among other things, the books can barely go ten pages without having another rape.}}
'''Warning: This article contains so many spoilers we're ruining books that haven't even been released yet.'''

{{Topquote|If you think this story has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.|Ramsay Bolton, nailing the grimdark theme of this series}}

{{Topquote|It matters not from whence the blood flows. Only that it flows.|George RR Martin, Exalted Champion of Khorne when explaining why so many characters get offed}}

'''''A Song of Ice and Fire''''', better known as '''''Game of Thrones''''' (though only the first book has that title) is a [[Grimdark]] fantasy book series for people who hate fantasy, or at the very least, have gotten their fill of Tolkien pretenders and want something more "distinct". Its central themes include [[Tzeentch|political Machiavellian scheming]], [[Khorne|ultraviolence]], [[Slaanesh|incest/sex with exposition/tons of rape]], and [[Nurgle|everyone trying to survive in such a Crapsack World of perpetual suffering]]. There is also lots and lots of food. Thus it has become one of the most popular series of our generation and its author, [[George R. R. Martin]], has been praised for his highly realized world and gritty low fantasy style. He was even called "the American [[Tolkien]]" by <s>Time magazine</s> gormless idiots who lump diametrically different writers together for no other reason than that they're both fantasy authors. The two authors do both have a passion (and talent) for worldbuilding and writing doorstoppers, but that's also where the similarities generally end. Still, the comparisons to Tolkien would probably explain this series' sudden spike in popularity following the TV show (at least [[Skub|to a point, anyway.]]) The great joke of an actual World War veteran writing fantasy about heroic knights and elves being compared to and contrasted with a conscientious objector who writes edgy fantasy is not lost on most (though its worth mentioning that Martin is as much of a Tolkien buff as any of us, meaning that he didn't write the series as a "fuck you" to Tolkien's work as some might assume).

The series itself is set on the [[Original character, do not steal|totally not medieval European ripoff]] realm of Westeros as it is wracked by a massive succession war drawing its realms into conflict. Everyone's picking up the pieces from the previous war until one family's bid for power starts another war (book one), A bunch of dudes declare themselves kings (book two), they're burning the continent down in their scramble for power, and somehow all the fuck-ups managed to lose anyway (book three). Just when the guys who lost the least start thinking they get to rule over the remaining chaos, more fuck ups happen and more dudes show up (book four). Sadly, winter has finally come and, unbeknownst to most people, [[Thousand Sons|evil ice wizards leading soulless undead]] [[Alpha Legion|assumed to be only myths by most people]] are about to invade the continent from the north. By the fifth book, things are going and/or will go to shit even for the bad guys.

According to a leaked fan conversation, George R. R. Martin jokingly stated the series would end with an epic cock-slap fight between Samwell Tarly and Jaime Lannister.

TL;DR: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Roses War of Roses] with a helpin' of <s>cliched fantasy</s> George's old sci-fi writing plots given a fantasy overhaul and [[/d/]]-lite.

[[ASOIAF Miniature Game|Miniature game has their own page now]]

==Characters==
{{cleanup}}
Since these books have some thousand named characters, you won't remember most of them without an obsessive disorder over details.
Here's a relatively shortlist (mostly based on the TV series rather than the books, but seems to randomly switch between the two) for the characters you'll care about. We'll also be making an effort to mostly focus on characters from the main series, rather than historical figures like Maegor Targaryen, the Dance of Dragons Blacks and Greens, and so on. Trust us, given the number of characters we already have to cover, it's for the best. The houses listed here doesn't even come close to covering them all, either.

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===House Stark===

''"Winter Is Coming"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Honourable, bro-tier northerners who always [[Space Wolves|compare themselves to direwolves and have a few as pets]]. They have a tendency towards being so resolutely honorable that proves to bite them in the ass due to naivete about how [[Tzeentch|Westerosi corrupt politics actually works]] (not that dishonorable characters often fare any better, but that's an "Anyone Can Die" setting for you). They're also arguably the protagonists of the setting. Basically Scotland and/or House Lancaster in the War of the Roses (but named after House York).
* Eddard Stark, ''The Quiet Wolf'': Patriarch, lord and POV death-puppet. Not nearly as stupid as everyone tries to pretend...but still kind of stupid, and very much a dead man walking. Honorable to a fault and deeply repulsed by the politicking that goes on around him, which eventually leads to a mild case of death by decapitation.
* Benjen Stark: Ned's ranger/Night's Watch brother (so the Faramir to his Boromir), who disappears later in the story and may or may not be the mysterious "Coldhands" (in the TV show he is).
* Robb Stark, ''The Young Wolf'': Shiny, King Arthur-like hero who veers between being [[Lawful Stupid]] and [[Lion El'Johnson|a brilliant military leader]]. After waging a successful war to avenge his murdered father, he was betrothed to a noblewoman but he ended having comfort sex with a virgin noblewoman which may have been arranged by her scheming bitch mother, while in softcore porno he got the hots for a commoner. Cacks it nastily: he got his head cut off and his pet's wolf's head stuck on his body, which was paraded around while his enemies chanted "HERE COMES THE KING IN THE NORTH!" In other words, he's a Scottish [[Roman Empire|Hannibal Barca]]. In the show his pregnant wife dies with him for added Grimdark, but in the books he (wisely) leaves her behind when he goes to the Red Wedding.
* Sansa Stark: Useless teenage girl extraordinaire at the start of the series with dreams of marrying a prince and "having lots of babies", but gets shat on hard by reality, being a case-study in what happens when you go into a Grimdark world thinking like a Fairy Tale Princess. Becomes Littlefinger's replacement goldfish when Catelyn's no longer around, her father got killed and her best friend was sold as a sex slave, and ended up in the worst relationship we can possibly imagine with King Joffrey. [[Grimdark|Even got deflowered via rape by Ramsey Bolton]] and married to him before managing to escape with the help of others. Currently acting as a co-ruler to her brother/cousin Jon Snow, and has learned much from her suffering, allowing her to kick Littlefinger out of the Great Game via throat slitting. While in the book Littlefinger is/was setting her up at House Arryn to claim the Vale and the North, the show version becomes QUEEN IN DA NORF in the final episode.
* Arya Stark: Little tomboy assassin. Has a kill list, but doesn't get to use it so long as she is an amnesiac apprentice of [[Officio Assassinorum|the Friendly Neighborhood Assassins Guild]]. In the books, she's still training with the Faceless Men, but in the show she's broken away from them and headed back to Westeros to get revenge on a LOT of people, giving her one of the highest kill counts in the series. She goes home to Winterfell when she hears that Jon and Sansa took it back and starts acting as a general "troubleshooter" for Sansa while scaring the hell out of everyone with all her new assassin skillz. Kills the Night King like a fucking champion in Season 8 (though in a way that doesn't actually make any sense), then rides south to add Cersei to her body count. Instead, the Hound talks her out of it and she [[The Lord of the Rings|decides to sail into the unknown west]]. Kind of the [[Mary Sue|writer's pet]] in the show, among other things getting to avenge the Red Wedding in a brutally cinematic manner even though Dumb and Dumber justified giving us a pregnant woman getting stabbed to death on-screen because Game of Thrones is above "cliches" like loved ones getting avenged in just such a way. And her aforementioned killing of the Night King that doesn't actually make any sense, since it required her getting the drop on him in a way that was ''physically impossible without out-of-universe special effects equipment''. Book version is still level-grinding to get to her TV version's skill level.
* Catelyn Stark (nee Tully): A woman who trusts the wrong people at the worst time, causing a lot of misery. Gets killed along with Robb, then comes back (books only) as Lady Stoneheart, an undead witch bent on killing all the Boltons, Freys, Greyjoys, Lannisters... pretty much everyone she thinks was tangentially involved in betraying her and her family, or somebody who just pissed her off (kind of hard to blame her though). The show writers left this part out completely, which caused much [[rage]] and [[skub]] in the fandom.
* Bran Stark: Intelligent little boy, named after the founder of House Stark, Brandon the Builder (basically Tony Stark combined with [[Leman Russ]]). He was crippled in the first sign of major [[GrimDark]]. Has prophetic dreams and becomes a [[druid]]. In the TV series, fucks things up by alerting the Others to where he's hiding, which gets all of the Children, his loyal wolf, the Three-Eyed Crow and Hodor killed. For good measure, turns out to have accidentally ''caused'' Hodor to become, well, Hodor, as he was using his druid powers to figure out why Hodor is only able to say Hodor, resulting in Hodor's gruesome death-by-zombies being beamed directly into young Hodor's brain. He's now the Three-Eyed Raven and likes going around being creepy as fuck and generally weirding people out. Becomes King of the <s>Seven</s> Six Kingdoms in a hilariously nonsensical plot twist in the finale.
* Rickon Stark: Four years old at the start, turning into a real little [[Barbarian]] from not being raised properly, because everyone who would have raised him was dead or missing. In the books, he and his wildling nanny Osha are on the cannibal-infested island of Skagos, and Davos Seaworth is on his way there to pick them up so that the northern lords who are still loyal to House Stark have a figurehead to rally behind. In the show, he ends up hanging out at the Umbers, then is handed over to Ramsay as a prisoner when Smalljon becomes afraid of the Wildlings living north of him (who were invited by Jon Snow to fight the Zombie Apocalypse), and finally dies via arrow in a sick game of "dodge the missiles" courtesy of Ramsey.
* Jon Snow, ''The White Wolf'': A bastard living in the Stark household before leaving for the Night's Watch (basically [[The Last Chancers|Colonel Schaeffer]] with more convicted rapists under his command) and excels there because nearly every one of his fellow recruits are peasants who have never had a formal days of training while Jon has had the serious training afforded to all lords. After he takes over by becoming the Watch Commander secures and alliance with the Wildlings, ancient barbarian enemies of the Night's Watch, because when the end of the world is coming you tend to think outside the box. Also gets a Wildling girlfriend, but she dies. He was taken under the wing by the Lord Commander Jora Mormont and given advice by Aemon (a Targaryen who is so '''old''' that everyone south has forgotten he existed, and unbeknownst to him, his great-great-granduncle), and managed to actually be a competent leader: after a disastrous loss of strength after the failure of the Great Ranging, and then the Wildling invasion, he unilaterally decides to let the Wildlings through in exchange for their aid in securing the Wall against the real enemy; he even impresses Stannis (The Mannis) with his honor and sense of justice. [[Grimdark|And then, all the corrupt exiles from the South (and the rejects who were left behind during the Ranging) banded together to kill him]].
**Though he's currently dead in the books as a result of mutiny, he was revived by R'hllor in the series after being stabbed to death by the senior members of the Watch. Isn't actually Eddard's bastard son, but rather the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, meaning that he is, in fact, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. The new KING IN DA NORF according to his supporters after he killed Ramsay Bolton and took back Winterfell, and is also currently hooking up with his own aunt.
**He turns on Daenerys once he realizes she's lost it and kills her in the throne room, but [[Plot Armor|for some reason her dragon doesn't kill him despite seeing him do the the deed]]. The Unsullied want his head, but instead, King Bran exiles him to the Night's Watch and he fucks off into the far north to live with the Free Folk.
* Hodor: Hodor. Hodor, Hodor, Hodor. <s>An enormous and possibly retarded stable boy, and Bran's faithful steed.</s> Hodor. Ok, in all actual seriousness, this guy is probably one of the most tragic figures in this series (and that's saying something). [[Grimdark|The guy basically received horrible visions of his own death fighting a horde of zombies, buying time for his friends to escape by literally holding the door shut as he was hacked apart]]. This causes him to suffer a mental break, leading him to develop Immature Personality Disorder and making it so the only thing he can say is a garbled version of his friend's last request "hold the door" for all of his adult life; the logic here is that "hold the door" devolves into "hol' th' door" and eventually "Hodor". You now feel bad for at laughing at the guy.
* Osha: A Wildling woman who surrendered to the Starks and becomes their servant in exchange for not getting killed. Now dead in the show thanks to Ramsay's dickery, costing the cast another valued waifu.</div></div>

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===House Targaryen===

''"Fire and Blood"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The former Dragon kings and rulers of Westeros, [[Eldar|fair-haired purple-eyed beautiful people]] who have descended from the [[Dark Age of Technology|ancient technologically-advanced superpower]] of [[Roman Empire|Valyria]], which collapsed because of [[Fall of the Eldar|their colossal hubris]]. After the anarchic [[Age of Strife|Century of Blood]], the Targaryen patriarch Aegon I, instead of reconquering the lost cause of Essos and of Valyria's former empire, looked towards the rather primitive continent of Westeros, and its squabbling Seven Kingdoms, [[Great Crusade|to establish his own Imperial dynasty and unify the Realm]]. Aegon I is essentially the Low Fantasy version of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror William the Conqueror] and/or the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]], with a little dash of [[/d/|incest]].

[[Rules Lawyer|Thanks to a loophole]], the Targaryens were immune to the moral objections relating to incest. Common sense (and common decency) took back seat to a time-honoured policy of [[/d/|catastrophic inbreeding]], which made a number of problems, the most obvious of which was that a whole bunch of them were fucking crazy. Aegon I married his older and younger sisters and had several kids with each, which would be the start of another Targaryen tradition: the occasional succession crisis. Because GRRM can't write a book without going off on a tangent (and because the Targaryens were running things for a good chunk of the setting's history), the Targaryens and their 300ish long legacy is full of rebellions and wars ripped from English History and in turn mined by HBO. Fun interregnums include the Dance of Dragons, where the Targaryens used the last of their dragons in a brutal civil-war against each other (and now a TV show), and the Blackfyre Rebellions, where the fat-fuck Aegon IV (who had Henry VII's opposite problems: he fucked everyone and had many heirs) legitimized all his bastards and even gifted one of them the dynasty's greatest treasure: the Blackfyre sword. Actually, considering how ''much'' of these rebellions were caused by half-Targaryen bastards, [[/d/|maybe they had a point?]]

Eventually, the lineage was banished to Essos after a brutal civil war: Aerys II, a crazy paranoid king that savagely executed many different people, made the wrong move of executing the Lord and Heir of the North; the two men were in King's Landing because Aery's son, Rhaegar, the '''non''-crazy one, eloped/abducted Robert Baratheon's fiance and their sister. Since he was already married and she was engaged, they left together in secret, which caused Robert the Cuck to go wild. Joining with Eddard, the new Lord of the North, and their teacher/foster-dad Jon Arryn, the three Kingdoms rebelled and Robert warhammered Rhaegar because STR > DEX.

The survivors were smuggled out/hidden from Robert, with Viserys and his then-pregnant mother hiding on their ancestral home of Dragonstone first, before fucking off to Essos when the war was truly lost; Rhaegar's ''first'' son and daughter were killed and his wife raped by the Lannister's bannermen, though Rhaegar's best friend [[Gay|who loved him very, very, very much]] claims to have helped sneak him out of Westeros and hides with him in Essos; finally, Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, Jon/Aegon, was adopted by Ned, who was made to realize that the entire civil war was a misunderstanding and that his whoremongering drunk of a foster brother would've probably been a terrible brother-in-law anyway. [[Grimdark]]. Basically, the entire British royal family, but with more incest, and a lot of dragons. Still, they occasionally did have genuinely good people like Aegon V (aka Egg), Jaeherys I the Conciliator, his wife Good Queen Alysanne and complete badasses like Brynden Bloodraven and Baelor Breakspear (too bad Bloodraven is hooked up to Old God wi-fi permanently and Breakspear died before he could become king).
Pseudo-Romans and/or the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Normandy House of Normandy].

* Aerys II, ''The Mad King'': [[Kharn|A pretty fun guy to be around]]. Had a psychotic fascination for fire, which extended to being a psychotic fascination for burning traitors, a category of people that eventually grew to include anybody he disliked for any reason, anyone who disagreed with him, and a few people who were unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. [[Goge Vandire|Teamkilled by his bodyguard Jaime for planning to burn the city down with everyone inside it, and even refused to accept his death until he actually died]].
* Daenerys Targaryen, ''Stormborn'': She was sold by her brother to a barbarian leader [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Khal (warlord) Drogo]] in exchange for the promise that he'd use his Khalassar (Warband/tribe) to conquer Westeros. She found her self esteem as his wife, then her husband killed her idiot brother Viserys and promised to conquer the world for Daenerys, making her a full-fledged badass barbarian war queen. Unfortunately, her husband died when [[Derp|Daenerys trusted one of the slaves whose town Drogo had pillaged and burnt to heal an infected wound of his]] and his horde fell apart (though the book is somewhat ambiguous as to whether the slave did kill Drogo). Then she hatched three dragons (completely by accident when she tried to commit suicide) bringing them back from extinction, and now everyone wants to marry her because she is now one of the most powerful people around due to said dragons and being good-looking (in the books this is by the age-of-consent in Westeros standards, where girls are women when they start getting their periods and boys are men at age 13). [[Gets shit done]] except the entire fifth book, in which she mopes around about wanting to marry an annoying, flamboyant mercenary instead of saving herself for political marriage. After banging the flamboyant mercenary, she later marries a Meereenese noble who guarantees he can get her some peace (more likely [[Just As Planned|just as he planned]]).
**She also does nothing while insurgents kill her men, a horde of plagued refugees spread disease to her city and standing idly by while an enemy army besieges her walls, all for realistically political reasons because the world is a horrible place. Learns how to train her dragon. In the books she's just encountered another Khalassar after being hauled away from Meereen by Drogo. In the TV series, she takes over all the Dothraki and adds them to her army, then heads for Westeros to invade the place with her army of elite hoplites, massive horde of Dothraki and her dragons. By the time she gets to King's Landing she's taken significant losses, including two of her dragons, and is fucking her nephew (Jon Snow). Officially went Mad Queen as of S8E5, wherein she burned most of King's Landing after the city attempted to surrender and has decided to "liberate" everyone on the planet, whether they want it or not. Jon kills her in the series finale so that she won't go around burninating the rest of the world.
* The dragons: The three dragons that Daenerys hatched. They're wyverns that breathe fire, [[Awesome|have blood hot enough to melt steel]], and [[List of /tg/ Cuisine|cook their meat before eating it]]. Naturally, some of the coolest things in the story.
** Drogon; named for her late husband, Khal Drogo. Black and red, the biggest and [[Gork|most aggressive dragon]]. Starts eating people and then escapes, leading to the other two getting imprisoned. Interrupts a gladiator tournament, killing a lot of people before being whipped by Daenerys into flying her to a Khalassar that broke off from her husband's after his death. In the show, he's the last dragon standing after Viserion bites it north of the Wall and his undead body is put down at Winterfell and Rhaegal gets shot down over Dragonstone. Takes Dany's body, destroys the Iron Throne and fucks off to who knows where after Dany is killed.
** Rhaegal; named for the first of her dead brothers, Rhaegar. Green and gold, the [[Mork|cunning one]] and the loudest (with a roar "...that would have sent a hundred lions fleeing,"). Kills Quentyn Martell when the latter is trying to goad Viserion (see below). After breaking out of jail with Viserion they go "all your base are belong to us" on Meereen, killing people and taking over the pyramid of a loyal family as his lair. Last seen playing "sack the town" with Viserion in the books. Dead in the show thanks to Euron Greyjoy and some Diabolus ex Machina bullshit.
** Viserion; named for her other brother Viserys. White and gold and the [[Vulkan|friendliest]] (as dragons go, he still eats people). Dug cave for himself in his jail then moved into another pyramid after his and his brother's great escape. Gets killed by the [[Vampire Counts|Night's King in the show via a magic spear, then his corpse is reanimated to be the Night King's zombie dragon steed]] and blasts a hole in the famous Wall, allowing the armies of snow elves and zombies to start flooding Westeros. Now perma-dead thanks to the Night King biting it.
* Viserys Targaryen, ''The Beggar King'': Daenerys' physically abusive older brother. Best known for being a bully with incestuous lust for her, and an arrogant and incompetent fuck with a massive sense of entitlement. He eventually got himself killed for being an all-around jerk and whiny idiot, which culminated in him threatening his sister and unborn nephew with a sword while drunk in a sacred Dothraki place where weapons and bloodshed are forbidden on pain of death (execution is done by bloodless death - having a scarf wrapped tight around the neck and being drowned in a barrel). Daenerys' husband [[awesome|poured molten gold over his head and called it his promised crown, also ensuring his death didn't technically shed any blood in their sacred place]].
* Aegon Targaryen, ''Aegon VI'': Daenerys' nephew, the son of her brother Rhaegar. Been hiding in Essos for the entire length of the series, but recently raised an army of Westerosi exiles and threw them all a massive Welcome Home party with rape and pillage. Wants to marry his aunt because she has dragons, ''and might not actually be a member of House Targaryen'' if you believe some fans. He can actually count past 6, can multiply numbers, can read different language and has a minor understanding of geometry thus cementing him as one of the most educated people in this overwrought series. Can also do his own laundry.
**Like Dany, he has his own band of misfits following him around. While Dany has Dothraki and Unsullied, Aegon has '''The Golden Company''', a mercenary company of ten thousand, descended from the forces loyal to the Blackfyre bastards. The Golden Company has a long and storied history of invading Westeros and failing, which has led to the theories that Aegon is really a Blackfyre. Because of their long history and descent from actual nobles, the Golden Company is nothing like the mercenary rabble common in the rest of the series, even having dedicated knight, archer, and War Elephant divisions.
* Brynden Rivers ''Bloodraven'': A Targaryen bastard who came to prominence about a hundred years before the series as a sort of sorcerer, he later became known as the "Three-Eyed Raven/Crow" after encountering the Children of the Forest, and uses his powers to help advert the Long Night and train Bran. He's described as having long, white hair, missing an eye, bound to a tree, knows all and sees all, associated heavily with ravens and omens... [[Vikings|yeah, he's very much Odin, come to think of it. Just a lot more of an asshole than the Warrior King of legend.]]
**In his prime, he was pretty much just Loki. The Spymaster ''and'' Hand of the King during the Blackfyre Rebellions (a rebellion of all Aegon IV's many bastards, [[Troll|who he legitimized on his deathbed because that's how he rolled]]), he was one of the few to remain loyal. He was a sorceror and had a spy network so thorough, it was a commmon-joke that the [[Magnus the Red|one-eyed]] sorcerer had "[[Thousand Sons|a thousand eyes]], and [[Tzeentch|one]]" He had his own elite unit of archers that solved the first rebellion by sticking the claimant, his heir, and finally his twin, full of arrows.
**Exiled to the Night's Watch after assassinating after assassinating a Blackfyre after promising him safe passage, a running theme in ASOIAF.
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===House Lannister===

''"Hear Me Roar"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Monopoly|Westeros' richest family]], proud, pompous, selfish and fabulous assholes. Not much of a martial tradition but if you cross them [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7t7cnwlOgY they will fucking cut you]. You can tell they are the bad guys because they have an army of sick fucks, including a zebra-riding mercenary band and 7' 8" Khornate Champion <s>not-Goliath</s> Gregor Clegane. House York (though named after House Lancaster) combined with the House of Rothschild and the Mafia. Their unofficial motto is "A Lannister Always Pays His Debts"
* Tywin Lannister, ''The Lion of Lannister'': The Godfather, head of the house, and obsessed with his reputation as a Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire. Lawful Evil Personified. He was a most feared general whose greatest achievement was [[Exterminatus|erasing House Reyne from existence]], which was immortalised in his own sweet-yet-creepy-as-fuck theme song (The Rains of Castamere) that became used as a warning against anyone standing against him. During his tenure as Hand of the King (i.e. Prime Minister), he was a political genius who operated as the true power behind the Iron Throne, keeping the realm stable and prosperous despite the stupidity of Aerys II and Joffrey. However, despite all of his achievements, he's an [[Emperor|absolutely terrible father]], who treats his children as nothing more than tools to further his political agenda. He completely overlooks the incestuous relationship his two oldest children had, and hated Tyrion and made his life a living hell for very poor reasons. He humiliated Tyrion whenever it wouldn't threaten the family's reputation, berated Tyrion for being a whore-monger despite secretly being one himself (this is ''only'' in the show), [[Grimdark|tried to get him killed multiple times]], and as the capstone of awful parenting, he taught Tyrion not to marry commoners after he married one called Tysha - by forcing Tyrion to watch Tysha get gang-raped, forcing him to rape her too and then annulling their marriage. The only person Tywin truly loved was his wife. He eventually gets his comeuppance when Tyrion finds out the truth about the Tysha incident and kills him with a crossbow, all while mentioning that out of all his children, Tyrion was the most alike to Tywin himself. He's based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick Warwick the Kingmaker].
* Joanna Lannister: Tywin's late wife and first cousin, meaning the next three characters are inbred as well, ironically. Dies giving birth to Tyrion, which is part of why Tywin hates him, though Cersei hates him for other reasons. Caught wind of Cersei and Jaime's incestuous tendencies, but she died before she could tell Tywin. It is implied that her ghost visits Jaime in a dream and mourns the current state of her family.
* Cersei Lannister, ''Bitch Queen'': Tywin and Joanna's first child. Twin sister to Jaime Lannister and wife to King Robert Baratheon. She fucks her brother Jaime all the time and had three of his children, whom she passed off as Robert's to grab power. She is a massive narcissist who thinks of herself as "female Tywin" and hence seeks to rule Westeros as the Queen, and will do anything to keep her power... even when [[Abbadon the Despoiler|most of her plans end up becoming utter failures]]. Crazy as all fuck and prophesied to be killed by the "little brother." This is because of a prophecy made by a witch, Cersei was a child that she'd be a beautiful queen, lose everything, her children would die before her, and the "Valonqar" would kill her. Though that does explain why she hates Tyrion as hard as all fuck, [[Just As Planned|the exact translation of the term]] that was used is "younger sibling", and not necessarily her sibling, which opens the door to all sorts of characters who hate the fuck out of her. Since Jaime is technically younger by a few seconds, him killing Cersei would be an interesting twist not without buildup. Possibly the Witch was messing with her head because of what a bitch Cersei was being to her, something Cersei never grew out of. Cersei is currently alive only because Varys wants her to be, [[Just As Planned|as she's a terrible queen who'll destabilize the realm enough for him to bring back the Targaryens]]. She was completely shaved, stripped of power in all but her royal heritage and forced to do a nude walk of penance throughout the city by the High Sparrow (ASOIAF Pope- equivalent/[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther Martin Luther] except he won the Reformation) after he uncovered her crimes. Now she's waiting for her hair to grow back and maybe thinking of revenge.
**She gets it in the show by blowing up the Great Sept of Baelor (ASOIAF [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Cathedral Canterbury Cathedral]) with everyone she doesn't like inside it, having her cousin killed near the Wildfire, killing Tyene Sand with the same poison that Tyene used on Myrcella and forcing Ellaria to watch, then capturing the nun who was her jailer and [[Grimdark|leaving her to be tortured to death by zombie Gregor Clegane]]. She is in short [[Thanquol]] disguised as a beautiful blonde woman. Gets anticlimactically squashed by a collapsing ceiling along with Jaime during Daenerys's assault on King's Landing. (her biggest issue? Not dying sooner, for the Seven's sake!)
* Jaime Lannister, ''The Kingslayer'': Younger twin brother (by about three seconds) to Cersei Lannister and commander of the Kingsguard. He loves his sister in every sense of the word and had three children with her. Killed the last king despite his oath, and is widely hated for it, even though everyone agrees that dying was a massive improvement for Aerys. The reason for this betrayal was that Aerys had a huge stockpile of Acme Brand Magic Napalm stockpiled under the city, ready to be set off the moment a siege broke through the town walls, and Jaime's options were to let it happen or kill Aerys before the crazy fuck got ''everybody'' killed. His desire to openly love his sister and win the respect he feels he deserves eventually causes Cersei to reject him. Starts off as an arrogant douche who [[Grimdark|tried to murder Bran Stark, but accidentally crippled him instead]]; as the series progressed he became progressively more bro-tier besides the whole wants-to-fuck-his-sister thing, though he eventually begins to question even this devotion after seeing what a bitch she is when she comes to power. He genuinely loves Tyrion, so much so that he actually went off on his own to get him back after he heard Catelyn had him imprisoned in the Vale. He gets freed by Robb and goes on a journey through Westeros, loses his arm, and gets a lesson in valour and knighthood from Brienne of Tarth. He starts to question his legacy after his son Joffrey makes him Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, a position that was only made available because Joff expelled the Knight who had actually earned it. Since Joff and Cersei had filled the Kingsguard with sycophants and their own thugs, Jaime's role as the Lord Commander has left a bad taste in his mouth because he is now the leader of probably the least prestigious iteration of the Kingsguard ever. Basically, [[Sigvald|Sigvald the Magnificent]] currently in the midst of a redemption arc. In the books, he is currently being lured into a trap by Lady Stoneheart.
**In the show, he has finally told Cersei to get fucked after realizing that she has well and truly lost it, and rode north to help fight the White Walkers. He survived the Battle of Winterfell, hooked up with Brienne, and then rides south [[Derp|because he just can't let Cersei go.]] Winds up getting shanked by Euron Greyjoy and dies [[Fail|via collapsing ceiling]].
* Tyrion Lannister, ''Halfman'': a very intelligent dwarf who is awesome, but hated by everyone, either because of his deformity, or because he's a Lannister. The few people who treat him well is an uncle that went missing, his brother Jaime, Jon Snow who learned a lot from him, and Varys, who at first saw him as an asset, but grew to admire his political abilities and intellect, even declaring him a friend. He seems to do much better when getting drunk with whores, rogues, bastards and barbarians. His silver tongue is one of his greatest strengths (he's witty and good at persuading people) and weaknesses (he's quick with insults and the truth in a city ruled by sociopaths and liars). Tyrion is also one of the only characters with an actual sense of the bigger picture, and an interest toward steering the world toward an outcome that ''doesn't'' involve a [[The End Times|Warhammer End Times]] scenario. **Unfortunately, the world's movers, shakers, and those who generally have the power to make a difference are increasingly either a) dead, b) scattered to the winds or c) hate his dwarf guts. Despite the increasing difficulty and fruitlessness of his task, however, [[Awesome|Tyrion still fights]]. After being framed for killing Joffrey, he killed his own father and fled Westeros. In the books, he is currently in exile in the Free Cities, weaselling his way into leading a merc band and trying to sign them up with Daenerys' forces, recognizing her as one of the few chances Westeros has got of fixing its shit (provided she can get her own shit together, which she's having a bit of trouble with).
**Since characters in this series tend to either be walking tropes, rip-offs of other fantasy characters, or historical people with different names, Tyrion is probably based on the great [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vorkosigan Miles Vorkosigan] (who was himself based on a few people including Sir Winston Churchill) and is a nod to King Richard III (a deformed but competent king later demonized by historiographers of his era). Even if he is usually the smartest one in the room at any given time, though, Tyrion is still not above having some derp moments. Exhibit A, when Tyrion asked his father what happened to his first wife (right before killing him), he took an ''obvious'' "I don't know and I don't care" response ("Wherever whores go") as if it was literal directions, and afterward keeps asking random people if they know where whores go, with predictable reactions. (Admittedly he'd just killed his ex and was probably in the middle of some serious PTSD at the time, which is not great for your brain.) The show version eventually meets Daenerys and becomes her Hand only to [[Fail|fuck up a bunch of stuff]] and lose her trust. He sells her out when he realizes that she's gone round the bend and winds up becoming Hand to King Bran.
* Kevan Lannister: Tywin's younger brother, considered "the reliable one". One of the few decent Lannisters, though saying that he is perfectly happy carrying out Tywin's bidding. Tried to talk sense into Cersei and was later called in to try and fix her mess. He did such a good job of it that Varys decided to personally thank him. With a crossbow. And a group of knife-wielding children. In the show he dies with the rest of the crowd when the Great Sept got nuked by Cersei - the manner of his book death was given over to Grand Maester Pycelle at the exact same time.
* Lancel Lannister: Kevan's son, Tywin's nephew and Tyrion, Jamie and Cersei's cousin. A callow, spoilt but well-meaning nobleman. Pretty much Joffery but mentally stable, not sadistic and capable of compassion and honor. Enters a sexual relationship with his cousin Cersei when Jamie is captured, which Tyrion uncovers and uses to blackmail Lancel into spying for him. He later has a religious experience after nearly dying and joins the Poor Fellows of the Faith of the Seven, gives up his incestuous relationship and tries to convert several of his family members (somewhat successfully with Kevan, unsuccessfully with Cersei). Still alive in the books.
**In the show, he reports Cersei to the High Sparrow (rather than the High Sparrow cleverly uncovering Cersei's plan and trapping her) and dies horribly. Cersei deliberately set him up for a particularly agonizing and drawn-out end; he's lured into a catacomb under the sept that contains a massive cache of wildfire, gets his spinal cord severed so he can't walk, and is left where he can see candles sitting in a pool of wildfire just a little too far away for him to reach it in time, so that he [[Grimdark|spends his last moments vainly trying to avert a horrible catastrophe before being incinerated]].
* Cersei and Robert's (actually Jaime's) children:
** Joffrey Baratheon: Spoiled brat and sociopath to the extreme. He's basically [[Sigvald]] during his teenage years (and likely inspired [[Phil Kelly|Kelly]] to make the character Sigvald). "Heir" of the throne, and the technical king of Westeros during the War of the Five Kings since he lives in King's Landing and sits on the throne. Turned out to be worse than Aerys. He died and there was much rejoicing. [[Fail|Except by his mother, who instead had sex on his corpse]]. Fourteen years old at the time of his death.
** Tommen Baratheon: The new king on the Iron Throne. Nine years old. Married to a teenaged shotacon wife who's (unknown to him) the granddaughter of his brother's true killer. Trying to litigate the criminalization of beets. Loves [[Cats|kittens]]. He's pretty well-rounded and non-fucked up, which is a miracle considering his parents, both putative and biological. Also seems to be trying to take kinging seriously, but his mom is trying to quash that in her subliminal attempt to hold power indefinitely, so whether it holds is another matter entirely. Prophesied to die before Cersei, which is doubly tragic due to his age and being a much better person than her.
**In the show, he commits suicide after Cersei blows up the Great Sept (head office of the fantasy knockoff Church of England), killing his godfather, great-uncle, wife, and all his religious friends, because of course her power hunger was more important than his happiness and well being.
** Myrcella Baratheon: Princess, and Cersei and "Robert's" second oldest child. Ten years old. In order to appease the Martells, Tyrion arranges a marriage with her and the youngest Martell, which pissed off everyone. In the books, she had her face fucked up because of Arianne Martell's amateur intrigues, which overlapped with poor planning, general stupidity, and another guy's backstabbing. Before the maiming, she was quite decent and non-evil. Who knows how she'll turn out now with half of her face cut off. Also prophesied to die before Cersei.
**In the show, she had a crush on Oberyn's surviving nephew but was killed by Elia in revenge for Oberyn's death, but alive in the books though missing an ear. Also, the readership all got on George's balls for maiming this girl, mostly because it was a sign that he had run out of ideas and was basically just milking Diabolus ex Machina ([[Just As Planned|or that's what he wants us to think]]).
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===House Baratheon===

''"Ours is the Fury"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Ascended to the Iron Throne after a successful rebellion against the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen. Produces no less than three claimants to the succession, each one very different from the other. Technically a cadet branch of House Targaryen as their founder Orys was allegedly a Targaryen bastard, who took the original Storm Kings (House Durrandon) deer sigil after killing the last one and fucking his only child Argella and then 200 odd years later, King Egg's daughter married their grandfather. They're pretty much the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Plantagenet House of Plantagenet].
* Robert Baratheon, ''The Usurper'': Fat, old, former badass who led the rebellion, and now the king who married Cersei Lannister. Then he fucked a bunch of other women and had lots of illegitimate kids. He was killed while mixing boar hunting and drinking, but whether this death was planned or not is uncertain. On the surface, a king with a thing for easy laughs and partying; right underneath the surface, he's irresponsible and leaves the actual ruling of a nation to his staff, deeper under the surface he's pretty much a sad, lonely old bro who would rather not have been king. Comparable to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England Henry IV], in that both were powerfully built military geniuses who overthrew the existing monarchy and later succumbed to an unhealthy lifestyle.
* Stannis '''The Mannis''' Baratheon: Robert's younger brother, an all-around badass who swings between [[Lawful Stupid]] (more so in the show than the books) and [[gets shit done|getting shit done]]. [[Judge Dredd|believes so strongly in the rule of law]] that he feels compelled to take the Iron Throne for himself despite wanting nothing to do with it. Is advised by a priestess of the God of light, Melisandre, and a lowborn smuggler named Davos Seaworth raised to knighthood and nobility. [[C.S Goto|His character is ruined in the show into an incompetent pawn of Melisandre and gets killed off just because one of the showrunners didn't like him]].
** Shireen Baratheon: Stannis's kid daughter. The sweet, charming, and intelligent little lady who was left with a deformity on her face from a disease called greyscale. Teaches Davos how to read, and is probably the most innocent person in the series alongside Tommen, Myrcella and a few others. Being the grim and dark universe A Song of Ice and Fire is, however, this means that she's likely going to end up becoming fuel for a vicious fire god. In the show she does, but in the books, she is safe and sound since Stannis isn't stupid enough to bring him with her while campaigning. His wife, on the other hand, being such an idiotic fanatical pyromaniac... well, her odds aren't exactly looking that great.
* Renly Baratheon, ''That Gay Guy'': Robert and Stannis's youngest brother. Took Loras Tyrell (a.k.a. Knight of Flowers, Pretty Boy, etc.) as his lover. Decided he was better suited to be king, though the bizarre and outdated laws of the land stated Stannis was next in line (though Joffrey and then Tommen were first since they were [[Pretend|officially]] Bobby B's legitimate kids). Was hugely popular since he had Robert's charisma, which led to him getting the most support, but he lacked Stannis's conviction and devotion to the duty of actually doing the work of a king, or even Robert's ability to wage war. Killed by Melisandre with some "help" by Stannis ''The Mannis'' for trying to steal his crown, though in the books Stannis may not have been completely aware of the role he played in Renly's death. He's basically [[That Guy]] of ASOIAF, since quite a lot of shit is his fault, indirectly or otherwise.
*Gendry Baratheon, the Bastard Son. One of Robert's many, many bastard children, and the one who gets the most page and screen time. He starts out as a humble blacksmith in King's Landing, who first comes to Ned's attention when Lord Stark is investigating the death of Jon Arryn. From there, he gets shipped off to the Night's Watch to avoid the imminent purge of Robert's bastards and winds up becoming friends with Arya and Hot Pie. After some adventuring and sexual tension with Arya (at least in the show), he joins the Brotherhood Without Banners. In the show, they sell him to Melisandre so she can use him for a blood magic ritual, while in the books he just goes on being a smith and doesn't get involved in anything particularly weird or shady. He's helping run an inn as a Brotherhood front/orphanage when he reappears in the books, but in the show, Ser Davos sets him free and tells him to fuck off, which he does for a few seasons. He eventually turns up back in King's Landing, where Davos finds him and recruits him (and his comically oversized LARPing hammer) for Team Snow. He helps Jon capture a wight to show Cersei, makes dragonglass weapons for the Army of the Living, hooks up with Arya, and fights in the Battle of Winterfell, after which Daenerys legitimizes him as the new lord of House Baratheon.</div></div>

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===House Tully===

''"Family, Duty, Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> Lords of the central riverlands. Being the obligatory central nation they spend a lot of the series being fought over like a cake in between fat kids. Basically Poland/the Netherlands, given they have so many rivers and how hard they've been fucked over.
*Edmure Tully: Basically the SoIaF universe's eternal butt monkey (because he happens to be a decent fucking person). Despite being an okay guy, he's also a useless ponce with a dense streak a mile wide and a bad habit of bragging about things he shouldn't be proud of. It took hanging in a stockade for a few months to make him experience some growth. When Jaime was brought in to unfuck the situation and end the siege at Riverrun, Jaime's "negotiation" pressured him into convincing his house to surrender, but he made sure [[Troll|that Brynden got out first]]. In the books, he's currently spending his days at the Lannister house as a hostage to make sure that the Tullys don't try to ruin the situation again.
**In the show, he disappears until the final episode, [[Fail|where he tries to make a case for himself as king]] only to get shut down by Sansa.
*Lord Hoster Tully: In GoT the only act he committed of any note was to die. In the books however he is arguably, though inadvertently, the most destructive character once you've delved into his history. The man looked down upon peasants, cripples, bastards, and broken things, which influenced his daughters and primed them for their mistreatment of such through their travels (especially Catelyn's immediate suspicion of Tyrion, [[What|despite the charge and evidence making little sense, but because he's a "Monster" of course he must have done it]]). He denied Tywin's offer to marry Tyrion to Lysa for said reasons, but he also denied Lysa to marry Petyr because of his low birth and her value of being married off to a higher bidder, even if their age differed by at least 50 years and she was pregnant with Petyr's child. He responded to this pregnancy by forcefully aborting the child via drinking Moon Tea, without her knowledge (something he would have nightmares about approaching his death). Not only did this nearly cause her death, but it destroyed her reproductive system resulting in 5 miscarriages and 2 stillbirths (an event that would lead her to aggressive paranoia so fervent that she killed her husband to prevent being separated from her only living child). All of these actions unfortunately spiraled into helping cause The War of the Five Kings.
*Brynden Tully ''the Blackfish'': He didn't catch the memo that he was part of the joke faction, and proceeds to spend the entire series fucking Lannister shit up and generally being a boss. Thought to be the black sheep in a family of fish (Thus "Blackfish", geddit?), but in spite of that status held true to the family, continuing to hold Riverrun for Robb in spite of the war pretty much being lost. When Edmure surrendered Riverrun, he escaped by swimming under the portcullis and escaping into the river, causing everyone to shit themselves because he's totally coming for revenge. Also widely accepted by the fans to be a closeted homosexual.
**In the HBO show, he gets killed when resisting arrest from Tully forces by order of Edmure. [[Rage|And it happens offscreen.]]</div></div>

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===House Arryn===

''"As High as Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Mountain lords turned [[NEET|neurotic shut ins]]. Goes through lords about as quickly as you would expect a castle equipped with a door that opens into empty air. Basically Switzerland/Afghanistan, seeing as how they stayed neutral in the War of Five Kings, their land is covered by nothing but mountains, and they're constantly fighting with the local tribes. They were being entertainingly screwed over by Littlefinger until his death.
*Jon Arryn: Only appears posthumously and is the catalyst for the whole plot. Used to be a foster father of sorts to Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Was the Robert's Malcador the Sigilite during Robert's Rebellion. He was killed by Littlefinger via Lysa when he figured out that Robert's kids are bastards of Cersei and Jaime. His death was blamed on the Lannisters to destabilize Westeros.
*Lysa Arryn: Loli bride turned Lady of the Vale after the Lannisters forcibly retired her husband from life, at least officially. In reality, Littlefinger convinced her to poison her husband and blame the Lannisters [[Just As Planned|which pretty much started this whole clusterfuck to begin with]]. A closeted, crazy woman who spends the entire series in her castle "the Eyrie" being useless, breastfeeding her own son at age 10, obsessing over Littlefinger's cock, and [[Derp|refusing to help her sister and nephew in the war she and Littlefinger pretty much started]], which may have guaranteed their eventual horrific murders by their enemies. Finally gets her comeuppance when Littlefinger kicks her out the moon door (post-taunting, of course), putting her out of our collective misery. Long live the Lord Protector.
* Robert Arryn: ''Littlefuck'', Lysa's equally mentally unstable autistic son, who still sucks on his mom's tit and enjoys seeing people "fly" out the moon door to their deaths. He actually seems to be a bit smarter than you would first think and is a really, really good judge of character, except with Sansa. Secretly being poisoned by Littlefinger and Sansa so she can take over the Vale and North. Named Robin in the show because the showrunners were afraid that having two characters with the same name would be too confusing. The show version doesn't get poisoned but turns up in the series finale as the Lord of the Vale.</div></div>

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===House Greyjoy===

''"We Do Not Sow"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Awesome|A house founded by Cthulhu-worshipping Norscans]]. While not actual Vikings in any sense of the word, there is little other way to describe them. They live on some islands off the coast of Westeros and almost their entire culture is based around raiding and the ocean. Their religion holds it shameful for a man to pay for personal possessions, and states they have to get things either by trade, washing up from the ocean or the "Iron Price": seizing something from the body or belongings of someone he defeated in battle rather than paying or trading for it. Also, only possessions acquired via the Iron Price command respect among the Ironborn. The nastiest form this takes is stealing women as "Salt Wives", [[Emperor's Children|effectively making them a society of rapists]]. As an interesting bit of trivia, their local variety of baptism is to be ritually drowned in seawater and resuscitated by their priests, and they don't see drowning as a bad way to go on the grounds that it means their god/gods have accepted them and they'll go to an underwater Heaven that's basically a more X-rated version of The Little Mermaid.
*Balon Greyjoy: Asshole dad, crappy ruler, and general shithead (all very common things in this world, but still) who rebelled against Robert Baratheon and failed miserably. All of his sons were killed, except for Theon, who was taken as a hostage to ensure his good behaviour. Despite being in a position to join either the Lannisters or the Starks during the War of Five Kings and thereby get whatever he wanted from either (independence and the North, or independence and Casterly Rock, respectively), he does the absolute stupidest thing possible and declares himself independent without support from anyone, attacking the North and the rest of Westeros, thereby virtually guaranteeing that he'll be on the receiving end of another one-sided battle once everyone else has sorted their shit out. In the book he at least tried to make one alliance but it was with the freaking Lannisters and not the other Kingdom seeking independence. Never got that far, though, since he was pushed off a bridge during a storm by an assassin his brother Euron sent.
*Victarion Greyjoy: Admiral of the Iron Fleet. [[Gets shit done]] while wearing [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Lokhir Fellheart's]] armour during boarding actions. Does it for vengeance, the lulz and as a ticket to Ironborn heaven (which they believe men can reach if they die in battle or by drowning). Worships both R'hllor and the Drowned God. For all his badassery, is far too stupid to realize that his black Red Priest sidekick's constant rambling about his "great destiny" is inevitably going to end in his burning to death on a sacrificial pyre. Said Red Priest impressed Victarion by surviving being marooned at sea for 3 weeks and turning Victarion's infected arm into a super-strong volcano arm. Seriously. Isn't in the show, which is lame.
*Aeron Greyjoy ''Damphair'': [[Kostaltyn|A priestly Alan Moore who drank seawater]]. Once a fun-loving party animal, he nearly drowned during the Greyjoy Rebellion and became a dour and devout priest of the Ironborn [[Cthulhu]] religion. Confirmed to have been raped by Euron when they were kids. Planned to overthrow Euron, who bribed and manipulated his way into becoming king of the Ironborn. As of the excerpts from the sixth book, he [[Grimdark|Was captured by Euron and tortured to try and make him renounce his faith, including feeding him spoiled food, drugging him and burning him. Later Euron tied Aeron, naked, to the prow of Euron's ship alongside Euron's tortured, pregnant former lover because she showed Aeron kindness by once giving him proper food]]. He tried to console her by saying their suffering will end in underwater Valhalla, [[Awesome|showing Euron failed to make him deny his faith]]. Also left out of the show.
*Theon Greyjoy: Son of the Lord/King of the Iron Islands. Had the personality of a stereotypical high school jock, being an excellent archer and womanizer and proud of it. He was given to Ned Stark by his father after Balon failed to successfully rebel against Robert Baratheon. Swore an oath to Robb, but then ditched him out of a desperate need to please his father. Ends up castrated and acts as the personal slave of Ramsay Bolton after Ramsay puts him through horrific torture to turn him into Reek. Rescued by his sister, but the psychological trauma meant it took a while before he could stop calling himself Reek and start getting back to normal mentally (physically he's now missing a few parts that don't heal or grow back). He's just been reunited with his sister in the books, but is dead in the show, thanks to charging the Night King by himself while protecting Bran.
* Asha Greyjoy: Theon's older sister and a commander of some renown which is quite a feat - almost every man on the Iron Islands except her father either tried to get in her pants or told her to [[-4 STR|stop playing around and go do some actual women's work]], before she kicked enough ass that they respected her. Rescues Theon after he escapes Ramsay but then loses him to Stannis. Is named Yara in the show because the showrunners thought her name sounded too similar to Osha the wildling chick and is also apparently [[PROMOTIONS|bisexual]]. Eventually becomes Lady of the Iron Islands in the show because she's the last Greyjoy standing. Is more or less the only Ironborn who isn't a complete asshole.
*Euron Greyjoy ''Crow's Eye'': A [[Chaos Warrior|sick fuck Lovecraftian pirate armed with unnatural sorcerous powers]] and so evil that Balon banished him from the Iron Islands. Every member of his crew is a mute because Euron ripped all their tongues out. Many of them are also the illegitimate sons [[Beastmen|of women he's raped around the world during his raids]]. Uses an eyepatch to conceal a pitch-black eye, his personal "obviously a villain" mark. Raped his brother Victarion's wife, then claimed she wanted it so Victarion had to kill her. Raped his younger brother Aeron. Also showed back up in the Iron Islands the day after Balon died, despite having been raping and pillaging in Essos before that, which is suspicious as fuck. Now the new Iron King. Plans to conquer Westeros and has some unknown plan to deal with Daenerys. Revealed in the book ''Winds of Winter'' to be [[Erebus|one of the sickest fucks in an entire setting of sick fucks (and that's saying something)]], including having a god complex while hating religion so much he [[Grimdark|tortures any clergymen he captures to try and make them give up their faiths using ironic tortures themed around their religions - such as preachers have their tongues cut out and burning priests of the fire god to death]]. Euron tried and failed to break his priest brother Aeron's faith so he lashed Aeron to the front of his ship to die [[Grimdark|alongside Euron's own pregnant lover Falia]], in what could be preparations for the [[Betrayal at Calth|ruinstorm]].
**In the show he's just a psycho pirate turned king without any magic powers or gear [[FAIL|who wants to bang Cersei and Jaime kills him in the second-to-last episode in one of the dumbest moments in an already terrible episode.]]
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===House Tyrell===

''"Growing Strong"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Lords of Highgarden and the Reach, backstabbers par-excellence, and owners of a lot of fertile land: of the Seven Kingdoms, the Reach is the "biggest," having the most people, the largest army, and a stable, if not agrarian economy; yes, the Westerlands is richer, yes, the Stormlands have/had the strongest military, and yes, the Vale is the most honor-and-chivalry obsessed, but the Reach and the Tyrells are the only ones who can compete with all three at once. Unlike the current lot of Lannisters they understand the value of good PR, balancing ruthlessness with being somewhat amicable, political savvy and not being stuck-up on honour (which they still have more of than the Lannisters do). They're a bit analogous to France. In the books, it's the Tyrells and their support that keeps the throne aloft post-Robert, first aiding Joffrey, then Tommen. They were "shrewd" enough to stay out of Robert's Rebellion and outside of his court while Tywin was in charge, so their lands are basically untouched by war: the Reach's cities are also the most beautiful, with Highgarden and Oldtown being notable for not smelling like shit and full of garbage. [[Fail|Unfortunately, they've all been wiped out in the show]].

*Mace "The Ace" Tyrell: Lord of Highgarden. Massively fat and overweight, while being stupid, overreaching and constantly mocked by everyone else, he's otherwise known as a friendly man, a good Lord when it comes to management and a good father; in the books, The Throne uses him to print gold and alleviate hunger during the War of the Five Kings, so they give him and his family a bunch of positions to keep them invested. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to save a man in the Game of Thrones. Gets killed with the rest of the noble houses when Cersei blows up the Great Sept of Baelor.
*Olenna Tyrell: The brains behind House Tyrell's schemes. Known as the ''Queen of Thorns'' for being an outspoken, prickly and venomous old lady. Schemed with Littlefinger to have Joffrey killed, but she carried it out with compressed powder "gems" hidden in Sansa's hairnet that poisoned his wine. She is to the Tyrells as Tywin is to the Lannisters, except her daughter isn't a narcissistic sociopath.
**Alive and well in the books (so far), where she's pretty much the same as the show. She has taken Margaery as her successor, which is why she made sure she'd be engaged to Tommen and had Joffrey offed.
**Became a fan-favorite for constantly dropping awesome one-liners and calling out smug and/or unpopular characters like Littlefinger and the Sand Snakes. [[Fail|Killed off in the show]] as Jaime gives her the option of drinking painless poison or whatever Cersei wanted to do to her after beseiging Highgarden. Olenna took the poison, and before she died [[Awesome|revealed to Jaime that she was the one who killed Joffrey and told him to make sure Cersei knows it]].
*Willas Tyrell: Mace Tyrell's eldest son and heir, crippled at a very young age when jousting against Oberyn Martell. Surprisingly, he and Oberyn are still bros, even though the rest of their Houses aren't very fond of each other because of this incident. Probably one of the most pleasant and sensible characters in the books, which might explain why they never included him in the TV show. Very fond of breeding animals, especially horses.
*Garlan Tyrell ''The Gallant'': Second-born son. Badass extraordinaire considered one of the best swords in Westeros, and one of the few people kind to Tyrion. Trains for real combat (often against multiple opponents by himself) unlike Loras, who's a tourney fighter. Single-handedly wrecks many notable knights fighting for Stannis during the War of The Five Kings. And he is the only person other than Tywin to put Joffrey in his place, at his own wedding. Sadly no POV chapter yet and omitted from the TV series (Loras takes credit for his deeds).
*Loras Tyrell ''The Knight of Flowers'': The Tyrell who appears most in the TV series, since his older brothers got adapted out. Considered to be an example of the perfect knight, despite his youth. Is secretly Renly's gay lover and conspired to take the throne with him and his sister. He was elevated to the Kingsguard as part of the Lannister's appeasement of the Tyrells, but also to ensure that Margaery would be safe if it turned out they couldn't kill Joff/Tommen turned out to be a sociopath too. Last seen badly injured in the books attempting to take Stannis' castle in order to to prove his honor after the Faith Militant locked up his sister, but because none of Cersei's sources could visually confirm it, it's likely that the Tyrells ([[Iron warriors|it was ''their'' forces that did the sieging]], after all) fabricated a story to get their boy out of there. In the show he ends up tortured by the members of the Faith for being gay [[C.S Goto|because the showrunners retconned them to hate gay people]], [[Protectorate of Menoth|later joins their ranks of questionable willingness]], then dies when Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor.
*Margaery Tyrell: The would-be Queen of Westeros, she has married, in order, Renly Baratheon (gay), Joffrey Baratheon (evil), and Tommen Baratheon (8 years old) and has been crowned as queen three times. While she is nice, like Disney Princess-in-a-grimdark-setting-nice, she is still her grandmother's protege , and so is the source of Cersei's paranoia (which is kinda valid as the Tyrells did off Joffrey so that the more-controllable and non-sociopathic Tommen could marry Margy). Cersei was so paranoid about Marge's ascension that she decided to legitimize the Sparrows and allow them to reform the [[Age of Apostasy|Faith Militant]], all because she was afraid Tommen would listen to Margaery more than her.
**In the show, she marries and uses sex to control Tommen, because the show needed to hit its titty quota and because Tommen is a teenager in the show. Was arrested by the resident Chamber Militant The Sparrow and asked for a trial by faith in the books. In the show, this also happens but she tries to be pious in an attempt to save herself but ended up getting killed when Cersei blew up the Sept of Baelor.
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===House Martell===

''"Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"''
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[[Tallarn|Desert dwelling survivalists]] who [[Dune|pride themselves on having never been conquered]] by the Targaryen dynasty (though they later married in). Moorish Spaniards, kinda. Their entire thing is that they're nothing like the rest of the Seven Kingdoms: they're descended from the Rhoynar, a group of people that used to live along one of Essos' longest rivers who practice absolute cognatic (the oldest child, regardless of gender, inherits the throne) succession and take a very liberal attitude towards sex. House Martell also has a rocky relationship with the rest of the kingdom: The Baratheons don't trust them because they were all Targaryen loyalists, the Reach doesn't like them because of historic wars between the two, and House Martell has never forgiven House Lannister for Clegane's rape and murder of Elia Martell, Rhaegar's first wife and mother of his children.
[[C.S Goto|Their story arc was completely ruined in the show, as Elia and Oberyn's daughters kill Oberyn's brother and nephew for taking too long to avenge him before being captured and killed themselves by Euron and Cersei]].
*Doran Martell: Lord of Sunspear and of royal descent. Still mad at the Lannisters about that whole "murdered-my-sister-and-infant-niece thing". Playing the longest of long games with Varys, which blew up in his face because he told ''no one in his family'' about his schemes (well, maybe Oberyn, but Oberyn is dead).
**[[What|Killed off in the show by Ellaria as part of her plan to avenge Oberyn]]. Even his actor was upset.
*Arianne Martell: One of GRRM's characters who seems to exists solely to fuck everything up at the worst conceivable moment. Still hot as Dornish girls come. See, she is technically the heir of Dorne, being the ''first-born'' daughter, and yet was shut out of most of her father's meetings and plans, which caused her to get upset because even Oberyn treats all of his bastards better than her dad treats her. After Doran ''seemingly'' accepts his own brother's death without any sort of fuss, she decides that her father is weak and plans to start ''another'' front in the War of Five Kings by putting Myrcella up on the throne. However, one of her dad's spies gives them up, and in a huge clusterfuck, Myrcella gets maimed by one of the pro-war knights. She is then taken to her father, who finally spills the beans on his grand scheme: the reason why she was sidelined by her father was because he had secretly betrothed her to her Viserys, but now that Viserys is dead, plans to see if he can broker an alliance with "Aegon," Rhaegar and Elia's son who "supposedly" was secreted away and replaced with doubles.
*Oberyn Martell ''The Viper of Dorne'': Doran Martell's brother, a bisexual swinger, former mercenary, and a drunkard (and also Inigo Montoya in Dark Fantasy). His girlfriend is a spectacularly beautiful bastard named Ellaria Sand and he has many illegitimate children, mostly daughters, collectively called "The Sand Snakes". Crippled the Tyrell heir in a joust, causing a rift between the two houses; despite this, he's actually best mates with the aforementioned heir, due to Willas Tyrell being straight up the nicest and most balanced man in the series and Oberyn being a very decent person. Known for poisoning his weapons, as well as his battle-cry. Died from a mutual kill, with Gregor Clegane crushing his skull in rather graphically, but Oberyn getting the last laugh, since he got Clegane with a horribly painful and slow-acting venom which stretched his death over days or even weeks, during which time he was ruthlessly experimented upon by a mad scientist, meaning he avenged his sister Elia who Gregor had raped and murdered. [[Sanguinius|So to sum it up, he's a spear-wielding badass whose death in battle against a major villain was deeply traumatizing for all in-universe and out]].

*Quentyn Martell: Didn't realize he was in Dark Low Fantasy and thought he was in High Fantasy, poor bastard. A member of House Martell, sent to marry Daenerys to secure an alliance between the families since the original marriage plan to hook Arianne up with Viserys won't work with Viserys dead. Leaves Westeros and goes all the way to the city of Meereen to marry her, but he's too late, as she marries the Meereenese noble Hizdahr, and like Jorah he's not her type (Dany likes her bad boys). Tries to tame two of her dragons to impress her; the attempt goes wrong, he gets horribly burnt and gradually dies in agony from his wounds.
*The Sand Snakes: Oberyn's children. All daughters he had with various women throughout his travels (all consensual encounters, mind you, which actually says a lot about Westeros that it has to be said). Mixed race and all hot with various skills including combat training and mastery of poisons. Working with Doran and Ellaria in the books.
**[[C.S Goto|Ruined in the show where they don't accomplish anything, are given atrocious dialogue (the "you need the bad pussy" line comes to mind), aren't great fighters and get killed by Euron's men, except for the one who poisoned Myrcella; she gets captured and poisoned back by Cersei so an imprisoned Ellaria is forced to watch her die and decompose.]]</div></div>

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===House Bolton===

''"Our Blades Are Sharp"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Starks' most important (and most despised) vassal, a former arch-rival made of [[Grimdark]] because their entire theme [[Dark Eldar|revolves around Torture]] and they're [[Night Lords|thoroughly awful, dishonorable, sadistic cowards who can be counted on to do every dirty trick possible before even trying to fight fair. Their sigil is a crucified and flayed man]], their castle is [[Commorragh|a complex of constant suffering called the Dreadfort]], and just look at their House motto...all of which shows how stupid the Starks were for thinking they could control them. Tied with Red Wedding collaborators the Freys as the most thoroughly vile house in the entire setting (no mean feat, all things considered).
*Roose Bolton, ''The 'Leech Lord'': A Lawful Evil sociopathic health nut who's called the Leech Lord because he gets leeched regularly, believing they get rid of bad blood. Second-most powerful Lord in the North with ambitions to depose the Starks. Since the Starks are mostly unable to think like crafty people and are blinded by excessive honour this doesn't prove too difficult. He gets his wish when he stabs Robb Stark in the back, at his uncle's wedding no less, and has anyone associated with Robb killed. He then makes over Winterfell in his bloody image and is currently trolling Stannis. Believes in the abolished practice of "[[Rape|Droit du seigneur]]" (a tradition that allowed a lord to have sex with subordinate women, whether they wanted to or not) and killed at least one man for trying to hide his wife from Roose (before fathering Ramsay with her via rape). Believed that he and his son could be as evil as they wanted as long as no one found out. Killed by Ramsey in the show, which Ramsay tried to cover with a lie despite the witnesses to his actions. May also be dead in the books, since the letter Jon receives from Winterfell in book five is addressed from Lord Ramsay Bolton.
*Ramsay Snow/Bolton: <s>A Dark Elf with shaved ears in the wrong universe</s>. <s>The Joker of Westeros</s>. The Chaotic Evil incarnate bastard son of Roose Bolton and a peasant woman he raped [[Grimdark|(under the hanging corpse of the woman's husband, for fuck's sake!)]]. One of the most fucked up people in all of the Seven Kingdoms (alongside the Mountain, Joffrey, the original Reek, the pedophile marauder Rorge and Euron), because he [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|loves to torture and kill people openly for the lulz]], such as Theon Greyjoy, who he crippled, knocked his teeth out, castrated, and brainwashed into calling himself Reek. Reek was originally a peasant appointed to try and control a young Ramsay, but instead Ramsay warped him into a mentally unstable necrophiliac before killing Reek to fake his death, but Ramsay seemed to hold some twisted affection for him. He also sent Theon's severed appendage to Theon's dad in a cutesy box with a letter mockingly detailing his evilness. Will torture anyone who points out his illegitimate heritage even though now he's legally recognized as a Bolton. Also has a pack of hunting dogs he names after women he hunts, rapes and kills. Married a fake Arya Stark and regularly mistreats her, including forced bestiality. Not a fun guy to be around. The only reason he's gotten away with it for so long (as pointed out by his father) is that no one is strong enough to stand up to him yet, but [[Powder Keg of Justice|when they are]] he's going to be killed (especially if his fate in the show is anything to go by).
**In the show, he killed his father with a knife, fed his stepmother and newborn half-brother to his dogs, then married Sansa Stark and deflowered her via rape. Ramsay was such a monster even Iwan Rheon, THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED THE GUY, hoped he'd die horribly. He got his wish: The consequences of Ramsay's actions catch up with him when Jon Snow shows up with an army capable of threatening him, and after surprise reinforcements from Littlefinger and his own fucked-up teamkilling, the Starks crush the Bolton army, forcing Ramsay to flee back to Winterfell. Despite this, the gate is smashed down, and Jon disarms him and beats him quite brutally before detaining him to await trial. Before the trial Sansa sets his dogs on him, which he had deliberately starved so they would eat Jon. Apparently they found him quite tasty. For all that Season 6 of GoT is Skub, there likely aren't many who would object to this moment.
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===House Frey===

''"We Stand Together"''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> House of weasels who are always grumpy and have a thing for overreacting to perceived slights. Wouldn't be that important except for the fact that they own the only bridge over a strategically important river, and regularly extort anyone attempting to cross it...that, and performing the Red Wedding, AKA the Magnum Opus of Grimdark that single-handedly ensures they're [[Marines Malevolent|the most hated fucks in the whole setting in-universe and out.]] Simply put, there is '''nothing''' good or nice you can say about the Freys. They're ugly inside and out, cruel, treacherous, thoroughly dishonorable, and aren't even strong warriors, being a mix of incompetent dumbasses and sadistic cowards. They'd all make excellent Skaven (especially considering they could stand to be killed by some Lizardmen).

*Walder Frey: The ancient, terrible, ornery old man in charge of the Twins. Universally detested by his peers (and the audience) for being an amoral, sociopathic opportunist, which he returns in kind for said peers "looking down on him" (can't imagine why), and will readily betray an important ally for immediate gain, or if he feels he has been slighted in some minor way, with the aforementioned Red Wedding being the most infamous example of both. His descendants are literally so numerous that no one except GRRM himself has been able to count them all, so we aren't even going to attempt it (not helped by quite a few of them being named Walder as well). Now dead in the show due to getting his throat slit by a vengeful Arya after she serves him two of his sons as meat pies. </div></div>

===Minor Houses and non-Houses===
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'''Night's Watch'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Night's Watch are an apolitical force in charge of manning The Wall, a giant ice wall that separates the relative tranquillity of the south from the Lovecraftian fucked-up-itude of the true north. They are chronically undermanned and undersupplied since nobody believes their stories of a barbarian army or the impending zombie apocalypse. Basically everybody else thinks they're in a game of [[Diplomacy]] and the Night's Watch are the only ones who realize they're actually in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], though it's been so long since the last snow elf invasion that even they had forgotten about the undead hordes and focused too much on barbarians. Too add to their problems, they are overwhelmingly comprised of petty criminals who wanted to avoid the hangman, because "taking the black", as it's colloquially known, also brings with it a full pardon for any crime committed, even murder and treason (even rape, though rapists tend to be despised among the Night's Watch). Taking the black isn't also very popular, as a common joke in the Seven Kingdoms is that out 10 people, only would one would willfully take the black, the rest would rather get hanged. They also frequently serve as a convinient catch-all solution for Lords and nobles who fell out of favor, committed treason or were outwitted in the endless Westerosi wheel of politics; lucky for them because said Lords and Nobles are usually the only ones with any fighting experience that are part of the watch and make up their leadership. They've allied with the Wildings and the North, but in the TV show, the Night's King used the undead dragon Viserion to burn a hole through The Wall.
*Jeor Mormont, ''The Old Bear'': 997th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at the start of the series. Sees Jon Snow as something of a second son (since his own son Jorah was exiled for enslaving and refused to take the black for his crimes). Leads a ranging north of the Wall to investigate reports that the Others have returned. Ends up killed during a mutiny of survivors after the Others wiped out most of his force.
*Alliser Thorne: Prick of a knight who was favourite to be the next Watch Commander, but was passed over by Jon Snow. Unable to accept Jon Snow letting the Wildlings live on the other side of the wall in an alliance against the zombie hordes, he staged a coup against Jon. It failed because Jon was brought back to life. He is now dead in the show, having been executed for his treason by Jon Snow. Despite of his many personal failings, he's one of the very few capable fighters (and a pretty good one, even) of the Watch and a skilled commander. Took the Black after siding with the Targaryens during the Sack of King's Landing in the civil war.
*Aemon Targaryen: Maester of the Citadel at Castle Black. Despite being the third born son of King Maekar I Targaryen, he declined the right to sit on the Iron Throne. One of the few people in the series to die of old age, at 102.
*Samwell Tarly, ''The Slayer'': Fat bookworm who was forced to take the black after his father Randyl threatened to murder him for being unmanly. Jon Snow's best friend among the Night's Watch, and knows everything because he "read it in a book". Despite being a self-professed coward, Sam became the first person in thousands of years to slay an Other with an obsidian dagger. George Martin himself said Sam's based on Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. Since then, he has started improving his combat skills and balls (in more ways than one for the latter, finding his spine and losing his virginity). He abandons the Night's Watch to help fight the dead and tell Jon who he really is, and winds up becoming the new Grand Maester by the end of the show.
*Eddison Tollett, ''Dolorous Edd'': Probably the most badass member of the Night's Watch. Responds to situations by making sarcastic jokes about them, and known for being a grim motherfucker in a setting of grim motherfuckers. In the show he [[Awesome|became the new Lord Commander]] while Jon was dead, but gave the title back to Jon when he was brought back to life, and then Jon handed it right back because he needed to go sort out Ramsay Bolton. Dies in Season 8 at the Battle of Winterfell.
*Benjen Stark: The [[Dune|Duncan Idaho]] of this series, the dead guy all the other characters and all the ''readers'' love so much someone has to bring him back from the dead in later books. Benjen is Eddard Stark's youngest brother and the prime motivation why Jon wants to join the Night's Watch in the first place. Joined the Watch for reasons unknown and disappears without a trace even before Jon arrives. In the TV series, he returns as a benevolent Wight that retained his free will and helps Bran to get back to the Seven Kingdoms.
*Qhorin Half-Hand: Badass extraordinaire that killed a shitton of Wildlings in his long time of service, rumoured to have spent more time north of the Wall than anyone living southerner in the setting. Lets himself get killed by Jon in a gambit to earn Mance Rayders respect.
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'''Wildlings'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Groups of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who live north of the Wall. Mostly First Men by blood, they have been heading toward the Wall for the past decade with the reputed reemergence of the Others. Nomadic, aggressive, and very much believing in "might makes right", they do not get along with anyone south of The Wall since they view them as "Kneeling weaklings". Basically every Celtic/Scandinavian/barbarian stereotype combined.
*Mance Rayder, ''The King Beyond The Wall'': A Wildling orphan who was taken in by the Night's Watch, he became their best Ranger before he deserted to join his people. He united the Wildlings and lead them south to escape the Others. Also a trained bard, but that was not enough to save him from death in the show while he's merely MIA in the books.
*Tormund Giantsbane: Claims to have a ten-inch penis, and invites his enemies to use their mouths if they want to clean it. Cool as fuck old guy who [[Furry|fucks mother-bears]] in his free time. Tough as nails motherfucker who preaches the merits of using one's cock for everything. He teams up with Jon Snow for the fight against the White Walkers, then fucks off back to the north once the Night King is dead, making him one of the most sensible people on the show. He and Jon go off to be bros at the end of the show.
*Ygritte: Wildling woman who Jon Snow ends up falling for and who returns his affections. Has red hair which is considered lucky among the Wildlings. This being ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', she ends up dying because her worldview is not compatible with Jon's.
*Craster: A sick bastard, formerly a member of the Night's Watch turned polygamous isolationist. By the way, [[Grimdark|his current wives are his many daughters and granddaughters who he fucks regularly to have more children. Girls grow up to become more wives, boys get sacrificed to the Others]]. This keeps the Others at bay - and is implied to be a way the Others reproduce themselves, and that sanctuary is why the Night's Watch barely tolerates him. Fortunately, he's been killed off in the story and his offspring go their separate ways.
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'''Commoners, Knights, and Petty Lords'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Basically any character not associated with any of the Great Houses.
* Varys, ''The Spider'': The eunuch spymaster of Westeros. You can't take a shit in the Seven Kingdoms without Varys finding out where, when, and how watery or dry it was. He does this through paid informants and his "little birds", a spy network of children who sneak through the castle's passageways and air flues to eavesdrop on everyone. Somewhat of a paradoxical character, since his literal dicklessness, reputation and political power make every character extremely vary of him (it's more or less implied that the main thing keeping him in the small council is the fact that he has got enough shit on everyone to blackmail them into submission if they would dare step out of his line) but under the surface, he is the rare example of people in Westeros that isn't an entirely self-serving scumbag and seems to show genuine care and concern for the common folk [[Just as planned|(Even if his machinations frequently put commonors in peril, but hey, such is politics)]]. To that end, he manipulated events that, according to his plan, would end with a Targaryen on the throne, to permanently stabilize the realm and rid it of the aformentioned self-serving idiots. On a sidenote, he's one of the few, if not the only person to fully comprehend how dangerous Littlefinger actually is. In the books, he's currently trying to install an adolescent Targaryen on the Iron Throne (who probably isn't even one, but he got the looks) Dead in the show, having decided to try and put Jon on the throne instead of Daenerys; Jon says no, Tyrion sells him out when he realizes Jon absolutely means it, and Dany has Drogon barbecue him.
* Petyr Baelish, ''Littlefinger'': The Master of Coin (the ASOIAF equivalent of a treasurer) and the closest person the Game of Thrones world has to a [[Daemon Prince]] of [[Tzeentch]], up to even declaring "[[Chaos]] is a Ladder". A dangerous manipulator who manages to trick and steal his way to positions of lordship and wealth because no one takes him seriously, and stabs all the Lannisters in the back when they become inconvenient. As a child, he wanted Catelyn Stark and was tricked into thinking she wanted him when her sister Lysa fucked him while he was drunk. Challenged Catelyn's betrothed Brandon Stark, Ned's older brother who was murdered by Aerys, for her hand in marriage and got his ass kicked because he was a small skinny boy and Brandon Stark was a big strapping man, making that his start of darkness. The guy responsible, directly or indirectly, for the War of the Five Kings because he was the mastermind behind poisoning Jon Arryn, the capture and execution of Ned Stark, feeding several half-truths to Catelyn to motivate her to arrest Tyrion, and eventually Joffrey's death by having Dontos and Olenna Tyrell carry out the plan to kill Joffrey and letting Tyrion take the fall; but no one in the story knows this, not even Varys. People think he can pull gold out of thin air, but he's really been buying debt while letting Robert Baratheon's extravagances and Joffrey and Cersei's dipshittery pull the country into a serious debt of its own. So he's pledged himself to [[Chaos]] and destroying Westeros all because he couldn't have Catelyn as his girlfriend, though he changed his focus to her daughter Sansa now, making him a pedophile. Hasn't yet got his comeuppance in the books, but is currently dead in the show after he was out-gambitted by Sansa and killed by Arya (though the less said about how well executed this was, the better). According to GRRM, he's based on the title character from the Great Gatsby, even though he only really resembles the character when putting on an act. [[Erebus|Basically has the role of a treacherous figure who gives bad advice on purpose and is responsible for the series of events that lead to a massive, devastating war with horrible consequences, making him one of the vilest folks in the 'verse]].
*Gregor Clegane, ''The Mountain'': A 7' 8" 400 pound mass of testosterone, muscles, steroid overdose, [[Slaanesh|utter disregard for consent]], [[Khorne|and murderous RAGE]], Gregor is Tywin Lannister's top muscle. Killed his own father and sister and permanently scarred his brother. [[Beastmen|Hobbies include rape, arson, murder, and random torture]]; he's also been married a few times but not now with the implication he kept killing his wives. He played an important part in destroying the Targaryens by killing a couple of Rhaegar's kids in rather brutal fashion, then raping and murdering his wife. Spends a few novels doing Tywin's dirty work before a Trial by Champion leads to him dying after being poisoned by Oberyn Martell. Qyburn later resurrected him as... something... called "Ser Robert Strong", and is now even stronger, less prone to psychotic rages, and is completely obedient. He's based on accounts of French knight Gilles de Rais and maybe also the scriptural giant Goliath. In the show he goes on to torture Cersei's nun jailer to death in a brutal and unspecified fashion kills Qyburn during the Siege of King's Landing and then nearly kills his little brother, only for Sandor to tackle him through a collapsing wall and into a gigantic inferno that claims both. [[Honsou|Standing out as one of ''the'' evilest pieces of shit in a world filled with them]], to the point that even the author himself has labeled him the worst character in the series.
* Sandor Clegane, ''The Hound'': Younger brother to Gregor Clegane, called the Hound because of his hound-face helm, his family's heraldry, and being the king's hired muscle without being a knight. He hates knights due to the hypocrisy of being a professional "noble warrior" but mostly since his monstrous brother is a knight, showing it's not so much of a noble promotion. Terrified of fire after Gregor put his head against a brazier for playing with one of Gregor's old toys when they were children, burning half his face, but he's still the second-strongest person in Westeros. A brutal anti-hero with a soft spot for Sansa, but a better person than his brother. After falling sick from Biter's nasty teeth, he ends up being a silent monk burying people in the Silent Isles. In the show, he joins the Brotherhood without Banners and goes north to help fuck up the White Walkers. As of Season 8, he's survived the Battle of Winterfell and is riding south with Arya to put the boots to Gregor. Dies killing his now undead brother in a pretty epic fight amidst the crumbling ruins of the Red Keep.
*Grand Maester Pycelle: A shrewd, dangerous man putting on a "harmless old man act" and a high ranking scholar from the science/medical guild the Maesters. The longest-serving member of the King's advisory staff, and is actually Tywin Lannister's biggest lackey. He convinced the Mad King to let Tywin in as Baratheon's armies were marching on the capital, where Tywin proceeded to sack the city and claim it for Robert. Gets his head bashed in by Varys in the books and murdered by Qyburn in the show.
* Qyburn: Formerly a maester, who was kicked out of the order for unethical experiments on the living (taking people and performing vivisections to be precise). Introduced as a part of a mercenary company serving Roose Bolton, which should be a red flag. He moves up in the world when he's sent to escort Brienne and Jaime back to King's Landing and ends with Cersei employing him to replace Pycelle as "science advisor" and eventually Varys's Spymaster. Serves Cersei loyally as long as she lets him indulge his sick experiments, serving as a black magic variety of the court mage. He has resurrected Gregor Clegane as... something. [[Fabius Bile]] if he traded his robot limbs, eugenics and power armour for necromancy. He overestimated his hold on Gregor and got his head caved in for it as of the second-to-last episode of the show.
*Barristan Selmy, ''The Bold'': Knight of the Kingsguard. Which Kingsguard? Take your pick. He's served pretty much every king since Aerys and understandably feels pretty bad about it. Another sad old man who pretty much just wants to die until he decides to go pledge his services to Daenerys. Even in his old age, he is considered one of the most dangerous men in Westeros. [[Fail|Dead in the show]] (to be fair they gave him a huge last stand), but [[Awesome|alive]] and [[Roboute Guilliman|appointed himself Daenerys' steward in her absence to try and fix Meereen's situation in the books]].
*Melisandre, ''The Red Witch'': A priestess of R'hllor, the god of fire. Proclaimed Stannis to be the messiah-king and is doing everything in her power to make sure he wins (considerable given that she can scry, make shadow baby assassins and set things on fire with her mind). She'd be pretty bro-tier if her god wasn't so vicious. As it stands she's kind of in the grey (in the books, the show seems to zig-zag on her being evil 'cos the showrunners seem to hate religion). Most of the people she set on fire deserved it, and she hasn't ''succeeded'' in killing any babies yet. Show version now dead from suicide via rapid ageing after ensuring the Living defeat the Dead.
*Jorah Mormont: A knight and son of Jeor Mormont, exiled for trying to sell poachers into slavery and eventually joining the exiles of House Targaryen. He is offered a pardon in exchange for spying on the Targaryens but ultimately decides to stay with them after falling in love with Daenerys. Unfortunately, he gets friend-zoned hard. Despite saving her life from an assassin while she was pregnant, she still votes him off the Khalassar after learning he was a spy. He still loves her and follows her in secret, though. In the show, he goes on a quest to prove himself to her and contracts the dangerous disease Greyscale (it's like the unholy lovechild of smallpox and leprosy), but he gets cured and is now back at her side. He dies protecting her at the Battle of Winterfell.
*[[This Guy|Davos Seaworth]], ''The Onion Knight'': A former smuggler and bannerman to House Baratheon, and a top-tier hype man, pulling speeches out on the spot on several occasions to convince people to support Stannis and later Jon. One of the most Noblebright characters in the setting, which really isn't bad for a man that only just now learned how to read. During Roberts Rebellion he ran a blockade with a cargo of contraband onions to a castle Stannis Baratheon was besieged in. In exchange for the food he had, Stannis knighted Davos, [[Rules Lawyer|but Stannis's law-worshipping mindset compelled him to remove four digits from his left hand]]. Despite this, Davos has served Stannis with unquestioning loyalty, because Stannis knighting him gave his children a future. The fact that Stannis's war for the throne has ended up killing several of his sons hasn't dented his loyalty at all. **Doesn't like Melisandre because he sees her as a user and her beliefs as brutal. He's a devout follower of the Faith of the Seven in the books and the first season of the show [[C.S Goto|but is clumsily retconned into an anti-religious atheist in later show seasons]]. In the show, he's now pledged to DA NORF and is basically Jon's Hand of the King, except he doesn't get a fancy pin. He survives the Battle of Winterfell and the Second Sack of King's Landing and becomes Master of Ships in the final episode of the show.
*Shae: A former camp follower and Tyrion Lannister's squeeze for most of the story. Fled from an abusive family and became a camp follower to earn a living. Seems to fall in love with Tyrion, but it turns out she's a gold-digging bitch. When Tyrion doesn't marry Shae she sells him out to Cersei for a better offer, then fucks Tywin when she realizes Cersei won't keep her promise. Tyrion found her in his father's bed and strangled her to death with a necklace for betraying him. The discovery of Shae's corpse in Tywin's bed - posthumously outing him as a whoremonger - upsets Cersei to the point she unpersons Shae.
*Bronn: A mercenary who acts as Tyrion's enforcer and personal killer until Cersei outbids him and he settles down with a little wife and title. Routinely kills knights by exploiting how arrogant and stupid they are even after becoming one himself. Only in it for the money, which he'll happily tell you himself. The only character other than Littlefinger to end every book in a better position than he started it. In the show, he makes the very sensible decision to sit out the fighting and wait for his promised castle (Riverrun if Cersei wins, Highgarden if Daenerys wins). He gets Highgarden and is named Lord Paramount of the Reach and Master of Coin in the final episode. Some nobles bitch about the idea of an upjumped thug receiving such high and exalted positions until he points out that their Houses were probably founded by people a lot like him.
* Brienne of Tarth, ''The Beauty'': Surprisingly badass lady knight wannabe (since no women can be knighted), legendarily unattractive but still pretty idealistic despite the shit she gets for her looks. Fate frequently gives her the shit end of the stick, because no matter how hard she tries to finish her quests, she ends up failing or stuff happens that makes it impossible. Secretly crushes on Renly and unaware he's gay. After he dies, Brienne switches her loyalty to Catelyn and helps her bring Jaime to King's Landing as Tyrion promised Sansa's return in exchange for Jaime. She later developed a crush on Jaime. Things don't go well because Jaime lost his hand and the Red Wedding happened. Next, Jaime sends her out to find and keep Sansa safe to make good on Tyrion's promise, since he isn't the complete dick everyone thinks he is. Brienne ends up getting captured by Cat, now known as Lady Stoneheart and an insane undead, who was going to hang Brienne for working with Jaime. Brienne was spared at the last moment to capture/manipulate Jaime.
**In the show, she's now sworn to House Stark and gets knighted by Jaime just before the Battle of Winterfell and then she and Jaime hook up afterwards, only for him to take off and break her heart, because remember kids, he'd rather fuck his sister than fuck an ugly chick. She is now Lady Commander of the Kingsguard as of the final episode.
* Lyanna Mormont: A badass ten-year-old girl who inherits [[Kislev|Bear Island]] after her mother and older sister die horribly in the Riverlands - at least if we are going by the show; in the book, her mother is still alive somewhere [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|waging a Guerilla War]] in the Neck and her older sister Alysanne is the de-facto head of House Mormont. Her activities include pimp-slapping bitches, leading men twice as old as her, and being completely loyal to the Starks despite all their misfortunes. [[Awesome|"Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK."]] She dies killing an undead giant at the Battle of Winterfell, which is pretty badass.
* Wyman Manderly, ''Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse'': The Lord of White Harbour and one of the few Northerners who worship the Seven. Fervently loyal to House Stark, he pays lip-service to the Iron Throne long enough for his eldest son to return home, all to mask a plan to restore the Starks to power, mostly by destabilising the Frey-Bolton alliance, building a navy, marshalling the forces of the lands east of the White Knife river, "losing" Freys in the wilderness and sending Lord Davos Seaworth to rescue Rickon Stark from Skagos. His favourite food is lamprey, although he has also developed a taste for Frey Pie. Also a remarkably graceful dancer, and can survive taking a knife to the throat.
** Wylla Manderly: Granddaughter to the above. Another badass little girl, her activities include openly declaring undying loyalty to House Stark and dying her hair green. She and Lyanna Mormont would probably be best friends if they met. [[Awesome|"The city is built upon the land [the Starks] gave us. In return, we swore that we should always be their men. Stark men!"]]
* Jon Umber, ''The Greatjon'': At first he seems to be your stereotypical, boisterous Northern Lord. However, he becomes one of Robb's most loyal supporters, being first to declare him as 'King in the North' after Ned's execution. Had his moment of awesome [[Awesome|when he killed and wounded four Freys at the Red Wedding, all the while being drunk and needing eight additional men to take him down.]]
* Beric Dondarrion, ''The Lightning Lord'': Minor lord who agreed to head an expedition to take out Gregor Clegane. This being Game of Thrones, however, his party is ambushed by the Mountain and is beaten rather badly, and he loses his life in the process. Thanks to his drunken Red Priest friend, however, he manages to come back not once, but eight times, and each time he comes back, he becomes more powerful, though at the cost of his memory. He now heads an outlaw faction of grimdark Robin Hood types called "The Brotherhood Without Banners", who are dedicated to punishing those who abuse and mistreat the smallfolk. Ironically, he's one of the few book characters to have died (permanently) in the books but remain alive in the show, except now he's dead for real as of the Battle of Winterfell.
* Thoros of Myr: Aforementioned drunken priest who is dedicated to R'hllor, though at first he doesn't really give a rat's ass about the Red God, as he prefers to party it up with wine and women, but after he 'accidentally' resurrects Beric, he becomes quite serious about his religion and vows to curb his excesses in drinking. Dies on a mission beyond the Wall to capture a wight (show-version). Bane of swordsmiths across the lands, as he likes to routinely ignite his swords with Wildfire when he gets a hold of some of the stuff, which completely destroys the blade.
* The Brave Companions: Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be a faction in this setting as fucked up as the Boltons, Freys, and Ironborn, these guys come along and prove you wrong. A bunch of "mercenaries" who are really more just complete and utter lunatics that are incapable of doing what they're paid to in any way except the bloodiest and nastiest, all with maximum [[Rape]] thrown in too (especially if Brienne of Tarth is involved, because every single fucking one of these guys wants, tries to, or threatens to rape her at some point). Led by Vargo Hoat, a goat-helmet wearing maniac who likes cutting body parts off of his victims before killing them. The rest of his band consists of a bunch of other sickos who are every bit as bad as him (except Rorge, who is even worse). To put this into perspective, the member of the group who is a pedophile priest (Septon Utt), is the ''least'' evil one, if only because he actually regrets what he does and is suggested to do what he does because of urges he can't control. The rest? Forget about it. After Vargo's gruesome death at the hands of the even worse Gregor Clegane, the surviving Brave Companions scatter, effectively dissolving the group but meaning a bunch of these assholes are still active. Cut from the TV show completely.
** Rorge: Gregor Clegane 2.0, being ''another'' big, brutish, psychotic monster who rapes people and murders children and who is a Chaotic Evil super-thug through and through (because apparently we needed another one in the setting), with the added bit of awfulness of being a child-hating pedophile. Along with Gregor Clegane, one of the absolute worst characters in the entire series (a high bar, as you've probably gathered by now). Killed by Brienne. In the TV show, he's a completely forgettable one-shot, throwaway character who gets killed by Arya before he can really do anything and doesn't come anywhere close to the awfulness of his book version.
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'''The Free Cities'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Nine city-states to the West of Essos, for the most part, the old colonies of the Valaryian Freehold. Mostly they are ruled by Merchant Princes. They look down on the Westerosi for being a bunch of up jumped backwards war-mongering morons who are only a few silverware sets and maesters away from absolute barbarism. In turn, the Westerosi look down on the Free Cities as being money-grubbing effete cowards ruled by cheesemongers who use bribery, tall walls and dirty tricks to get ahead in the world.

* Illyrio Mopatis: A rich fat bastard and a Magister of Pentos. Old buddies with Varys and a bigtime schemer.
* [[Officio Assassinorum|The Faceless Men]]: A cult of shape-shifting assassins who worship The Many-Faced God of death based in the free city of Braavos that give up personal identity. They claim descent from escaped Valyrian slaves who considered death to be a better fate than perpetual slavery. Their mission hence became being servants of the Many-Faced God of Death. You can hire them to off your rivals, but they request a steep and equivalent price. They also offer a painless, quick suicide for downtrodden and desparate people by the means of poison. Their motto is "Valar Morghulis": All Men Must Die.
* Xaro Xhoan Daxos: One of the thirteen leaders of the city of Qarth. A flamboyant, languid, bald rich man who looks after Daenerys while she stays in Qarth and gives her many gifts. He wants her dragons as much as anyone else and even tries to marry her despite his homosexual tendencies. He stops wanting the dragons later in the book series after seeing [[RIP AND TEAR|their work in Astapor]], and no longer wants her around as her anti-slavery stance is hampering his wealth, so he offers Daenerys ships to leave the area and declares war on her when she refuses. In the show, he's heterosexual, helps steal her dragons, fucks one of her handmaidens and gets locked in a vault for conspiring to have her killed. He's also black and fat in the show when he's white and lanky in the books, being Qartheen and all.
* Syrio Forel: The former First Sword of Braavos (aka the ruler's personal bodyguard) and later Arya's mentor in King's Landing. He teaches her the way of Braavosi fencing, called "Water Dancing", and sacrifices himself to save her from Lannister thugs, taking down at least six of them with a wooden sword. May have inadvertently set her on the path of becoming a badass assassin by telling her of his belief in the God of Death.

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'''The Dothraki'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Horse people who live in a country of endless grass plains referred to by others as the Dothraki sea. They only have one city, called Vaes Dothrak, which is less of a city and more of a place they all meet when important things have to be discussed. Have traits borrowed from several cultures, including Mongols and Native Americans, all filtered through European misconceptions of those cultures of course, such as the Dothraki's antipathy for heavy armour, despite the fact that the Mongols were very heavily armoured and also excelled as infantry, see the Battle of Leignitz. They fear the ocean because of its size and the fact that horses won't drink from it, calling it the "poison water".

* Khal Drogo: An Expy of <s>Genghis Khan</s> Yesukhei Baatyr (his son would have been the equivalent to Chinggis Khaan). Leads the largest Khalassar among the Dothraki. Despite being a barbarian warlord, Drogo is surprisingly intelligent and treats Daenerys well. After an assassin tries to kill her he promises to conquer Westeros for her and their unborn son and immediately starts raiding towns for slaves and ships. At one town he gets cut in a leadership challenge and Daenerys gets a captive wise woman to heal him. However, the woman hates him because his tribe destroyed her hometown, raped/slaughtered or enslaved her friends and raped her three times so she curses him to become catatonic (along with killing his unborn son), leading a devastated Daenerys to perform an arguable mercy kill by smothering him with a pillow. After she burns herself, her stillborn child and the wise woman on his funeral pyre, Daenerys survives and it brings her dragons to life. GRRM named Drogo after [[The Lord of the Rings|Frodo's father]].
* Daenerys' handmaidens.
** Doreah: Daenerys' handmaiden and a wedding gift from Illyrio. A woman from Lysene brought by her brother to teach her how to pleasure a man. In the book she dies of fever and starvation crossing a desert, in the TV show, she betrays Daenerys for [[Salamanders|Xaro's BBC]] and gets locked in a vault to starve to death.
** Irri: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches Daenerys how to ride a horse. [[PROMOTIONS|Also pleasures Daenerys twice after catching her masturbating once]], yet this canonical girl-on-girl action was left out of the show. The character was even killed off there when she survived in the books, but in this case, it was because her actress' visa had expired rather than [[C.S. Goto|author railroading]].
** Jhiqui: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches her the Dothraki language and squabbles with Irri over wanting one of Daenerys' bodyguards when he becomes a badass. Also dies in the TV show while staying alive so far in the books.

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'''Slavers Bay'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">A civilization of [[Stupid Evil]] slavers. The remains of a previous civilization that was once the big powerful empire thanks to having phalanxes of obedient, pain-resistant soldiers which Valyria conquered a long while ago because phalanxes don't do too well against motherfucking dragons. They are ruled by wealthy slave mongers who buy slaves, train them up to do specific things and generally are a bunch of stuck up, decadent, puppy-eating (literally) assholes. Basically a civilization so repugnant even most hippies will be cheering when Dany decides to conquer them.

* The Unsullied: Eunuch phalanx fighting slave soldiers trained the Spartan way to produce totally obedient infantry that never break ranks. They also don't feel pain due to drinking a special drink daily, and each one has to take a new name from the name box each day so they can't develop a sense of identity. At least until Dany "bought" the lot of them, had them sack the city which trained them, and freed them.
* Grey Worm: The Unsullied Commander and a no-nonsense badass. When given a chance to take a new name he keeps his slave name because it's the name he had when freed so he considers it lucky. He is completely loyal to Daenerys, considering her his saviour, and in the show, he falls in love with fellow freed-woman, Missandei. This being ASOIAF, however, he can only watch helplessly as his lover is beheaded in front of him by the Mountain. This drives him into a rage, and he eagerly takes part in the sacking of King's Landing in revenge for her death. After the war is over and both Daenerys and Cersei are dead, he takes the Unsullied forces to Naath, in order to fulfil his promise to Missandei that he'd protect her homeland.
* Strong Belwas: A fat but skilled eunuch gladiator. Loves liver and onions and referring to himself in the third person. Travelling companion/guide of Ser Barristan. Has an awesome scene where he beats the champion of Meereen then mocks the Meereenese by taking a shit in their direction and wiping his ass on their dead champion's cloak. Also saves Daenerys from eating poisoned sweets. [[FAIL|Left out of the show]].
* Daario Naharis: A Tyroshi mercenary captain who dyes his hair blue. Betrays his fellow commanders for Daenerys because he loves her as a queen. Fortunately for him, Daenerys loves him back and they pursue a romance for a time, though she doesn't marry him as she's still otherwise smart enough to know she has to save herself for a political marriage. Goes to Yunkai as a hostage in the war on Meereen. Also potentially a shapeshifter, if the show is to be believed.
*Missandei: A young female slave with a remarkable talent for linguistics and one of the more empathetic people in this dark world, Missandei is freed by Daenerys during her campaign to liberate Slaver's Bay, eventually becoming one of her closest confidants and advisers. While a child in the books, in the show Missandei is a grown woman, falls in love with the Unsullied leader Grey Worm, but later is captured by Cersei and beheaded by the zombified Mountain in front of all her friends, but not before telling her friends to burn the Lannisters to ashes.

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===Magic and Gods===
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> The world of ASOIAF has various religions and faiths abound, just like in real life. Similarly, they range between fucking awesome to utterly useless. Dissimilarly, some of them have very tangible, undeniable magic powers, although it is said that the magic became stronger after the rebirth of Dragons into the world, and that in the Far East, where people worship [[Lovecraft|Lovecraft references]], that magic is still alive and well, but those are all just rumors.

Blood Magic seems to be the most consistent, with practitioners paying steep prices for magic, while the druidic magic of the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods still hold strong to this day, they just don't have any practitioners left.

Magic and the Afterlife is a theme in the setting as well, most expounded by the faithful of R'hllor: fire is associated with the warmth of life, as well as light; on the other hand, death is associated with cold and darkness; death carries a harsh finality in the series, ''except when it doesn't:'' as they've shown in special cases with those resurrected by R'hllor, rebirth comes with a price, and not everyone comes back ''fully there''.

*[[Ecclesiarchy|The Faith of the Seven]]: The Catholic Church/Church of England stand-in mixed with elements of Hinduism, which gets both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters associated with it (though mostly only in the books for the former). Holds an anti-slavery stance. The god/s are considered seven aspects of one deity with three male aspects (The Smith, the Father, the Warrior), three female aspects (The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone) and a sexless one representing Death, a bit akin to how the Hindu God Vishnu has multiple aspects. The places of worship are called Septs, and their system includes Septons, nun-equivalents called Septas and a Pope equivalent called a High Septon. The High Septons all give up their names when they become one to confuse future historians (and readers).
** High Septon 1 Fatfuck: A fat, greedy man who used the position for personal gain. He ended up being [[Grimdark|torn apart in a riot]], because the people resented that he had enough food to stay fat while they were starving.
** High Septon 2 Lannister Puppet: Successor of High Septon Fatfuck. Chosen by Tyrion so the Faith would be loyal to the Lannisters. Only ''slightly'' corrupt, being a pro-Lannister yes-man. Murdered on Cersei's order in the book, while in the show he's retconned into a whoremonger who gets deposed by the Sparrows (see below).
** High Septon 3/The High Sparrow: Successor of High Septon Lannister Puppet. After the second High Septon shown in the present day of the story died, the smallfolk burst into the meeting to pick a successor and ordered their chosen candidate to be put in charge when his original successor was caught whoremongering. He'd been a wandering preacher beforehand, and his feet were dark and gnarled from lots of walking. When he reaches the position he starts [[gets shit done|getting things done]]. Since he was appointed by a smallfolk religious movement called Sparrows, he's given the moniker "The High Sparrow". The nobility underestimates him, either due to having other matters or disregard for religious people, but he turns out to be smart, well-meaning and somewhat ruthless. Under the High Sparrow, he and the other clergymen sell their fancy clothes and decorations [[Noblebright|replacing them with simple wool tunics, using the money to buy food and clothes for the poor in King's Landing]]. He also has their Knights-Templar-equivalent reformed to [[Inquisition|protect the faithful and help them root out]] [[heresy]] and sin. He also outwits Cersei and has her arrested and tried for all her evil deeds. While Cersei's scheming does lead to Margaery's arrest, Cersei confesses to some crimes while concealing others, leading to Cersei taking a nude walk of penance in front of the entire city. After this, he somewhat reined in the nobles' politicking to actually look after the commoners and the Faith, though this does make some enemies. In the show, while he still talks of helping the Smallfolk, he and the Sparrows are [[C.S Goto|flanderized]] from assorted smallfolk and clergymen tired of the nobles' lawlessness and power plays into one-dimensional stereotypes and thinly-veiled jabs at the Catholic Church [[Imperial Truth|in a shoe-horned anti-religion message]]. While they do arrest Cersei and Margaery like in the books, the High Sparrow's plans all come to nothing, as during the trial most of the Faith, including the High Sparrow himself, get blown to Kingdom Come when Cersei has her agents ignite a massive amount of magical napalm underneath the Great Sept. In the books they're much more like Martin Luther and the Lutherans, except that the Protestant Reformation wins outright.
* [[Old Ones|Old Gods]]: Native American/Japanese Kame/Druid/nature spirits that reside in places called Godswoods. The original practitioners of this faith were the Children of the Forest, non-elf looking Wood Elves, whose magics were responsible for smashing an entire Southern Warhost with tsunamis (leaving only a narrow isthmus between the North and everyone else), the Wall (it was a collaborative effort with humans), and allowing people to look into the past, and (confirmed in the show at least) influence it.
**Their powers are limited to the North, though, where the last remaining Godswoods remain, but they can grant gifted individuals awesome psychic powers like Warging (mind-controlling animals) and Greensight (Time Travel). For some reason, Martin claims they're based off the Norse Gods. Probably has to do with the way the Vikings made sacrifices to their gods, by hanging them in Ash trees, a symbol for the World Tree Yggdrasil. The Weirwood trees are sacred to the followers of the Old Gods in a similar way. Mostly worship of them is quiet and informal.
*R'hllor: The God of Fire and Light, and like the Old Gods, actually shows evidence for existing. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He gets shit done]], being one of the most common faiths East of Westeros, and his priests have powers such as fire magic and motherfucking Resurrection. Has a nasty habit for burning heretics, though. GRRM said this faith is roughly based (read: poorly modelled after) upon Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism. His nemesis is The Great Other: the god of cold and darkness, the leader of the Others, and prophesied to be defeated by the chosen one, or messianic figure: [[Star Child|Azor Ahai/The Prince That Was Promised]], a figure who is the prophesied warrior that will fight with the Great Other/Night's King during the Apocalypse. Interestingly enough, the prophecy may not refer to a single person, but three (Jon, Tyrion/Bran, and Daenerys). Supposedly, one of these three will also receive an [[Emperor's Sword|awesome flaming sword called "Lightbringer"]].
**R'hllor is very popular among the slaves and poor of the East, though Eastern nobles hate him because of that association. It's actually hard-to-tell how many "miracles" ascribed to him are actually real miracles. Stannis, absolute chad though he is, has a sword called "Lightbringer" meant to evoke the mythical one, but Aemon has [[Bullshit|noticed that it doesn't give off any heat]].
**For obvious reasons, they are ''very excited'' that there are Dragons again.
* Him of Many Faces: The god of the Dead of the religion whose followers are the [[Officio Assassinorum|Faceless Men]]. According to his cult of assassins, whom Arya joins, all gods of death are just him: since every religion has a god of death of some sort, he ''must'' be the only one that's real. Of course, your mileage may vary as to whether he's real or not, though his most awesome followers are granted shapeshifting abilities and powers to be the ultimate assassins.
* Drowned God: Cthulhu combined with Odin. Runs an underwater Valhalla were all Ironborn go whey they either if they drowned at sea, the men die a manly death or the women die in childbirth. Probably doesn't exist or he would have done something about Euron Greyjoy... at least in the books. There, Euron is [[Imperial Truth|proudly scornful]] of him, and his brother Aeron fruitlessly and endlessly mutters "no godless man can sit the Seastone Chair". In the show, Euron is perfectly happy to go through the traditional Drownie coronation ritual and Aeron performs it.
* The Night's King: This is completely different depending on whether you prefer the [[oldfag|books]] or [[newfag|show]]. Book version: A long time ago, when the Night's Watch was just barely getting set up, its Lord Commander, the thirteenth in line, decided to climb over the Wall and explore some. While in the woods to the north of the Wall, he found a beautiful [[Monstergirls|Other female]]. He fell in love with her, had [[/d/|sex with her on top of the Wall]], which somehow changed him into an albino version of [[Star Wars|Darth Maul]], and set himself up as King of the Wall, making everyone in the Watch his slaves and sacrificial fodder. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with the Starks and the Wildlings, and so they banded together to free the Watch and kick his ass, which they managed to do successfully. Now everyone thinks him as dead or a myth. Show version: he was the very first White Walker ever created by the Children, and he decided to get back at them by wiping out all life. Also, whilst he was apparently beaten in the ancient past and sealed away behind the Wall, he's still "alive" and well, [[Daemonculaba|turning infant human boys into new White Walkers]]. Also, he can apparently raise up entire legions of undead, just by raising his arms and looking completely smug about it; unlike regular Others, who can just raise up maybe a village at most. Given that he's the resident [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] of the series, it makes sense that he can take down a dragon with seemingly little effort (a simple throw of his spear), and resurrect it to be his personal steed a la Arthas. (Whether that particular nonsense is going to show up in the books is up in the air, it's suitably grimdark and not particularly [[derp]] so it might.) Then he used the dragon to blow a hole in the Wall and begin [[The End Times]] for Westeros. But [[FAIL|dead]], thanks to Arya's magic ninja haxx which let her [[what|kill the BBEG and his entire race and army of zombies ''in one blow.'']]
** The Others/The White Walkers: A mysterious race from beyond the Wall, known to [[newfag|HBO fans]] as "the White Walkers". Can be described as ice demons/snow elves with necromancy. Eight thousand years ago, they invaded Westeros during a decades-long winter (even longer than the usual years-long winters) known as "the Long Night". With an army of undead warriors, they proceeded to fuck Westeros up every which way to [[Sunday]] before the locals finally drove them out, established the Night's Watch, and built the Wall to keep them out. Like all fantasy aspects of ASOIAF, they are very cliched.
**In the TV series, it's revealed that they were created from human captives by "The Children", the pseudo-[[Elf]] fair folk race that lived in Westeros before humanity arrived, as an attempt to create a super-weapon. The idea was since humanity bred faster than the Children could keep up with, they would create icy [[lich]]-creatures that could create [[undead]] soldiers, and these would then wipe out all human life. Instead, it went disastrously wrong because it turned out that the Children actually couldn't control what they'd created, so the Others [[Ork|just want to exterminate '''all''' life.]] In both versions the Night's King is in control.
*'''Other Eastern Magic/Religions''' - The further and further east you go, the more GRRM scatters Lovecraft references to give the world flavour, like the Shadowlands and its cities of oily, black stone, Leng, and [[Deep Ones|fish people]]. They're just references, though, and will likely never be important.
**The Unsullied have their own goddess, the Lady of Spears, [[Slaanesh|whose altar they burn their dicks on as offerings]].
**The slavers worship a harpy goddess and justify their slavery through her.
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==Locations==

'''Westeros''': The continent where about 80% of the plot takes place. Scotland in the North, Siberia/Northern Scandinavia beyond the wall, Moorish Spain in the South, with the rest being England as far as climate is concerned, only much, much larger.
*The North: By far the largest of the Seven Kingdoms in size, and the least in population. [[Naggaroth|A rocky, cold and dangerous landscape where life barely tolerable]] ([[Norsca|although it's still preferrable to the eldrich lands beyond the wall]]), sometimes it even snows in summer, giving you a general idea why it's quite a shitty place to be in when compared with the more southern kingdoms. Living in it are the Northmen, culturally an inbetween of Northern English and Scots. Most of them still revere the Old Gods and practice traditions that feel very alien to those living in the south, of the First Men culture before the Andal Invasion, still holding out here and the Iron Islands. It's also damn near unconquerable by conventional means due to the narrow isthmus between it and the south being a noxious swamp; . Its ruling house at the beginning of the Story is House Stark, later House Bolton; Its capital is Winterfell.
*Iron Islands: Large, rocky archipelago off the coast of the North and the Riverlands. Their bleak and inhospitable landscape is the major reason why the Ironmen culture, the other hold out of the First Men culture in Westeros which has the unique blend of only political and not cultural Andal influence and lack of Children of the Forest influence as Weirwoods don't grow on islands and only First Men humans ever lived here during those times, is so centered around pillaging and raiding; you can't grow crops on rock. Does have a decently sized economy based around metal working, but nowhere near enough to support its populace. Their capital is Pyke.
*Riverlands: As the name says, the Riverlands are marked by several large rivers flowing through it and the large fertile valleys surrounding them. The historical whipping boy of the continent after the Andal Invasion took over the old First Men realms (minus the North and the Iron Islands), constantly fought over by the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, the Iron Islands and the Vale, to the point that it was under Iron Islands rule when Aegon Targaryen unified the continent minus Dorne. Gets buttfucked the hardest during the War of the Five Kings by a metric ton; first by the Mountain carrying out a campaign of terror against the civilian populace on Tywin's orders and second by most of the major fights between the Lannisters and the Starks taking place there. Honestly, after all the fighting, raping and pillaging happening in the Riverlands, one must wonder how many people are actually still left in them. Their ruling house is House Tully (later House Baelish); its Capital is Riverrun (later Harrenhal).
*Vale of Arryn: Mountainous Region east of the Riverlands home to (supposedly) the finest knights in Westeros due to them having constant field practice in crushing rebellion after rebellion of the native <s>Irish</s> Mountain Tribes (think Forsworn from Skyrim, only a lot more foul-mouthed) and having an absolute abundance of tiny territories to give out. The population lives more densely packed in the few large cities and townships that exist here due and traversing them is dangerous. Its ruling house is House Arryn, its capital The Eyrie, '''the''' hardest castle to take in Westeros as it is built on a mountaintop. Gulltown, one of the cities of Westeros, is the main economic hub.
*Westerlands: The second-smallest Kingdom in size but by far the richest due to its abundance of Gold and Silver Mines. Has a proud tradition of fucking everyone over by the means of money, politics or both combined. Also has a substantial importance as a major trading and naval hub in the city of Lannisport, which is the largest port on the western side of the continent. Its ruling house is House Lannister, its capital Casterly Rock. Casterly Rock was the capital of the old Kings, House Casterly, which was outsmarted by [[Lukas the Trickster|Lann the Clever]], who married the last surviving daughter and founded House Lannister.
*Crownlands: The lands directly controlled by the Iron Throne, surrounding a big bay, with a rather pleasant, mild climate. Centered around the capital King's Landing, which gets an entry of its own. Its ruling house is always the house of the current kings. Formerly divided between the Riverlands and the Stormlands.
**King's Landing: The capital of the seven kingdoms and by far its largest city. It houses every important institution on the continent, most importantly the Red Keep, where the King of the Seven Kingdoms resides and the Great Sept of Baelor, the religious center of the Faith of the Seven. Aside from the Red Keep and the Great Sept, a filth ridden, downtrodden shithole that is rife with poverty and criminals whereever you may set foot; the City Guard is openly corrupt and acts more like a government-approved gang of thugs. It seems to be something of an unofficial sport among all chacters in the books to never say anything good the city. Architecturally described like Medieval London, at the size of 1600s Paris.
*The Reach: The second-largest of the Seven Kingdoms, and the most populous. Its wide plains, dominated by fields and plantings serve as the breadbasket of the Seven Kingdoms. Also home to the oldest city in Westeros, Oldtown, which in turn is home to the Citadel of the Maesters. Its ruling house is Tyrell, its capital Highgarden. House Tyrell is matrilineally descended from Garth Greenhand like many other houses. The old ruling family, House Gardener, Garth's direct descendants, was wiped out when Aegon unleashed his dragons, with the then Lord of House Tyrell (at this point permanent stewards to House Gardener), was placed in control as he was married to the last Gardener female.
*Stormlands: The lands of House Baratheon, a mix of forested mountains and steep, stony shores: so-named for the very frequent storms that batter its coast. The weather here is so bad, their capital is known as Storm's End because all previous castles were destroyed by the weather, so this one had to be built <s>by a competent Northman architect</s> with magic. In spite of the dangerously bad weather, the area can be quite beautiful when not being battered by the elements. The Baratheons are descended from a loyal general who served the original Aegon, who was also rumored to be his half-brother. After Robert ascended the throne, control of the Stormlands was left to his youngest brother, Renly, while the middle-brother, Stannis, was assigned to guard Robert's back on the much-smaller, less prestigious island of Dragonestone.
*Dorne: The southernmost region of Westeros and the hottest (in more ways than just temperature), consists of rocky deserts in its center and lush, meditterrean areas on its coasts. The Dornish people differ a lot from other Westerosi in ethnicity and culture and have a different origin, that of the migrating Rhoynar people interbreeding with the then relatively isolated local Westerosi. [[Dune|Dorne was also the only Kingdom to successfully resist conquest by the Targaryens]] and was only brought into the fold through political marriages, and their rulers retain the title of Prince (the Rhoynar and the local Westerosi don't use king or queen, they use prince or princess), not afforded to anyone else not of the Royal Family. Its ruling house is Martell, its capital Sunspear.
*The Wall: A wall of ice of gargantuan proportions erected by the First Men to protect themselves against the Others/White Walkers long ago that marks the nothern border of Westeros proper and runs across it from west to east for three hundred miles. In the times when the Night's Watch was under full strength, it was an impenetrable fortification against anything that might dare to cross it, not just because of its sheer dimensions, but also the implication that the wall itself is reinforced by eldrich magic keeping the horrors beyond the wall at bay via unnatural means. Nowadays only three of its 19 keeps are permanently manned, leaving wide gaps in the Night's Watch defense against Wildlings, who sometimes climb over it to raid the South. The Night King tears a hole into it with one of Daenerys' Dragons in the final episode of season 7, allowing him and his undead army to pass through.
*Beyond-the-Wall:
**Craster's Keep: Not really a "keep" but the [[GRIMDARK|home of a man who fucks his own daughters and offers his sons to the Others]]. He is one of the very few "independent" wildlings and offers use of his home to the Night's Watch when they go off on scouting expeditions. Because it's full of servile (inbred) women, the men of the Night's Watch mutiny and take it over.
**Thenn: The name of both the land and its people, the Thenn consider themselves to be the ''true'' "last of the First Men," because they have laws and lords compared to the anarchist free-for-all of the other Free Folk; they don't speak common, they can actually smith, and they treat the "Magnar," the title of their king, like a god. In the show, they're just shown to be a bunch of scarred barbarians.
**Lands of Always Winter: The furthest north people have ever gone and have been able to come back from, the Lands are perpetually frozen, and the Others are said to come from here. Clearly, if you head far enough North, you'll hit a Chaos Rift and end up in the Warp.

'''The Stepstones''': Formerly a solid land bridge between Westeros and Essos, it was brought down by Children of the Forest magic in a failed attempt to stop the First Men invasion. Now an archipelago of islands infested by various ne'er-do-wells.

'''Essos''': A huge landmess (no, not a typo) about southeast of Westeros and home to many independent city-states west of the big mountain range. Generally agreed upon to be largely desolate wilderness sprinkled in with the occasional kingdoms that seem exotic and alien to Westerosi. Most of its western half used to be the center of power of the legendary Valyrian Freehold, with the Free Cities being colonies of them that survived the downfall of the Valyrian Empire hundreds of years ago. The exceptions are Slaver's Bay, conquered by the Valyrians before regaining independence after the Freehold's collapse, Qarth, Ib and some of the others.
*Old Valyria: The former center of the [[Roman Empire|all-powerful free state that ruled over most of Essos at its peak and posessed magic and technology, as well as dragons to keep control over it.]] Valyrias strength was legendary, so much so in fact that the downfall of it still influences politics in the world centuries after it occured. No one quite knows why Valyria fell, the only certain thing is that it was plagued by a sudden series of natural disasters that all but destroyed its homelands and left it in ruin. Valyrian culture only survived in bastardized forms in Volantis and, prior to their extinction, House Targaryen in Westeros. The ruins of Valyria are said to cursed and avoided by all but the most desperate of travellers - not just out of superstition but also because the free cities made a habit of using the old ruins as a leper colony for highly contagious diseases like Greyscale; having put the entire area subsequently under super-heavy quarantine.
*Free Cities: There are 9 city-states on the Western Half of Essos. 8 are former Valyrian colonies, with Braavos being the notable exception to most of the things they have in common. What ties them all together is that they're all connected by trade and feudalism isn't such a big thing here, which also makes their culture remarkably different from the Westerosi. Westerosi tend to view them as greedy opportunists while the Free Cities in turn view Westerosi as ignorant morons at best and backwards savages at worst. If you were going to have a setting based on ASOIAF and didn't want to spend the entire time shitting in the dirt or bleeding out in a ditch for some inbred noble, this is where you'd want to be:
**Braavos: The only one of the nine free cities to not be a Valyrian Colony (excepting the other countries like Qarth and Ib, who don't count among the nine). It was founded by Slaves that escaped their overlord in a marsh on the northernmost tip of Essos. It is mainly known for its massive port and the Iron Bank of Braavos, the biggest bank in the world. It also houses the House of Black and White, the central temple and headquarters of the Faceless Men.
**Pentos: Another large trading port on the western edge of Essos. It serves as the major trading hub between Westeros and the rest of Essos.
**Lys: Located on an island off the coast of Essos. Founded as a resort for Freeholders. A decadent city whose most famous export are prostitutes.
**Myr: The women here are hot, considering how often Westerosi seem to come back with wives from here. Other than that, its only notable feature is its forever-war with Lys and Tyrosh.
**Norvos: They make really good bodyguards that are taught to see their [[Executioners|axes as their waifus]].
**Qohor: Not much is known about them, except one of the brutal mercenary companies is from here, and they worship the [[Lovecraft|Black Goat.]]
**Tyrosh: Greedy slavers. Not really notable, except they're one-third of the constant warfare of the Disputed Lands along with Lys and Myr and for being extremely flamboyant.
**Volantis: The crown jewel, first colony of the Freehold and considers itself the successor state to the Freehold.
**Lorath: No, they don't speak for the trees. Lorath is the poorest of the Free Cities, and not much is known about them. Its most notable feature are the underground labyrinths that dot the island and which predate the Valyrians. Typical of Martin, the Labyrinths and a similar cult in Essos (the cult of the Pattern) are a reference to someone else's work, [[Dick|but no, he doesn't like fanfiction]].
*Ghiscari Empire and Slavers Bay: To the East of Valyria and the Free Cities, these cities pre-date Valyria. Before they were conquered, they had their own empire and worshiped the Harpy. Nowadays, they trade with the Dothraki, exchanging tribute for slaves, which they then market to the rest of the World. Vaguely the [[Middle East]] of ASOIAF. They are: Old Ghis, New Ghis, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. In the books, Dany is stuck here trying to manage the clusterfuck that is deslaverizing these lands. Currently locked in a brutal war where the newly-freed slaves are either fighting the surviving slaver-nobles, other cities, or each other.
*Qarth: What separates the "East" from the "Far East." It's to the West of Slaver Bay and East of not!China/Japan, so any traffic between the Free Cities, Slaver's bay, and them, requires them to pass through Qarth. Home to a bunch of fucking weirdo Orientalist tropes that vie for power: The Pureborn, the noble descendants of ancient Qaathi Kings and Queens that fled the sacking of their cities to Qarth, so hold no real power beyond their titles; the Ancient Guild of Spicers (it's in the name [[Memes|and it must flow]]); the Thirteen, ''another'' group of Merchants; the Tourmaline Brotherhood (more merchants!). Qarth is also the location of the House of the Undying, a group of Warlocks that drink "shade-of-the-evening," which is pretty much [[Dune|Spice from Dune]], but made from trees and not wormshit; the House of the Undying and most of its Warlocks were burnt down by Dany's dragons after they tried to steal them; they sent out some guys for revenge, but they ran into Euron where he promptly murdered them all and took their <s>spice</s> <s>nightshade</s> shade-of-the-evening. Functionally Singapore, but with a more Indo-Persian aesthetic.
*Rhoyne: Destroyed former city of the Rhoynar, who fled the Valyrian Freehold and migrated to Dorne. The former capital is currently infested by Stone-Men, Greyscale survivors who have gone feral.
*Ib: not!Dwarfs, but described more like Neanderthals than Nordic shorties. They're [[squat]], barrel-chested, with thick wiry black hair, heavy sloping eye brows and square-teeth of neanderthals, They're also incredibly hairy, and even their women have facial hair., Instead of digging holes in mountains, they travel the sees in equally-stocky whaling ships. They tend to keep to themselves, [[Meme|but are natural sailors, suitable for long voyages]].
*The Dothraki Sea: Not a sea, but the name for the not!Eurasian Plains. Before the Freehold collapsed and the Dothraki tribesmen took advantage of the chaos of the Century of Blood to conquer it and burn down all but one of the old Qaathi cities (with only Qarth itself surviving) and most of the old Kingdom of Sarnor along with other minor cities, it was known as the Great Grass Sea.
**Vaes Dothrak: The capital and only permanent Dothraki settlement. It is forbidden to carry weapons or spill blood here (doesn't mean you can't kill through other means).
*Golden Empire of Yi Ti: Not!China, with a mysterious history and pattern of legends eerily-similar to Westeros' own. Like China, has a long history of Emperors, each dynasty progressively ruling over smaller, weaker empires. The current dynasty is actually so weak, they're not taken seriously outside their capital.
**The Five Forts: In the not!Chinese version of the Long Winter/Long Night, the Empire of Yi Ti was cast into a long night that never ended, where the evil Lion of the Night was unleashed by the Bloodstone Emperor. He was beat back by the Lord of Light/Hyrkoon the Hero/but the name that the Yi Ti know him by was never stated. Just like the Wall in Westeros, the Five Forts were said to be erected by a great Emperor soon after to make sure the crisis never happens again. Just like Westeros, the Five Forts have waned in importance, now only protecting the Yi Ti from barbarians. The Five Forts are said to be made from a material of "fused black stone," similar in description to many ancient ruins all over the setting. Harrenhal is also described similarly, but Harrenhal was stone melted by dragonfire, so the idea that the Five Forts was made with the aid of dragons and/or magic has been floated by fans.
*The Jogos Nhai: not!Mongols, but they ride Zebras and are literally cone-heads.
*Asshai-by-the-Shadow: Further-Further-East, it may as well be mythic. The city of Asshai is depressingly gloomy, the entire city is composed of dark black towers made of fused, black stone that seems to "drink the light."

The South:
'''Summer Isles''': Think Avelorn, but Black. An archipelago to the Far South of Westeros, everything here is pretty idyllic. War is very formalized, prostitution is a religious rite, [[meme|there are no white people]], it's practically paradise. A deposed prince was sent to exile in Westeros and had been trying to get Robert to make the journey south to put him back on the throne, but no one really took him seriously.

'''Sothoryos''': [[Lustria|Jungle hell]].
*Yeen: Made of the same creepy black metal in Stygai, implied to be an old Empire of the Dawn Outpost. Even the death world jungle (as in, not just the animals, the actual jungle itself) refuses to go in there for fear of dying.

'''Ulthos''': not!Australia, and has absolutely no lore. Seriously, GRRM has literally never mentioned it except in relation to another place that also has no lore. It's a passing mention that his obsessive fans took note of, and when they literally helped wrote the setting book for him, their guess became canon.

==The appeal of A Song of Ice And Fire==
Exactly what catches the eyes of [[Skub|a given fan/critic/lout who complains about how bad it is anytime the show is mentioned within earshot]] to ASOIAF and its TV adaptation varies from individual to individual. Still, there's a couple of major draws.

'''The Worldbuilding:''' The main reason why this series gets compared to [[The Lord of the Rings]], ASOIAF is literally ''drowning'' under the weight of its worldbuilding, being crammed as full of facts about fictitious regions, histories, cultures, dynasties and races as GRRM can fit it. Your mileage will vary on how ''good'' that info is, but there's plenty of info in it. It is worth noting that much of the vagueness of various aspects of the world's lore comes down to the limited perspectives of each of the characters' point of view, so many places and events are often only known partially through superstition, rumors, and often second hand experiences passed down and muddled over time; all of which play quite heavily into the overall story structure of the series.

'''A vast colorful Cast:''' A lot of works of fantasy get by with a few archetypal characters (the Young Guy out to Prove themself, the Wise Wizard, the Dark Lord, the Mischievous One, the Grizzled Veteran, the Princess, the Dwarf, etc) and maybe a guy or two which rises above this. A Song of Ice and Fire has dozens of viewpoint characters and a hundreds of secondaries each with different situations, drives, motives and quirks that make them reasonably interesting. Even if you don't like one or some of them, there are plenty of others. When they die, it often hits home. Speaking of which...

'''Mainstream [[Dark Fantasy]]:''' Dark Fantasy is not exactly a mainstream niche. ASOIAF stands out by deliberately trying to market itself to the mainstream, despite embracing an abundance of dark fantasy tropes; gratuitous violence, sexuality and sexual violence, moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and a willingness to suddenly kill off any character, even the most likeable or heroic of them.

'''[[Low Fantasy]]:''' On the surface, ASOIAF is an old-school Low Fantasy setting, being a medieval-tech world with the story openly focused on the mundane lives of people struggling for political power and though supernatural elements do exist, they tend to be used sparingly.

'''[[High Fantasy]]:''' But if you scratch the surface, ASOIAF is also a High Fantasy setting, which is always the more marketable of the two, with the big backstory about how the world is facing impending doom from an army of wintery [[fey]] and their [[undead]] minions. There are also non-evil higher powers working against them, but they get swept under the rug in the show. Also, [[dragon]]s. As the more marketable genre, it's also inevitably the more skubby one, for whatever that's worth.

'''[[Magical Realm|Gratuitous Sexuality]]:''' More a thing for the TV show than the books; GRRM's scenes were [[Rape|raepy]] in the earlier volumes, and apparently our boy must have overheard the nickname "George Rape Rape Martin (I ''Like'' Rape)", because he dialed back the forced boning in #4-5. The frequent scenes of nudity and sex in the early seasons of the show were a ''big'' selling point for many people (the casting of people from the sex industry for some of these scenes also helped).

'''Not much in terms of generic fantasy tropes:''' Hate how almost every fantasy just has to have things popularized by Tolkien such as elves, dwarves, orcs and all that stuff? You're in luck because ASOIAF doesn't have a "five races" system, their accompanying stereotypes or the plot hinging on a magic item. On the other hand, it does have several generic fantasy tropes, such as [[dragon]]s, [[Medieval Stasis]], [[undead]] and at least two contenders for [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] status, so if you hate them too, well...

'''Lots of Houses and Sigils''': OK, so this is sort of a joke...except not completely. For those who are artistically minded and love coming up with their own OC groups and/or fleshing out minor characters, this setting really does invite it with the absolutely insane number of houses [[Space Marines|that each have their own distinct logo/color-scheme combo]].

==Oh Yeah, About The TV Show==
[[image:KnightsWhoSayFuck.jpg|150px|thumb|left|Yeah, pretty much.]]

{{Skubby}}

After the first three books became hits, many Hollywood producers and directors had come to the sadistic neckbeard, asking him about making a movie adaptation. At first, he was reluctant at best, due to the fact that a lot of his content would've been cut out to fit into a movie trilogy (see the Lord of the Rings live-action films). Then, a couple of dudes, David Benioff and D.B/Daniel Brett Weiss (AKA D&D, or more accurately as of the final season, Dumb & Dumber), decided to contact him and asked him at a local restaurant about turning ASOIAF into a Television show produced by HBO, the top-rated soft-core porno channel. The story goes that George asked them a very specific question (Who is Jon Snow's mother?). Satisfied with the response they gave, he gave them permission to start work on the show, which would be titled after the first book, ''Game of Thrones''. They would later go on to prove that this is not a good way of choosing who should adapt your work.

The television show casts several well-known performers, such as Sean Bean as Eddard, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, Lena Headey as Cersei, and Charles Dance as Tywin. They have also cast some comparatively less well-known actors and even ones new to cinema, such as Sophie Turner (Sansa), Maisie Williams (Arya), Kit Harington (Jon), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay), Alfie Allen (Theon), and Richard Madden (Robb)

Thus, book snobs seem to think that every episode post-season 4 is nothing more than Emmy-bait. Regardless of the fact Kit Harington still [[Fail|doesn't have an Emmy]], there's a valid contention in that regard, with the number of liberties taken overshadowing the initial appeal.

The final season (more on that below) was eventually revealed to be such a train wreck because Dumb & Dumber did not want to work on the series anymore and had let the success with the earlier seasons go to their heads. In their arrogance, instead of handing the reins to someone else, they decided to plan out their own ending and use it as an audition to Disney so they could write for Star Wars. By then, they'd run out of books to adapt, there was no superior writing for them to leech off of and there was no one to gainsay them in their echo chamber of a writer's room (even George himself was cut out). The result was absolutely shit writing that caused a glorious breakage in the [[skub]] dam that left [[Butthurt|many a fan's anus weeping]] (provided they weren't early seasons fans, book series fans, or any of the other assorted onlookers [[Lulz|taking part in the mightiest of keks]]) and, if anything proved <s>George's </s> Ramsay's quote at the beginning of the article true. Goddamn Dumb & Dumber, could you talentless Derp machines do any worse if you tried? Luckily, comeuppance came after them and Disney, having some sense, told them to fuck off with their [[Star Wars]] ideas after the backlash towards the final season. Not that Disney Star Wars has been without its share of controversy and [[Rage]], but you know it's bad when someone gets told to piss off from even that.

The Greatest Irony and Tragedy of the show's writing was that in the first few seasons, with George RR Martin consulting them and with a wealth of material from the first few books to work with, D&D were actually pretty damn good at adapting the books into a TV format. In fact, quite a few scenes were in fact not only adapted, but actually created from scratch outside of the source material. One of the most noteworthy is the iconic introduction of Tywin Lannister in Season 1 Episode 7, where we learn everything we need to know about his character with nothing but precisely chosen dialogue and a rather blunt visual metaphor of him gutting a stag he slew in a hunt, all while brutally laying into Season 1's initially perceived villain, Jaime. Contrast this with Season 5 where the show's major decline began with blunders such as the omission of fan-favorite Lady Stoneheart, literally butchering the Dorne subplot with Martell family team-killing and changing the Sparrows' movement to a militant atheist's stereotype of religion. This decline makes a lot more sense after George himself admitted that Season 5 was the first Season where he was was really locked out of the loop.

Goes to show how much they had fallen when the well ran dry and the show' writing and adaptation process was no longer the finely honed instrument it had started as.

'''TL;DR'''

[[GM|Producers Dumb&Dumber-style change characters and railroad the plot at a whim,]] [[/d/M|the tits and ultraviolence spigot is opened even wider than the books,]] and most scenes are made for the actors to show off their skills at making their signature angry/murder/brooding/etc. faces, and wrapped it up with a season of TV soon to be discussed that even Matt Ward would be 100% justified in pointing and laughing at. Seasons 1-4 are worth your time, 7 and 8 are best ignored, and 5 and 6 are the [[Skub]] ones.

===The Final <s>Dumpster Fire</s> Season===
{{Fail}}
{{HurfDurf}}
{{Plot Armour}}

{{Topquote|If you try to do something fancy with your ending and you screw up, your audience will probably remember the botched ending more than the well run marathon|JP from Terrible Writing Advice (and advice Dumb and Dumber obviously didn't heed}})

Seasons 5, 6, and especially 7 all got their share of grief from people. Mostly deserved in the case of Season 7 and [[Skub|arguably so]] for 5 and 6 (though the latter did at least finally give Ramsay his just desserts, most of the problems that cropped up in 5 and 6 happened when the show passed the book in particular plotlines and mostly served as an early warning, 7 is when things started getting criticized in general rather than individual plots or details). Season 8 though? Well, read on:

The Final Season kicks off with the Night King's army attacking Winterfell in a battle meant to be epic, but instead so chock full of tactical [[Fail|fails]] from the living, they make General Custer look like Sun Tzu. The most infamous examples include Melisandre's powers being underutilized, putting soldiers in front of trenches/walls they should be behind/standing on, no flanking charges and hiding the non-combatants in a crypt while fighting necromancers. The battle is resolved when Arya teleports directly to the BBEG and kills him with some sleight-of-hand that destroys his entire army Keystone Army trope-style and ends the winter. Also Theon, Jorah and Melisandre die, but the story sweeps their deaths under the rug like they're nameless background characters.

Then the Westerosi go full-retard and start hating Daenerys. Yes really; Dany helped end a nation-destroying winter plus a zombie apocalypse, has a claim to the throne AND is their best ally against Cersei... but they want her gone. Even Sansa suddenly turns against Dany and starts seeking the throne, despite having no claim to the rest of Westeros and Dany being easily able to kill her for treason. Everyone inexplicably starts wanting Jon to be king despite his attempt to abdicate, and Jon himself even starts thinking Aunt Daenerys might be a bad queen... but that doesn't stop him from [[Incest Smith|starting a sexual relationship with her]]. The fact that Robert's bastard son Gendry is now a lord, giving him a claim to the throne at least as strong as Dany's or Jon's, is swept under the rug. Varys also jumps ship from Dany to Jon for no reason, even trying to kill Dany in an uncharacteristically stupid move. For his efforts, Tyrion reports Varys to Daenerys, who has Varys executed by Drogon's fire-breath.

Then Daenerys press-gangs people who should logically be happy to fight for her into an army to attack King's Landing and brings them there by sea. Along the way Rhaegal, one of Daenerys' two surviving dragons, is killed by ballistae from Euron's ships. This is despite the facts that Daenerys and her dragons should've easily been able to spot the ships, they were flying well out of ballista range and Euron had no way of knowing where they'd be. After Daenerys and Drogon single-handedly destroy the Iron Fleet (amid poorly animated weather*), they reach King's Landing. Cersei's artillery does nothing despite Daenerys, all her advisors and her dragon being within lethal range plus Cersei's lack of scruples. They in turn do nothing but watch Daenerys' friend Missandei, who was captured offscreen earlier, get executed by zombie-Gregor (despite the fact Cersei and co. had no reason to believe Missandei was anyone of import to either capture or execute. Maybe someone left a copy of the script in Cersei's solar next to her Starbucks latte**)

The battle for King's Landing has Daenerys' forces break in and battle through the streets. Meanwhile Jaime snuck though the tunnels [[Fail|to find and reconcile with Cersei. The Hound regresses to his old violent self and tracks down zombie-Gregor to take him down in a battle that kills them both (although most consider this the one bright spot in the episode). Arya gives up on revenge and decides to let Cersei go despite having strong non-revenge-related reasons to kill her]]. The famed Golden Company is quickly killed off and Cersei signals a surrender by ringing the bells (the bells aren't, and have never been, signals for surrender). Then, in the capstone of bad writing for this season, Daenerys' switch flips from good to evil because the writers want it to happen, and Dany abandons her plan of freeing and leading Westeros to purging King's Landing with her dragon and army. Cersei and Jamie die together in a cave-in and Tyrion mourns their deaths despite being ready and eager to personally kill Cersei earlier. This is followed by Dany's Saruman/Hitler-esque speech that has nothing to do with her former character. Tyrion is arrested for criticizing Daenerys by saying "If this is liberation, I don't believe in liberation theology." Yes, [[Derp|the writers think theology and ideology are the same thing]] (an unsurprising mistake, given they shoehorned in anti-religious rants for the past three Seasons despite the books' even-handedness). This last one has proven to be its own personal bit of Skub, as many have argued that Daenerys going evil is in keeping with the cynical themes and tone of the setting. While this isn't wrong on its face, it does nothing to change the fact that the execution is 100% half-assed. Walter White's descent into villainy this is not, or even Anakin's arc in the Star Wars Prequels, which looks like The Godfather compared to what Season 8 does with Daenerys.

In the aftermath, Jon assassinates Daenerys for the King's Landing massacre... [[Derp|right in front of her dragon]]. Drogon, due to Jon's stronger-than-Valyrian-steel-plot-armor, doesn't kill him but melts the Iron Throne ([[What|accidentally according to the showrunners]]) while chucking a tantrum before grabbing Dany's body and flying away. Jon is somehow charged with Dany's murder despite there being no evidence that he did it, but surprisingly none of the surviving characters still loyal to Dany try to kill Jon (such as the Unsullied or the Dothraki). Despite there being several legitimate choices of king still available, including Gendry, the nobles decide to replace a dynastic monarchy with an elective one and make Bran king. Bran is nominated by Tyrion for a nonsensical reason ("he has the best story"), Tyrion somehow getting a say in the meeting despite being imprisoned for treason.

The Unsullied go to Southros under command of Grey Worm (the only one who still has a personality at this point). The Dothraki are forgotten about by everyone else. Tyrion is freed and made Hand of the King to Brann. Brienne is made Commander of the Kingsguard. [[Derp|Bronn is made Master of Coin (and Lord of Highgarden). Gendry is completely forgotten. Samwell is made the new Grand Maester]] and [[What|the North secedes and becomes independent under Queen Sansa (which definitely wouldn't cause future problems and tensions)]]. [[The Lord of the Rings|Arya sails to the West]] for some unknown reason and Jon is exiled but doesn't care because he gets to go back up north with the Wildings like he wanted. The end.

This trainwreck of a plot is a testament to how two morons can royally fuck up a show beyond any redeeming qualities the cast and crew can put forward. And even then there were screw-ups among the production staff, such as *the animators being unable to decide whether the sky is sunny or overcast when Dany and Drogon destroy the Iron Fleet - which mattered because Dany's plan to not get shot down involved having the sun behind her - and **not removing the actors' water bottles and coffee cups from the set before shooting. Hyperbole is sort of the norm here, but it really is hard to overstate how badly Season 8's finale fucks up. Game of Thrones was ''everywhere'' culturally for most of the 2010s, drawing in huge numbers of people who would otherwise never be caught dead indulging in High Fantasy works with us uber-nerds. Now, the entire Thrones fandom has practically disappeared or gone underground. Honestly, it would be an impressive achievement if it weren't so terrible.

==House of the Dragon: The ''other'' TV show==

{{Topquote|If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.|Benjamin Franklin [[Star Wars:Rebels|(and also Maul when trying to kill Kanan)]]}}

Deciding that there was still a market for Game of Thrones stuff even after the last season turned the 2010s biggest pop-culture phenomenon into a laughingstock*, HBO bet the bank on some spin-offs, the first of which is now upon us. House of the Dragon is a prequel dealing with the Dance of Dragons, a civil war between two Targaryen factions that ends up consuming Westeros and everyone in it World-War style, and featuring lots of dragons fighting dragons and the standard Westeros fare of fairly bad people doing extremely bad things. Like Game of Thrones before it, it boasts a star-studded cast, a big budget, and a lot of hype. Time will tell if it redeems the failures of the original show or repeats them. If there's a reason to be optimistic (aside from Dumb and Dumber being absent), it would be that the whole story of the Dance of Dragons is written and mapped out, meaning the writers don't have to come up with their own shit to make an ending that George hasn't yet written. Has gotten off to a strong start, so there's the hope that it will be able to redeem the legacy GoT's last two seasons absolutely ruined.

*Given that the premiere was apparently so widely watched it crashed the streaming for many people, they might actually be right.

**In fact, with Martin having more oversight over the writing of this series, and director Miguel Sapochnik actually having a passion for the setting and genre rather than just answering a mystery question to GRRM's satisfaction, the current 6 episodes have seen sky high bumps in both HBO viewership and rave reviews. The slow burn over years as the characters inch closer towards disaster has left the majority of viewers on a palpable knife's edge so far.

==GRRM and [[Your Dudes]]==
Want to make your own ASoIF setting for a role-playing game? Well, readers have enough room to fantasize about their own minor noble House (or kingdom during the Age of the Hundred Kingdoms).

A good example of what you could do is the House from the old [[/v/|"Telltale Game of Thrones"]], House Forrester. Their relationship to the canon is as follows:

House Forrester (lords of someplace in the Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Glover (overall lords of the entire Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Stark (rulers of the North).

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] had a very brief tie-in making those annoying attention-sucking Facebook games, way back when FFG did that sort of thing. Just goes to show how even the other guys [[Games Workshop|will do anything for money]].

There's also an actual tie-in tabletop RPG now, which uses its own system and looks kind of like [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] with a heavy helping of resource-management strategy feel.
Players are assuming the role of a minor House to guide to glory, or, more accurately given the setting we're in, NOT to ruin utterly in a season or two, which would still be more than many A-list players mustered in canon. Each PC has a specific position within said House, and only the role of official Head is mandatory; the rest could be wife/children/brothers and sisters/all other kinds of siblings, bastards (with rules for obtaining the legitimate recognition), maesters, sworn/subservient knights, or most of anybody else. This naturally opens up near-infinite possibilities for families screwed up seven ways to high heavens, which would make Lannister's brand of infighting-slash-inbreeding look as sane as the High Septon.

The setting is also ill-suited for "adventures in Westeros" style of gaming for two reasons:
#In the grim darkness of low fantasy, a roaming nobody with no banner to talk about, no House allegiance, no nothing isn't generally treated to a Tavern With Quest Givers, but rather more to a Tavern Where You Are Shanked For Your Sword And Boots And Dumped At The Nearest Forest. Heck, even the big wheelers and dealers are routinely seen invited to the latter when they are slow to properly introduce themselves.
#Working on your initially-puny House will quite realistically involve thy neighbours first and foremost, then liege lords from the higher House yours is sworn to, and on occasion shopping around for an advantageous marriage - there simply ain't gonna be that much spare time to "travel to see places". Both of these are also why tourism wasn't a very popular pastime in medieval Europe (aside from Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Cologne and Santiago de Compostela) and why those who were "living on the road" usually enjoyed the lowest social standing.

A note to aspiring Lords: do NOT, under any circumstances, allow your "combat-optimized" siblings an unsupervised minute in a social setting. Game's "social combat" system is a thing more brutal than the physical one, and it takes a socially-optimized character all of a few minutes to mindfuck one who is not (read: everyone but dedicated diplomats and Heads of the Houses, and not every one of the latter, to boot, as illustrated by several amazing boneheads in canon) into believing pretty much anything short of Grumpkins and Snarks. Stupid NPCs or a stupid GM will make said mindfuck obvious, allowing you to "mindfuck 'em back" without abuse of OOC info; cunning ones will not.

On a side-note; GRRM is said to take a dim view of fanfiction, saying it kills creative ability. This is kind of a double-edged statement, since a lot of George's characters here are either rehashes of his characters from previous works, references to other fictional characters (like Littlefinger and Samwell being based on Jay Gatsby and [[The Lord of the Rings|Samwise Gamgee]]), walking tropes (such as Ned Stark and Robb Stark being the "[[TVTropes|Honor Before ]] [[Lawful Stupid|Reason]]" characters) or historical references (such House Lannister ripping off House Lancaster and House Tyrell being totally-not-House-Tudor - to the point that Margaery Tyrell is played by Natalie Dormer from "The Tudors" TV show). While this makes everything he wrote just another...fanfiction, and his disapproval hypocritical. Still, given the "creative" output of the average neckbeard, he's perhaps not entirely wrong. For another layer of irony/hypocrisy, he sold the rights to make a TV series of the books to HBO, who's adaptation would eventually devolve into a glorified fanfic.

==Games==
[[image:AGot-2nd-ed-cardfan.png|thumb|250px]]
Like any fantasy author who finds themselves unexpectedly in the warm embrace of commercial success, Martin quickly licensed the shit out of his setting; spawning everything from resin miniatures to replica great swords. While most of this is worthless junk to foist on [[Neckbeard|obsessive fanboys]] /tg/ has agreed that a few of the games are made of win. The first two are a collectable [[CCG|card game]] put out in 2002 by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] and a [[Risk]]-esque board game that followed shortly after in 2003. One of [[White Wolf]]'s subsidiaries also put out a [[d20 System|d20 RPG]] in 2005 but it quickly tanked because, come on, [[White Wolf]]. Martin since wrested the rights back and developed a new version with [[Green Ronin Games]].

Now let's have some serious talks about the Game of Thrones games, because they have become some sort of endless source of [[Skub|amusement and frustration]] for the gaming fanbase. Game of Thrones is, roughly speaking, the second franchise with the most licensed board games, after [[Star Wars]]. Some of them have acquired quite a legendary status and a fanbase that goes beyond the book or series fans.

The great juggernaut for all the ASOIAF-based games is [[Fantasy Flight Games]]:
* First and foremost we have [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-board-game-second-edition/ ''A Game of Thrones: The Board Game'']: a game that after two editions still ranks high in /bgg/'s top 100, and has recently had an expansion. The board game has become some sort of meme for the modern board gamers and it could be considered the equivalent of a more advanced [[Risk]], in which dice and blank character got replaced by a very flavourful and brutal combat system and a lot of thematical mechanics fueling the engine. Overall this game has been associated with concepts such as requiring maximum player count to really be entertaining, having an amazing amount of length and depth and being a very faithful representation of the political feeling the series inspired. Almost any boardgamer or wargamer worth his salt has played this game and enjoyed its highs, its lows and the amazing amount of frustrations it brings. This is probably the most well known of all the ASOIAF games and it was released way before Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon back in 2003.<br>
:It also has a digital edition, sold on Steam and Android

* Another game that bears mention, both for its excellent mechanics and its historical significance is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-card-game-second-edition/ A Game of Thrones: The Card Game]. It is one of the most balanced card game experiences you can get, also full of flavour and with quite a great amount of balance and non-linear thinking. The best part is, unlike certain other popular card games, the game follows the living card game format: players know exactly what each booster pack brings and can buy cards in a more responsible manner, rather than playing bingo and hoping to get a rare card. Also, the sole core set already provides more replayability than some fully-fledged board games.

* Finally, the last game to mention in the [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] venerable trilogy of games is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/battles-of-westeros/ ''Battles of Westeros''], arguably the most ambitious and least successful of the three. Battles of Westeros was a fully-fledged wargame that used the [[Memoir 44]] and [[BattleLore]] rules as a base, but then evolved into its own by introducing mechanics such as commanders, tactic cards, and very creative scenario rules. Miniatures were made in 15mm and, for their time and scale, they were quite detailed; some commanders are real standouts (for example, Robb Stark's has his direwolf jumping at his side).<br>
:Thanks to its scale, the game was able to provide players with a great number of options and units at a fraction of the price of other board games. With a core set that was already stacked with units and variety, and then faction-specific expansions that added several more units and commanders. The game also came with scenario books that provided narrative play with quite creative rule variants, such as storming palisades, having decoys in escort missions, and bombarding enemies with catapults. One scenario even tried to bring to life the Battle of the Blackwater (the hybrid invasion of King's Landing by Stannis ''the God-Damn Mannis'' Baratheon). The game was incredible and quite a creative wargame, but its main issue was that the setup time was just terrible. Incredibly complex and tiresome when compared to the actual gameplay time.

There are others, such as the ASOIAF-themed [[Settlers of Catan|Catan]] expansion called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-catan-brotherhood-of-the-watch/ ''A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch''], another card game called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/hand-of-the-king/ ''A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King''], and another board game [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/game-of-thrones-the-iron-throne/#/products-section ''Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne'']. The quality of those, however, remains to be seen.

And then the miniature-producing Kickstarter juggernaut [[CMON]] decided to produce its own [[wargame]], with AMAZING miniatures. The game began with, of course, a [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-tabletop-miniatures-game Kickstarter], and after that, the game has had at least 2 dozen more releases with 3 more factions added.<br>
The game has some mechanics taken from rank and file games, such as [[Kings of War]], combining them with mechanics taken out of "battles of Westeros" particularly the tactics deck. A new page is in the works: [[ASOIAF Miniature Game]]

==Books==
*''A Game of Thrones''
*''A Clash of Kings''
*''A Storm of Swords'': Split into 2
*''A Feast for Crows'': half the characters, the point where the series goes down the toilet
*''A Dance with Dragons'': split into 2 the first is about the other half of the characters, and manages to pick things up a bit
*''The Winds of Winter'': First rumored to be ready by late 2018, then given an official release date of Summer 2020, those times have come and gone and the book is unreleased. Though he has shared chapters of the book.
*''A Dream of Spring'' : Unreleased and unlikely to ever be.
** GRRM will most likely die before writing this, though he has given an outline for how he wants the series to end that might be made public knowledge if he dies before the book series is finished.
*''The Dunk and Egg Series'': A story about a landless hedge knight travelling across Westeros with a Targaryen squire, so he can teach him how not to be an asshole to peasants.

==On The "Grimdarkness" of the Setting==

One important note: While the setting is usually held to be "Grimdark", it is also very true to Real Life in its nastiness, with real consequences for assholes. George himself has said, quote; "No matter how much I make up, there's stuff in history that's just as bad, or worse." Book one is almost exactly the beginning of the War of the Roses, except with England enlarged to a continent's size and the seasons stretched out to let the travel times work. (...And then the dragons wake up, the ice elves and their undead armies return and magic makes a comeback. It's not a perfect analogy. All that stuff is closed in their own sub plots and they don't involve the main continent in the book, that is left to "common" war and plotting.)

For an example of Grimdark, but with consequences: The King can order the execution of the head of the leading noble family of the North, for essentially no reason, but now he doesn't have hostages to exchange when their relatives and/or armies come after him seeking revenge. (And all this is modeled on various occasions where more or less '''exactly''' this kind of thing happened in real life medieval Europe.)

In other words: Truly heinous shit goes on, and there's nothing ''stopping'' that kind of shit... but there are ''consequences'' to that kind of shit that act as an effective counterbalance against being seen to do that kind of shit to the smarter nobles in the kingdom. And, because anyone can die, the shittiest characters are no more guaranteed survival than the nicest.

Also worth mentioning that there's reason to think that, despite the quote that began this page, the series may not actually end on [[The End Times|100% downer note]], as Martin has said he hopes his series will end in a way akin to the Scouring of the Shire from Lord of the Rings, which, despite the name, is more of a bittersweet ending. So who knows (though this also presumes the author will actually get around to finishing the series at all).

In sum, whether the setting fully qualifies for "Grimdark" is a matter for debate. Probably the best way of looking at is that it is Grimdark, but in a nuanced way.

==See Also==
*[[/tg/ Song of Ice and Fire Houses]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U7NpSubAJQ Weiner, Weiner weiner]

[[category: Literature]]

A Song of Ice and Fire

2022-11-11T16:24:42Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Locations */

[[image:Game_of_Thrones_Title-DVD.png|300px|thumb|WIENER PARTY! WIENER PARTY!]]

{{Spoilers}}
{{Grimdark}}
{{Sick|Among other things, the books can barely go ten pages without having another rape.}}
'''Warning: This article contains so many spoilers we're ruining books that haven't even been released yet.'''

{{Topquote|If you think this story has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.|Ramsay Bolton, nailing the grimdark theme of this series}}

{{Topquote|It matters not from whence the blood flows. Only that it flows.|George RR Martin, Exalted Champion of Khorne when explaining why so many characters get offed}}

'''''A Song of Ice and Fire''''', better known as '''''Game of Thrones''''' (though only the first book has that title) is a [[Grimdark]] fantasy book series for people who hate fantasy, or at the very least, have gotten their fill of Tolkien pretenders and want something more "distinct". Its central themes include [[Tzeentch|political Machiavellian scheming]], [[Khorne|ultraviolence]], [[Slaanesh|incest/sex with exposition/tons of rape]], and [[Nurgle|everyone trying to survive in such a Crapsack World of perpetual suffering]]. There is also lots and lots of food. Thus it has become one of the most popular series of our generation and its author, [[George R. R. Martin]], has been praised for his highly realized world and gritty low fantasy style. He was even called "the American [[Tolkien]]" by <s>Time magazine</s> gormless idiots who lump diametrically different writers together for no other reason than that they're both fantasy authors. The two authors do both have a passion (and talent) for worldbuilding and writing doorstoppers, but that's also where the similarities generally end. Still, the comparisons to Tolkien would probably explain this series' sudden spike in popularity following the TV show (at least [[Skub|to a point, anyway.]]) The great joke of an actual World War veteran writing fantasy about heroic knights and elves being compared to and contrasted with a conscientious objector who writes edgy fantasy is not lost on most (though its worth mentioning that Martin is as much of a Tolkien buff as any of us, meaning that he didn't write the series as a "fuck you" to Tolkien's work as some might assume).

The series itself is set on the [[Original character, do not steal|totally not medieval European ripoff]] realm of Westeros as it is wracked by a massive succession war drawing its realms into conflict. Everyone's picking up the pieces from the previous war until one family's bid for power starts another war (book one), A bunch of dudes declare themselves kings (book two), they're burning the continent down in their scramble for power, and somehow all the fuck-ups managed to lose anyway (book three). Just when the guys who lost the least start thinking they get to rule over the remaining chaos, more fuck ups happen and more dudes show up (book four). Sadly, winter has finally come and, unbeknownst to most people, [[Thousand Sons|evil ice wizards leading soulless undead]] [[Alpha Legion|assumed to be only myths by most people]] are about to invade the continent from the north. By the fifth book, things are going and/or will go to shit even for the bad guys.

According to a leaked fan conversation, George R. R. Martin jokingly stated the series would end with an epic cock-slap fight between Samwell Tarly and Jaime Lannister.

TL;DR: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Roses War of Roses] with a helpin' of <s>cliched fantasy</s> George's old sci-fi writing plots given a fantasy overhaul and [[/d/]]-lite.

[[ASOIAF Miniature Game|Miniature game has their own page now]]

==Characters==
{{cleanup}}
Since these books have some thousand named characters, you won't remember most of them without an obsessive disorder over details.
Here's a relatively shortlist (mostly based on the TV series rather than the books, but seems to randomly switch between the two) for the characters you'll care about. We'll also be making an effort to mostly focus on characters from the main series, rather than historical figures like Maegor Targaryen, the Dance of Dragons Blacks and Greens, and so on. Trust us, given the number of characters we already have to cover, it's for the best. The houses listed here doesn't even come close to covering them all, either.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%">
===House Stark===

''"Winter Is Coming"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Honourable, bro-tier northerners who always [[Space Wolves|compare themselves to direwolves and have a few as pets]]. They have a tendency towards being so resolutely honorable that proves to bite them in the ass due to naivete about how [[Tzeentch|Westerosi corrupt politics actually works]] (not that dishonorable characters often fare any better, but that's an "Anyone Can Die" setting for you). They're also arguably the protagonists of the setting. Basically Scotland and/or House Lancaster in the War of the Roses (but named after House York).
* Eddard Stark, ''The Quiet Wolf'': Patriarch, lord and POV death-puppet. Not nearly as stupid as everyone tries to pretend...but still kind of stupid, and very much a dead man walking. Honorable to a fault and deeply repulsed by the politicking that goes on around him, which eventually leads to a mild case of death by decapitation.
* Benjen Stark: Ned's ranger/Night's Watch brother (so the Faramir to his Boromir), who disappears later in the story and may or may not be the mysterious "Coldhands" (in the TV show he is).
* Robb Stark, ''The Young Wolf'': Shiny, King Arthur-like hero who veers between being [[Lawful Stupid]] and [[Lion El'Johnson|a brilliant military leader]]. After waging a successful war to avenge his murdered father, he was betrothed to a noblewoman but he ended having comfort sex with a virgin noblewoman which may have been arranged by her scheming bitch mother, while in softcore porno he got the hots for a commoner. Cacks it nastily: he got his head cut off and his pet's wolf's head stuck on his body, which was paraded around while his enemies chanted "HERE COMES THE KING IN THE NORTH!" In other words, he's a Scottish [[Roman Empire|Hannibal Barca]]. In the show his pregnant wife dies with him for added Grimdark, but in the books he (wisely) leaves her behind when he goes to the Red Wedding.
* Sansa Stark: Useless teenage girl extraordinaire at the start of the series with dreams of marrying a prince and "having lots of babies", but gets shat on hard by reality, being a case-study in what happens when you go into a Grimdark world thinking like a Fairy Tale Princess. Becomes Littlefinger's replacement goldfish when Catelyn's no longer around, her father got killed and her best friend was sold as a sex slave, and ended up in the worst relationship we can possibly imagine with King Joffrey. [[Grimdark|Even got deflowered via rape by Ramsey Bolton]] and married to him before managing to escape with the help of others. Currently acting as a co-ruler to her brother/cousin Jon Snow, and has learned much from her suffering, allowing her to kick Littlefinger out of the Great Game via throat slitting. While in the book Littlefinger is/was setting her up at House Arryn to claim the Vale and the North, the show version becomes QUEEN IN DA NORF in the final episode.
* Arya Stark: Little tomboy assassin. Has a kill list, but doesn't get to use it so long as she is an amnesiac apprentice of [[Officio Assassinorum|the Friendly Neighborhood Assassins Guild]]. In the books, she's still training with the Faceless Men, but in the show she's broken away from them and headed back to Westeros to get revenge on a LOT of people, giving her one of the highest kill counts in the series. She goes home to Winterfell when she hears that Jon and Sansa took it back and starts acting as a general "troubleshooter" for Sansa while scaring the hell out of everyone with all her new assassin skillz. Kills the Night King like a fucking champion in Season 8 (though in a way that doesn't actually make any sense), then rides south to add Cersei to her body count. Instead, the Hound talks her out of it and she [[The Lord of the Rings|decides to sail into the unknown west]]. Kind of the [[Mary Sue|writer's pet]] in the show, among other things getting to avenge the Red Wedding in a brutally cinematic manner even though Dumb and Dumber justified giving us a pregnant woman getting stabbed to death on-screen because Game of Thrones is above "cliches" like loved ones getting avenged in just such a way. And her aforementioned killing of the Night King that doesn't actually make any sense, since it required her getting the drop on him in a way that was ''physically impossible without out-of-universe special effects equipment''. Book version is still level-grinding to get to her TV version's skill level.
* Catelyn Stark (nee Tully): A woman who trusts the wrong people at the worst time, causing a lot of misery. Gets killed along with Robb, then comes back (books only) as Lady Stoneheart, an undead witch bent on killing all the Boltons, Freys, Greyjoys, Lannisters... pretty much everyone she thinks was tangentially involved in betraying her and her family, or somebody who just pissed her off (kind of hard to blame her though). The show writers left this part out completely, which caused much [[rage]] and [[skub]] in the fandom.
* Bran Stark: Intelligent little boy, named after the founder of House Stark, Brandon the Builder (basically Tony Stark combined with [[Leman Russ]]). He was crippled in the first sign of major [[GrimDark]]. Has prophetic dreams and becomes a [[druid]]. In the TV series, fucks things up by alerting the Others to where he's hiding, which gets all of the Children, his loyal wolf, the Three-Eyed Crow and Hodor killed. For good measure, turns out to have accidentally ''caused'' Hodor to become, well, Hodor, as he was using his druid powers to figure out why Hodor is only able to say Hodor, resulting in Hodor's gruesome death-by-zombies being beamed directly into young Hodor's brain. He's now the Three-Eyed Raven and likes going around being creepy as fuck and generally weirding people out. Becomes King of the <s>Seven</s> Six Kingdoms in a hilariously nonsensical plot twist in the finale.
* Rickon Stark: Four years old at the start, turning into a real little [[Barbarian]] from not being raised properly, because everyone who would have raised him was dead or missing. In the books, he and his wildling nanny Osha are on the cannibal-infested island of Skagos, and Davos Seaworth is on his way there to pick them up so that the northern lords who are still loyal to House Stark have a figurehead to rally behind. In the show, he ends up hanging out at the Umbers, then is handed over to Ramsay as a prisoner when Smalljon becomes afraid of the Wildlings living north of him (who were invited by Jon Snow to fight the Zombie Apocalypse), and finally dies via arrow in a sick game of "dodge the missiles" courtesy of Ramsey.
* Jon Snow, ''The White Wolf'': A bastard living in the Stark household before leaving for the Night's Watch (basically [[The Last Chancers|Colonel Schaeffer]] with more convicted rapists under his command) and excels there because nearly every one of his fellow recruits are peasants who have never had a formal days of training while Jon has had the serious training afforded to all lords. After he takes over by becoming the Watch Commander secures and alliance with the Wildlings, ancient barbarian enemies of the Night's Watch, because when the end of the world is coming you tend to think outside the box. Also gets a Wildling girlfriend, but she dies. He was taken under the wing by the Lord Commander Jora Mormont and given advice by Aemon (a Targaryen who is so '''old''' that everyone south has forgotten he existed, and unbeknownst to him, his great-great-granduncle), and managed to actually be a competent leader: after a disastrous loss of strength after the failure of the Great Ranging, and then the Wildling invasion, he unilaterally decides to let the Wildlings through in exchange for their aid in securing the Wall against the real enemy; he even impresses Stannis (The Mannis) with his honor and sense of justice. [[Grimdark|And then, all the corrupt exiles from the South (and the rejects who were left behind during the Ranging) banded together to kill him]].
**Though he's currently dead in the books as a result of mutiny, he was revived by R'hllor in the series after being stabbed to death by the senior members of the Watch. Isn't actually Eddard's bastard son, but rather the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, meaning that he is, in fact, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. The new KING IN DA NORF according to his supporters after he killed Ramsay Bolton and took back Winterfell, and is also currently hooking up with his own aunt.
**He turns on Daenerys once he realizes she's lost it and kills her in the throne room, but [[Plot Armor|for some reason her dragon doesn't kill him despite seeing him do the the deed]]. The Unsullied want his head, but instead, King Bran exiles him to the Night's Watch and he fucks off into the far north to live with the Free Folk.
* Hodor: Hodor. Hodor, Hodor, Hodor. <s>An enormous and possibly retarded stable boy, and Bran's faithful steed.</s> Hodor. Ok, in all actual seriousness, this guy is probably one of the most tragic figures in this series (and that's saying something). [[Grimdark|The guy basically received horrible visions of his own death fighting a horde of zombies, buying time for his friends to escape by literally holding the door shut as he was hacked apart]]. This causes him to suffer a mental break, leading him to develop Immature Personality Disorder and making it so the only thing he can say is a garbled version of his friend's last request "hold the door" for all of his adult life; the logic here is that "hold the door" devolves into "hol' th' door" and eventually "Hodor". You now feel bad for at laughing at the guy.
* Osha: A Wildling woman who surrendered to the Starks and becomes their servant in exchange for not getting killed. Now dead in the show thanks to Ramsay's dickery, costing the cast another valued waifu.</div></div>

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===House Targaryen===

''"Fire and Blood"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The former Dragon kings and rulers of Westeros, [[Eldar|fair-haired purple-eyed beautiful people]] who have descended from the [[Dark Age of Technology|ancient technologically-advanced superpower]] of [[Roman Empire|Valyria]], which collapsed because of [[Fall of the Eldar|their colossal hubris]]. After the anarchic [[Age of Strife|Century of Blood]], the Targaryen patriarch Aegon I, instead of reconquering the lost cause of Essos and of Valyria's former empire, looked towards the rather primitive continent of Westeros, and its squabbling Seven Kingdoms, [[Great Crusade|to establish his own Imperial dynasty and unify the Realm]]. Aegon I is essentially the Low Fantasy version of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror William the Conqueror] and/or the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]], with a little dash of [[/d/|incest]].

[[Rules Lawyer|Thanks to a loophole]], the Targaryens were immune to the moral objections relating to incest. Common sense (and common decency) took back seat to a time-honoured policy of [[/d/|catastrophic inbreeding]], which made a number of problems, the most obvious of which was that a whole bunch of them were fucking crazy. Aegon I married his older and younger sisters and had several kids with each, which would be the start of another Targaryen tradition: the occasional succession crisis. Because GRRM can't write a book without going off on a tangent (and because the Targaryens were running things for a good chunk of the setting's history), the Targaryens and their 300ish long legacy is full of rebellions and wars ripped from English History and in turn mined by HBO. Fun interregnums include the Dance of Dragons, where the Targaryens used the last of their dragons in a brutal civil-war against each other (and now a TV show), and the Blackfyre Rebellions, where the fat-fuck Aegon IV (who had Henry VII's opposite problems: he fucked everyone and had many heirs) legitimized all his bastards and even gifted one of them the dynasty's greatest treasure: the Blackfyre sword. Actually, considering how ''much'' of these rebellions were caused by half-Targaryen bastards, [[/d/|maybe they had a point?]]

Eventually, the lineage was banished to Essos after a brutal civil war: Aerys II, a crazy paranoid king that savagely executed many different people, made the wrong move of executing the Lord and Heir of the North; the two men were in King's Landing because Aery's son, Rhaegar, the '''non''-crazy one, eloped/abducted Robert Baratheon's fiance and their sister. Since he was already married and she was engaged, they left together in secret, which caused Robert the Cuck to go wild. Joining with Eddard, the new Lord of the North, and their teacher/foster-dad Jon Arryn, the three Kingdoms rebelled and Robert warhammered Rhaegar because STR > DEX.

The survivors were smuggled out/hidden from Robert, with Viserys and his then-pregnant mother hiding on their ancestral home of Dragonstone first, before fucking off to Essos when the war was truly lost; Rhaegar's ''first'' son and daughter were killed and his wife raped by the Lannister's bannermen, though Rhaegar's best friend [[Gay|who loved him very, very, very much]] claims to have helped sneak him out of Westeros and hides with him in Essos; finally, Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, Jon/Aegon, was adopted by Ned, who was made to realize that the entire civil war was a misunderstanding and that his whoremongering drunk of a foster brother would've probably been a terrible brother-in-law anyway. [[Grimdark]]. Basically, the entire British royal family, but with more incest, and a lot of dragons. Still, they occasionally did have genuinely good people like Aegon V (aka Egg), Jaeherys I the Conciliator, his wife Good Queen Alysanne and complete badasses like Brynden Bloodraven and Baelor Breakspear (too bad Bloodraven is hooked up to Old God wi-fi permanently and Breakspear died before he could become king).
Pseudo-Romans and/or the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Normandy House of Normandy].

* Aerys II, ''The Mad King'': [[Kharn|A pretty fun guy to be around]]. Had a psychotic fascination for fire, which extended to being a psychotic fascination for burning traitors, a category of people that eventually grew to include anybody he disliked for any reason, anyone who disagreed with him, and a few people who were unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. [[Goge Vandire|Teamkilled by his bodyguard Jaime for planning to burn the city down with everyone inside it, and even refused to accept his death until he actually died]].
* Daenerys Targaryen, ''Stormborn'': She was sold by her brother to a barbarian leader [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Khal (warlord) Drogo]] in exchange for the promise that he'd use his Khalassar (Warband/tribe) to conquer Westeros. She found her self esteem as his wife, then her husband killed her idiot brother Viserys and promised to conquer the world for Daenerys, making her a full-fledged badass barbarian war queen. Unfortunately, her husband died when [[Derp|Daenerys trusted one of the slaves whose town Drogo had pillaged and burnt to heal an infected wound of his]] and his horde fell apart (though the book is somewhat ambiguous as to whether the slave did kill Drogo). Then she hatched three dragons (completely by accident when she tried to commit suicide) bringing them back from extinction, and now everyone wants to marry her because she is now one of the most powerful people around due to said dragons and being good-looking (in the books this is by the age-of-consent in Westeros standards, where girls are women when they start getting their periods and boys are men at age 13). [[Gets shit done]] except the entire fifth book, in which she mopes around about wanting to marry an annoying, flamboyant mercenary instead of saving herself for political marriage. After banging the flamboyant mercenary, she later marries a Meereenese noble who guarantees he can get her some peace (more likely [[Just As Planned|just as he planned]]).
**She also does nothing while insurgents kill her men, a horde of plagued refugees spread disease to her city and standing idly by while an enemy army besieges her walls, all for realistically political reasons because the world is a horrible place. Learns how to train her dragon. In the books she's just encountered another Khalassar after being hauled away from Meereen by Drogo. In the TV series, she takes over all the Dothraki and adds them to her army, then heads for Westeros to invade the place with her army of elite hoplites, massive horde of Dothraki and her dragons. By the time she gets to King's Landing she's taken significant losses, including two of her dragons, and is fucking her nephew (Jon Snow). Officially went Mad Queen as of S8E5, wherein she burned most of King's Landing after the city attempted to surrender and has decided to "liberate" everyone on the planet, whether they want it or not. Jon kills her in the series finale so that she won't go around burninating the rest of the world.
* The dragons: The three dragons that Daenerys hatched. They're wyverns that breathe fire, [[Awesome|have blood hot enough to melt steel]], and [[List of /tg/ Cuisine|cook their meat before eating it]]. Naturally, some of the coolest things in the story.
** Drogon; named for her late husband, Khal Drogo. Black and red, the biggest and [[Gork|most aggressive dragon]]. Starts eating people and then escapes, leading to the other two getting imprisoned. Interrupts a gladiator tournament, killing a lot of people before being whipped by Daenerys into flying her to a Khalassar that broke off from her husband's after his death. In the show, he's the last dragon standing after Viserion bites it north of the Wall and his undead body is put down at Winterfell and Rhaegal gets shot down over Dragonstone. Takes Dany's body, destroys the Iron Throne and fucks off to who knows where after Dany is killed.
** Rhaegal; named for the first of her dead brothers, Rhaegar. Green and gold, the [[Mork|cunning one]] and the loudest (with a roar "...that would have sent a hundred lions fleeing,"). Kills Quentyn Martell when the latter is trying to goad Viserion (see below). After breaking out of jail with Viserion they go "all your base are belong to us" on Meereen, killing people and taking over the pyramid of a loyal family as his lair. Last seen playing "sack the town" with Viserion in the books. Dead in the show thanks to Euron Greyjoy and some Diabolus ex Machina bullshit.
** Viserion; named for her other brother Viserys. White and gold and the [[Vulkan|friendliest]] (as dragons go, he still eats people). Dug cave for himself in his jail then moved into another pyramid after his and his brother's great escape. Gets killed by the [[Vampire Counts|Night's King in the show via a magic spear, then his corpse is reanimated to be the Night King's zombie dragon steed]] and blasts a hole in the famous Wall, allowing the armies of snow elves and zombies to start flooding Westeros. Now perma-dead thanks to the Night King biting it.
* Viserys Targaryen, ''The Beggar King'': Daenerys' physically abusive older brother. Best known for being a bully with incestuous lust for her, and an arrogant and incompetent fuck with a massive sense of entitlement. He eventually got himself killed for being an all-around jerk and whiny idiot, which culminated in him threatening his sister and unborn nephew with a sword while drunk in a sacred Dothraki place where weapons and bloodshed are forbidden on pain of death (execution is done by bloodless death - having a scarf wrapped tight around the neck and being drowned in a barrel). Daenerys' husband [[awesome|poured molten gold over his head and called it his promised crown, also ensuring his death didn't technically shed any blood in their sacred place]].
* Aegon Targaryen, ''Aegon VI'': Daenerys' nephew, the son of her brother Rhaegar. Been hiding in Essos for the entire length of the series, but recently raised an army of Westerosi exiles and threw them all a massive Welcome Home party with rape and pillage. Wants to marry his aunt because she has dragons, ''and might not actually be a member of House Targaryen'' if you believe some fans. He can actually count past 6, can multiply numbers, can read different language and has a minor understanding of geometry thus cementing him as one of the most educated people in this overwrought series. Can also do his own laundry.
**Like Dany, he has his own band of misfits following him around. While Dany has Dothraki and Unsullied, Aegon has '''The Golden Company''', a mercenary company of ten thousand, descended from the forces loyal to the Blackfyre bastards. The Golden Company has a long and storied history of invading Westeros and failing, which has led to the theories that Aegon is really a Blackfyre. Because of their long history and descent from actual nobles, the Golden Company is nothing like the mercenary rabble common in the rest of the series, even having dedicated knight, archer, and War Elephant divisions.
* Brynden Rivers ''Bloodraven'': A Targaryen bastard who came to prominence about a hundred years before the series as a sort of sorcerer, he later became known as the "Three-Eyed Raven/Crow" after encountering the Children of the Forest, and uses his powers to help advert the Long Night and train Bran. He's described as having long, white hair, missing an eye, bound to a tree, knows all and sees all, associated heavily with ravens and omens... [[Vikings|yeah, he's very much Odin, come to think of it. Just a lot more of an asshole than the Warrior King of legend.]]
**In his prime, he was pretty much just Loki. The Spymaster ''and'' Hand of the King during the Blackfyre Rebellions (a rebellion of all Aegon IV's many bastards, [[Troll|who he legitimized on his deathbed because that's how he rolled]]), he was one of the few to remain loyal. He was a sorceror and had a spy network so thorough, it was a commmon-joke that the [[Magnus the Red|one-eyed]] sorcerer had "[[Thousand Sons|a thousand eyes]], and [[Tzeentch|one]]" He had his own elite unit of archers that solved the first rebellion by sticking the claimant, his heir, and finally his twin, full of arrows.
**Exiled to the Night's Watch after assassinating after assassinating a Blackfyre after promising him safe passage, a running theme in ASOIAF.
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===House Lannister===

''"Hear Me Roar"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Monopoly|Westeros' richest family]], proud, pompous, selfish and fabulous assholes. Not much of a martial tradition but if you cross them [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7t7cnwlOgY they will fucking cut you]. You can tell they are the bad guys because they have an army of sick fucks, including a zebra-riding mercenary band and 7' 8" Khornate Champion <s>not-Goliath</s> Gregor Clegane. House York (though named after House Lancaster) combined with the House of Rothschild and the Mafia. Their unofficial motto is "A Lannister Always Pays His Debts"
* Tywin Lannister, ''The Lion of Lannister'': The Godfather, head of the house, and obsessed with his reputation as a Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire. Lawful Evil Personified. He was a most feared general whose greatest achievement was [[Exterminatus|erasing House Reyne from existence]], which was immortalised in his own sweet-yet-creepy-as-fuck theme song (The Rains of Castamere) that became used as a warning against anyone standing against him. During his tenure as Hand of the King (i.e. Prime Minister), he was a political genius who operated as the true power behind the Iron Throne, keeping the realm stable and prosperous despite the stupidity of Aerys II and Joffrey. However, despite all of his achievements, he's an [[Emperor|absolutely terrible father]], who treats his children as nothing more than tools to further his political agenda. He completely overlooks the incestuous relationship his two oldest children had, and hated Tyrion and made his life a living hell for very poor reasons. He humiliated Tyrion whenever it wouldn't threaten the family's reputation, berated Tyrion for being a whore-monger despite secretly being one himself (this is ''only'' in the show), [[Grimdark|tried to get him killed multiple times]], and as the capstone of awful parenting, he taught Tyrion not to marry commoners after he married one called Tysha - by forcing Tyrion to watch Tysha get gang-raped, forcing him to rape her too and then annulling their marriage. The only person Tywin truly loved was his wife. He eventually gets his comeuppance when Tyrion finds out the truth about the Tysha incident and kills him with a crossbow, all while mentioning that out of all his children, Tyrion was the most alike to Tywin himself. He's based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick Warwick the Kingmaker].
* Joanna Lannister: Tywin's late wife and first cousin, meaning the next three characters are inbred as well, ironically. Dies giving birth to Tyrion, which is part of why Tywin hates him, though Cersei hates him for other reasons. Caught wind of Cersei and Jaime's incestuous tendencies, but she died before she could tell Tywin. It is implied that her ghost visits Jaime in a dream and mourns the current state of her family.
* Cersei Lannister, ''Bitch Queen'': Tywin and Joanna's first child. Twin sister to Jaime Lannister and wife to King Robert Baratheon. She fucks her brother Jaime all the time and had three of his children, whom she passed off as Robert's to grab power. She is a massive narcissist who thinks of herself as "female Tywin" and hence seeks to rule Westeros as the Queen, and will do anything to keep her power... even when [[Abbadon the Despoiler|most of her plans end up becoming utter failures]]. Crazy as all fuck and prophesied to be killed by the "little brother." This is because of a prophecy made by a witch, Cersei was a child that she'd be a beautiful queen, lose everything, her children would die before her, and the "Valonqar" would kill her. Though that does explain why she hates Tyrion as hard as all fuck, [[Just As Planned|the exact translation of the term]] that was used is "younger sibling", and not necessarily her sibling, which opens the door to all sorts of characters who hate the fuck out of her. Since Jaime is technically younger by a few seconds, him killing Cersei would be an interesting twist not without buildup. Possibly the Witch was messing with her head because of what a bitch Cersei was being to her, something Cersei never grew out of. Cersei is currently alive only because Varys wants her to be, [[Just As Planned|as she's a terrible queen who'll destabilize the realm enough for him to bring back the Targaryens]]. She was completely shaved, stripped of power in all but her royal heritage and forced to do a nude walk of penance throughout the city by the High Sparrow (ASOIAF Pope- equivalent/[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther Martin Luther] except he won the Reformation) after he uncovered her crimes. Now she's waiting for her hair to grow back and maybe thinking of revenge.
**She gets it in the show by blowing up the Great Sept of Baelor (ASOIAF [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Cathedral Canterbury Cathedral]) with everyone she doesn't like inside it, having her cousin killed near the Wildfire, killing Tyene Sand with the same poison that Tyene used on Myrcella and forcing Ellaria to watch, then capturing the nun who was her jailer and [[Grimdark|leaving her to be tortured to death by zombie Gregor Clegane]]. She is in short [[Thanquol]] disguised as a beautiful blonde woman. Gets anticlimactically squashed by a collapsing ceiling along with Jaime during Daenerys's assault on King's Landing. (her biggest issue? Not dying sooner, for the Seven's sake!)
* Jaime Lannister, ''The Kingslayer'': Younger twin brother (by about three seconds) to Cersei Lannister and commander of the Kingsguard. He loves his sister in every sense of the word and had three children with her. Killed the last king despite his oath, and is widely hated for it, even though everyone agrees that dying was a massive improvement for Aerys. The reason for this betrayal was that Aerys had a huge stockpile of Acme Brand Magic Napalm stockpiled under the city, ready to be set off the moment a siege broke through the town walls, and Jaime's options were to let it happen or kill Aerys before the crazy fuck got ''everybody'' killed. His desire to openly love his sister and win the respect he feels he deserves eventually causes Cersei to reject him. Starts off as an arrogant douche who [[Grimdark|tried to murder Bran Stark, but accidentally crippled him instead]]; as the series progressed he became progressively more bro-tier besides the whole wants-to-fuck-his-sister thing, though he eventually begins to question even this devotion after seeing what a bitch she is when she comes to power. He genuinely loves Tyrion, so much so that he actually went off on his own to get him back after he heard Catelyn had him imprisoned in the Vale. He gets freed by Robb and goes on a journey through Westeros, loses his arm, and gets a lesson in valour and knighthood from Brienne of Tarth. He starts to question his legacy after his son Joffrey makes him Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, a position that was only made available because Joff expelled the Knight who had actually earned it. Since Joff and Cersei had filled the Kingsguard with sycophants and their own thugs, Jaime's role as the Lord Commander has left a bad taste in his mouth because he is now the leader of probably the least prestigious iteration of the Kingsguard ever. Basically, [[Sigvald|Sigvald the Magnificent]] currently in the midst of a redemption arc. In the books, he is currently being lured into a trap by Lady Stoneheart.
**In the show, he has finally told Cersei to get fucked after realizing that she has well and truly lost it, and rode north to help fight the White Walkers. He survived the Battle of Winterfell, hooked up with Brienne, and then rides south [[Derp|because he just can't let Cersei go.]] Winds up getting shanked by Euron Greyjoy and dies [[Fail|via collapsing ceiling]].
* Tyrion Lannister, ''Halfman'': a very intelligent dwarf who is awesome, but hated by everyone, either because of his deformity, or because he's a Lannister. The few people who treat him well is an uncle that went missing, his brother Jaime, Jon Snow who learned a lot from him, and Varys, who at first saw him as an asset, but grew to admire his political abilities and intellect, even declaring him a friend. He seems to do much better when getting drunk with whores, rogues, bastards and barbarians. His silver tongue is one of his greatest strengths (he's witty and good at persuading people) and weaknesses (he's quick with insults and the truth in a city ruled by sociopaths and liars). Tyrion is also one of the only characters with an actual sense of the bigger picture, and an interest toward steering the world toward an outcome that ''doesn't'' involve a [[The End Times|Warhammer End Times]] scenario. **Unfortunately, the world's movers, shakers, and those who generally have the power to make a difference are increasingly either a) dead, b) scattered to the winds or c) hate his dwarf guts. Despite the increasing difficulty and fruitlessness of his task, however, [[Awesome|Tyrion still fights]]. After being framed for killing Joffrey, he killed his own father and fled Westeros. In the books, he is currently in exile in the Free Cities, weaselling his way into leading a merc band and trying to sign them up with Daenerys' forces, recognizing her as one of the few chances Westeros has got of fixing its shit (provided she can get her own shit together, which she's having a bit of trouble with).
**Since characters in this series tend to either be walking tropes, rip-offs of other fantasy characters, or historical people with different names, Tyrion is probably based on the great [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vorkosigan Miles Vorkosigan] (who was himself based on a few people including Sir Winston Churchill) and is a nod to King Richard III (a deformed but competent king later demonized by historiographers of his era). Even if he is usually the smartest one in the room at any given time, though, Tyrion is still not above having some derp moments. Exhibit A, when Tyrion asked his father what happened to his first wife (right before killing him), he took an ''obvious'' "I don't know and I don't care" response ("Wherever whores go") as if it was literal directions, and afterward keeps asking random people if they know where whores go, with predictable reactions. (Admittedly he'd just killed his ex and was probably in the middle of some serious PTSD at the time, which is not great for your brain.) The show version eventually meets Daenerys and becomes her Hand only to [[Fail|fuck up a bunch of stuff]] and lose her trust. He sells her out when he realizes that she's gone round the bend and winds up becoming Hand to King Bran.
* Kevan Lannister: Tywin's younger brother, considered "the reliable one". One of the few decent Lannisters, though saying that he is perfectly happy carrying out Tywin's bidding. Tried to talk sense into Cersei and was later called in to try and fix her mess. He did such a good job of it that Varys decided to personally thank him. With a crossbow. And a group of knife-wielding children. In the show he dies with the rest of the crowd when the Great Sept got nuked by Cersei - the manner of his book death was given over to Grand Maester Pycelle at the exact same time.
* Lancel Lannister: Kevan's son, Tywin's nephew and Tyrion, Jamie and Cersei's cousin. A callow, spoilt but well-meaning nobleman. Pretty much Joffery but mentally stable, not sadistic and capable of compassion and honor. Enters a sexual relationship with his cousin Cersei when Jamie is captured, which Tyrion uncovers and uses to blackmail Lancel into spying for him. He later has a religious experience after nearly dying and joins the Poor Fellows of the Faith of the Seven, gives up his incestuous relationship and tries to convert several of his family members (somewhat successfully with Kevan, unsuccessfully with Cersei). Still alive in the books.
**In the show, he reports Cersei to the High Sparrow (rather than the High Sparrow cleverly uncovering Cersei's plan and trapping her) and dies horribly. Cersei deliberately set him up for a particularly agonizing and drawn-out end; he's lured into a catacomb under the sept that contains a massive cache of wildfire, gets his spinal cord severed so he can't walk, and is left where he can see candles sitting in a pool of wildfire just a little too far away for him to reach it in time, so that he [[Grimdark|spends his last moments vainly trying to avert a horrible catastrophe before being incinerated]].
* Cersei and Robert's (actually Jaime's) children:
** Joffrey Baratheon: Spoiled brat and sociopath to the extreme. He's basically [[Sigvald]] during his teenage years (and likely inspired [[Phil Kelly|Kelly]] to make the character Sigvald). "Heir" of the throne, and the technical king of Westeros during the War of the Five Kings since he lives in King's Landing and sits on the throne. Turned out to be worse than Aerys. He died and there was much rejoicing. [[Fail|Except by his mother, who instead had sex on his corpse]]. Fourteen years old at the time of his death.
** Tommen Baratheon: The new king on the Iron Throne. Nine years old. Married to a teenaged shotacon wife who's (unknown to him) the granddaughter of his brother's true killer. Trying to litigate the criminalization of beets. Loves [[Cats|kittens]]. He's pretty well-rounded and non-fucked up, which is a miracle considering his parents, both putative and biological. Also seems to be trying to take kinging seriously, but his mom is trying to quash that in her subliminal attempt to hold power indefinitely, so whether it holds is another matter entirely. Prophesied to die before Cersei, which is doubly tragic due to his age and being a much better person than her.
**In the show, he commits suicide after Cersei blows up the Great Sept (head office of the fantasy knockoff Church of England), killing his godfather, great-uncle, wife, and all his religious friends, because of course her power hunger was more important than his happiness and well being.
** Myrcella Baratheon: Princess, and Cersei and "Robert's" second oldest child. Ten years old. In order to appease the Martells, Tyrion arranges a marriage with her and the youngest Martell, which pissed off everyone. In the books, she had her face fucked up because of Arianne Martell's amateur intrigues, which overlapped with poor planning, general stupidity, and another guy's backstabbing. Before the maiming, she was quite decent and non-evil. Who knows how she'll turn out now with half of her face cut off. Also prophesied to die before Cersei.
**In the show, she had a crush on Oberyn's surviving nephew but was killed by Elia in revenge for Oberyn's death, but alive in the books though missing an ear. Also, the readership all got on George's balls for maiming this girl, mostly because it was a sign that he had run out of ideas and was basically just milking Diabolus ex Machina ([[Just As Planned|or that's what he wants us to think]]).
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===House Baratheon===

''"Ours is the Fury"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Ascended to the Iron Throne after a successful rebellion against the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen. Produces no less than three claimants to the succession, each one very different from the other. Technically a cadet branch of House Targaryen as their founder Orys was allegedly a Targaryen bastard, who took the original Storm Kings (House Durrandon) deer sigil after killing the last one and fucking his only child Argella and then 200 odd years later, King Egg's daughter married their grandfather. They're pretty much the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Plantagenet House of Plantagenet].
* Robert Baratheon, ''The Usurper'': Fat, old, former badass who led the rebellion, and now the king who married Cersei Lannister. Then he fucked a bunch of other women and had lots of illegitimate kids. He was killed while mixing boar hunting and drinking, but whether this death was planned or not is uncertain. On the surface, a king with a thing for easy laughs and partying; right underneath the surface, he's irresponsible and leaves the actual ruling of a nation to his staff, deeper under the surface he's pretty much a sad, lonely old bro who would rather not have been king. Comparable to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England Henry IV], in that both were powerfully built military geniuses who overthrew the existing monarchy and later succumbed to an unhealthy lifestyle.
* Stannis '''The Mannis''' Baratheon: Robert's younger brother, an all-around badass who swings between [[Lawful Stupid]] (more so in the show than the books) and [[gets shit done|getting shit done]]. [[Judge Dredd|believes so strongly in the rule of law]] that he feels compelled to take the Iron Throne for himself despite wanting nothing to do with it. Is advised by a priestess of the God of light, Melisandre, and a lowborn smuggler named Davos Seaworth raised to knighthood and nobility. [[C.S Goto|His character is ruined in the show into an incompetent pawn of Melisandre and gets killed off just because one of the showrunners didn't like him]].
** Shireen Baratheon: Stannis's kid daughter. The sweet, charming, and intelligent little lady who was left with a deformity on her face from a disease called greyscale. Teaches Davos how to read, and is probably the most innocent person in the series alongside Tommen, Myrcella and a few others. Being the grim and dark universe A Song of Ice and Fire is, however, this means that she's likely going to end up becoming fuel for a vicious fire god. In the show she does, but in the books, she is safe and sound since Stannis isn't stupid enough to bring him with her while campaigning. His wife, on the other hand, being such an idiotic fanatical pyromaniac... well, her odds aren't exactly looking that great.
* Renly Baratheon, ''That Gay Guy'': Robert and Stannis's youngest brother. Took Loras Tyrell (a.k.a. Knight of Flowers, Pretty Boy, etc.) as his lover. Decided he was better suited to be king, though the bizarre and outdated laws of the land stated Stannis was next in line (though Joffrey and then Tommen were first since they were [[Pretend|officially]] Bobby B's legitimate kids). Was hugely popular since he had Robert's charisma, which led to him getting the most support, but he lacked Stannis's conviction and devotion to the duty of actually doing the work of a king, or even Robert's ability to wage war. Killed by Melisandre with some "help" by Stannis ''The Mannis'' for trying to steal his crown, though in the books Stannis may not have been completely aware of the role he played in Renly's death. He's basically [[That Guy]] of ASOIAF, since quite a lot of shit is his fault, indirectly or otherwise.
*Gendry Baratheon, the Bastard Son. One of Robert's many, many bastard children, and the one who gets the most page and screen time. He starts out as a humble blacksmith in King's Landing, who first comes to Ned's attention when Lord Stark is investigating the death of Jon Arryn. From there, he gets shipped off to the Night's Watch to avoid the imminent purge of Robert's bastards and winds up becoming friends with Arya and Hot Pie. After some adventuring and sexual tension with Arya (at least in the show), he joins the Brotherhood Without Banners. In the show, they sell him to Melisandre so she can use him for a blood magic ritual, while in the books he just goes on being a smith and doesn't get involved in anything particularly weird or shady. He's helping run an inn as a Brotherhood front/orphanage when he reappears in the books, but in the show, Ser Davos sets him free and tells him to fuck off, which he does for a few seasons. He eventually turns up back in King's Landing, where Davos finds him and recruits him (and his comically oversized LARPing hammer) for Team Snow. He helps Jon capture a wight to show Cersei, makes dragonglass weapons for the Army of the Living, hooks up with Arya, and fights in the Battle of Winterfell, after which Daenerys legitimizes him as the new lord of House Baratheon.</div></div>

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===House Tully===

''"Family, Duty, Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> Lords of the central riverlands. Being the obligatory central nation they spend a lot of the series being fought over like a cake in between fat kids. Basically Poland/the Netherlands, given they have so many rivers and how hard they've been fucked over.
*Edmure Tully: Basically the SoIaF universe's eternal butt monkey (because he happens to be a decent fucking person). Despite being an okay guy, he's also a useless ponce with a dense streak a mile wide and a bad habit of bragging about things he shouldn't be proud of. It took hanging in a stockade for a few months to make him experience some growth. When Jaime was brought in to unfuck the situation and end the siege at Riverrun, Jaime's "negotiation" pressured him into convincing his house to surrender, but he made sure [[Troll|that Brynden got out first]]. In the books, he's currently spending his days at the Lannister house as a hostage to make sure that the Tullys don't try to ruin the situation again.
**In the show, he disappears until the final episode, [[Fail|where he tries to make a case for himself as king]] only to get shut down by Sansa.
*Lord Hoster Tully: In GoT the only act he committed of any note was to die. In the books however he is arguably, though inadvertently, the most destructive character once you've delved into his history. The man looked down upon peasants, cripples, bastards, and broken things, which influenced his daughters and primed them for their mistreatment of such through their travels (especially Catelyn's immediate suspicion of Tyrion, [[What|despite the charge and evidence making little sense, but because he's a "Monster" of course he must have done it]]). He denied Tywin's offer to marry Tyrion to Lysa for said reasons, but he also denied Lysa to marry Petyr because of his low birth and her value of being married off to a higher bidder, even if their age differed by at least 50 years and she was pregnant with Petyr's child. He responded to this pregnancy by forcefully aborting the child via drinking Moon Tea, without her knowledge (something he would have nightmares about approaching his death). Not only did this nearly cause her death, but it destroyed her reproductive system resulting in 5 miscarriages and 2 stillbirths (an event that would lead her to aggressive paranoia so fervent that she killed her husband to prevent being separated from her only living child). All of these actions unfortunately spiraled into helping cause The War of the Five Kings.
*Brynden Tully ''the Blackfish'': He didn't catch the memo that he was part of the joke faction, and proceeds to spend the entire series fucking Lannister shit up and generally being a boss. Thought to be the black sheep in a family of fish (Thus "Blackfish", geddit?), but in spite of that status held true to the family, continuing to hold Riverrun for Robb in spite of the war pretty much being lost. When Edmure surrendered Riverrun, he escaped by swimming under the portcullis and escaping into the river, causing everyone to shit themselves because he's totally coming for revenge. Also widely accepted by the fans to be a closeted homosexual.
**In the HBO show, he gets killed when resisting arrest from Tully forces by order of Edmure. [[Rage|And it happens offscreen.]]</div></div>

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===House Arryn===

''"As High as Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Mountain lords turned [[NEET|neurotic shut ins]]. Goes through lords about as quickly as you would expect a castle equipped with a door that opens into empty air. Basically Switzerland/Afghanistan, seeing as how they stayed neutral in the War of Five Kings, their land is covered by nothing but mountains, and they're constantly fighting with the local tribes. They were being entertainingly screwed over by Littlefinger until his death.
*Jon Arryn: Only appears posthumously and is the catalyst for the whole plot. Used to be a foster father of sorts to Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Was the Robert's Malcador the Sigilite during Robert's Rebellion. He was killed by Littlefinger via Lysa when he figured out that Robert's kids are bastards of Cersei and Jaime. His death was blamed on the Lannisters to destabilize Westeros.
*Lysa Arryn: Loli bride turned Lady of the Vale after the Lannisters forcibly retired her husband from life, at least officially. In reality, Littlefinger convinced her to poison her husband and blame the Lannisters [[Just As Planned|which pretty much started this whole clusterfuck to begin with]]. A closeted, crazy woman who spends the entire series in her castle "the Eyrie" being useless, breastfeeding her own son at age 10, obsessing over Littlefinger's cock, and [[Derp|refusing to help her sister and nephew in the war she and Littlefinger pretty much started]], which may have guaranteed their eventual horrific murders by their enemies. Finally gets her comeuppance when Littlefinger kicks her out the moon door (post-taunting, of course), putting her out of our collective misery. Long live the Lord Protector.
* Robert Arryn: ''Littlefuck'', Lysa's equally mentally unstable autistic son, who still sucks on his mom's tit and enjoys seeing people "fly" out the moon door to their deaths. He actually seems to be a bit smarter than you would first think and is a really, really good judge of character, except with Sansa. Secretly being poisoned by Littlefinger and Sansa so she can take over the Vale and North. Named Robin in the show because the showrunners were afraid that having two characters with the same name would be too confusing. The show version doesn't get poisoned but turns up in the series finale as the Lord of the Vale.</div></div>

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===House Greyjoy===

''"We Do Not Sow"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Awesome|A house founded by Cthulhu-worshipping Norscans]]. While not actual Vikings in any sense of the word, there is little other way to describe them. They live on some islands off the coast of Westeros and almost their entire culture is based around raiding and the ocean. Their religion holds it shameful for a man to pay for personal possessions, and states they have to get things either by trade, washing up from the ocean or the "Iron Price": seizing something from the body or belongings of someone he defeated in battle rather than paying or trading for it. Also, only possessions acquired via the Iron Price command respect among the Ironborn. The nastiest form this takes is stealing women as "Salt Wives", [[Emperor's Children|effectively making them a society of rapists]]. As an interesting bit of trivia, their local variety of baptism is to be ritually drowned in seawater and resuscitated by their priests, and they don't see drowning as a bad way to go on the grounds that it means their god/gods have accepted them and they'll go to an underwater Heaven that's basically a more X-rated version of The Little Mermaid.
*Balon Greyjoy: Asshole dad, crappy ruler, and general shithead (all very common things in this world, but still) who rebelled against Robert Baratheon and failed miserably. All of his sons were killed, except for Theon, who was taken as a hostage to ensure his good behaviour. Despite being in a position to join either the Lannisters or the Starks during the War of Five Kings and thereby get whatever he wanted from either (independence and the North, or independence and Casterly Rock, respectively), he does the absolute stupidest thing possible and declares himself independent without support from anyone, attacking the North and the rest of Westeros, thereby virtually guaranteeing that he'll be on the receiving end of another one-sided battle once everyone else has sorted their shit out. In the book he at least tried to make one alliance but it was with the freaking Lannisters and not the other Kingdom seeking independence. Never got that far, though, since he was pushed off a bridge during a storm by an assassin his brother Euron sent.
*Victarion Greyjoy: Admiral of the Iron Fleet. [[Gets shit done]] while wearing [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Lokhir Fellheart's]] armour during boarding actions. Does it for vengeance, the lulz and as a ticket to Ironborn heaven (which they believe men can reach if they die in battle or by drowning). Worships both R'hllor and the Drowned God. For all his badassery, is far too stupid to realize that his black Red Priest sidekick's constant rambling about his "great destiny" is inevitably going to end in his burning to death on a sacrificial pyre. Said Red Priest impressed Victarion by surviving being marooned at sea for 3 weeks and turning Victarion's infected arm into a super-strong volcano arm. Seriously. Isn't in the show, which is lame.
*Aeron Greyjoy ''Damphair'': [[Kostaltyn|A priestly Alan Moore who drank seawater]]. Once a fun-loving party animal, he nearly drowned during the Greyjoy Rebellion and became a dour and devout priest of the Ironborn [[Cthulhu]] religion. Confirmed to have been raped by Euron when they were kids. Planned to overthrow Euron, who bribed and manipulated his way into becoming king of the Ironborn. As of the excerpts from the sixth book, he [[Grimdark|Was captured by Euron and tortured to try and make him renounce his faith, including feeding him spoiled food, drugging him and burning him. Later Euron tied Aeron, naked, to the prow of Euron's ship alongside Euron's tortured, pregnant former lover because she showed Aeron kindness by once giving him proper food]]. He tried to console her by saying their suffering will end in underwater Valhalla, [[Awesome|showing Euron failed to make him deny his faith]]. Also left out of the show.
*Theon Greyjoy: Son of the Lord/King of the Iron Islands. Had the personality of a stereotypical high school jock, being an excellent archer and womanizer and proud of it. He was given to Ned Stark by his father after Balon failed to successfully rebel against Robert Baratheon. Swore an oath to Robb, but then ditched him out of a desperate need to please his father. Ends up castrated and acts as the personal slave of Ramsay Bolton after Ramsay puts him through horrific torture to turn him into Reek. Rescued by his sister, but the psychological trauma meant it took a while before he could stop calling himself Reek and start getting back to normal mentally (physically he's now missing a few parts that don't heal or grow back). He's just been reunited with his sister in the books, but is dead in the show, thanks to charging the Night King by himself while protecting Bran.
* Asha Greyjoy: Theon's older sister and a commander of some renown which is quite a feat - almost every man on the Iron Islands except her father either tried to get in her pants or told her to [[-4 STR|stop playing around and go do some actual women's work]], before she kicked enough ass that they respected her. Rescues Theon after he escapes Ramsay but then loses him to Stannis. Is named Yara in the show because the showrunners thought her name sounded too similar to Osha the wildling chick and is also apparently [[PROMOTIONS|bisexual]]. Eventually becomes Lady of the Iron Islands in the show because she's the last Greyjoy standing. Is more or less the only Ironborn who isn't a complete asshole.
*Euron Greyjoy ''Crow's Eye'': A [[Chaos Warrior|sick fuck Lovecraftian pirate armed with unnatural sorcerous powers]] and so evil that Balon banished him from the Iron Islands. Every member of his crew is a mute because Euron ripped all their tongues out. Many of them are also the illegitimate sons [[Beastmen|of women he's raped around the world during his raids]]. Uses an eyepatch to conceal a pitch-black eye, his personal "obviously a villain" mark. Raped his brother Victarion's wife, then claimed she wanted it so Victarion had to kill her. Raped his younger brother Aeron. Also showed back up in the Iron Islands the day after Balon died, despite having been raping and pillaging in Essos before that, which is suspicious as fuck. Now the new Iron King. Plans to conquer Westeros and has some unknown plan to deal with Daenerys. Revealed in the book ''Winds of Winter'' to be [[Erebus|one of the sickest fucks in an entire setting of sick fucks (and that's saying something)]], including having a god complex while hating religion so much he [[Grimdark|tortures any clergymen he captures to try and make them give up their faiths using ironic tortures themed around their religions - such as preachers have their tongues cut out and burning priests of the fire god to death]]. Euron tried and failed to break his priest brother Aeron's faith so he lashed Aeron to the front of his ship to die [[Grimdark|alongside Euron's own pregnant lover Falia]], in what could be preparations for the [[Betrayal at Calth|ruinstorm]].
**In the show he's just a psycho pirate turned king without any magic powers or gear [[FAIL|who wants to bang Cersei and Jaime kills him in the second-to-last episode in one of the dumbest moments in an already terrible episode.]]
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===House Tyrell===

''"Growing Strong"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Lords of Highgarden and the Reach, backstabbers par-excellence, and owners of a lot of fertile land: of the Seven Kingdoms, the Reach is the "biggest," having the most people, the largest army, and a stable, if not agrarian economy; yes, the Westerlands is richer, yes, the Stormlands have/had the strongest military, and yes, the Vale is the most honor-and-chivalry obsessed, but the Reach and the Tyrells are the only ones who can compete with all three at once. Unlike the current lot of Lannisters they understand the value of good PR, balancing ruthlessness with being somewhat amicable, political savvy and not being stuck-up on honour (which they still have more of than the Lannisters do). They're a bit analogous to France. In the books, it's the Tyrells and their support that keeps the throne aloft post-Robert, first aiding Joffrey, then Tommen. They were "shrewd" enough to stay out of Robert's Rebellion and outside of his court while Tywin was in charge, so their lands are basically untouched by war: the Reach's cities are also the most beautiful, with Highgarden and Oldtown being notable for not smelling like shit and full of garbage. [[Fail|Unfortunately, they've all been wiped out in the show]].

*Mace "The Ace" Tyrell: Lord of Highgarden. Massively fat and overweight, while being stupid, overreaching and constantly mocked by everyone else, he's otherwise known as a friendly man, a good Lord when it comes to management and a good father; in the books, The Throne uses him to print gold and alleviate hunger during the War of the Five Kings, so they give him and his family a bunch of positions to keep them invested. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to save a man in the Game of Thrones. Gets killed with the rest of the noble houses when Cersei blows up the Great Sept of Baelor.
*Olenna Tyrell: The brains behind House Tyrell's schemes. Known as the ''Queen of Thorns'' for being an outspoken, prickly and venomous old lady. Schemed with Littlefinger to have Joffrey killed, but she carried it out with compressed powder "gems" hidden in Sansa's hairnet that poisoned his wine. She is to the Tyrells as Tywin is to the Lannisters, except her daughter isn't a narcissistic sociopath.
**Alive and well in the books (so far), where she's pretty much the same as the show. She has taken Margaery as her successor, which is why she made sure she'd be engaged to Tommen and had Joffrey offed.
**Became a fan-favorite for constantly dropping awesome one-liners and calling out smug and/or unpopular characters like Littlefinger and the Sand Snakes. [[Fail|Killed off in the show]] as Jaime gives her the option of drinking painless poison or whatever Cersei wanted to do to her after beseiging Highgarden. Olenna took the poison, and before she died [[Awesome|revealed to Jaime that she was the one who killed Joffrey and told him to make sure Cersei knows it]].
*Willas Tyrell: Mace Tyrell's eldest son and heir, crippled at a very young age when jousting against Oberyn Martell. Surprisingly, he and Oberyn are still bros, even though the rest of their Houses aren't very fond of each other because of this incident. Probably one of the most pleasant and sensible characters in the books, which might explain why they never included him in the TV show. Very fond of breeding animals, especially horses.
*Garlan Tyrell ''The Gallant'': Second-born son. Badass extraordinaire considered one of the best swords in Westeros, and one of the few people kind to Tyrion. Trains for real combat (often against multiple opponents by himself) unlike Loras, who's a tourney fighter. Single-handedly wrecks many notable knights fighting for Stannis during the War of The Five Kings. And he is the only person other than Tywin to put Joffrey in his place, at his own wedding. Sadly no POV chapter yet and omitted from the TV series (Loras takes credit for his deeds).
*Loras Tyrell ''The Knight of Flowers'': The Tyrell who appears most in the TV series, since his older brothers got adapted out. Considered to be an example of the perfect knight, despite his youth. Is secretly Renly's gay lover and conspired to take the throne with him and his sister. He was elevated to the Kingsguard as part of the Lannister's appeasement of the Tyrells, but also to ensure that Margaery would be safe if it turned out they couldn't kill Joff/Tommen turned out to be a sociopath too. Last seen badly injured in the books attempting to take Stannis' castle in order to to prove his honor after the Faith Militant locked up his sister, but because none of Cersei's sources could visually confirm it, it's likely that the Tyrells ([[Iron warriors|it was ''their'' forces that did the sieging]], after all) fabricated a story to get their boy out of there. In the show he ends up tortured by the members of the Faith for being gay [[C.S Goto|because the showrunners retconned them to hate gay people]], [[Protectorate of Menoth|later joins their ranks of questionable willingness]], then dies when Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor.
*Margaery Tyrell: The would-be Queen of Westeros, she has married, in order, Renly Baratheon (gay), Joffrey Baratheon (evil), and Tommen Baratheon (8 years old) and has been crowned as queen three times. While she is nice, like Disney Princess-in-a-grimdark-setting-nice, she is still her grandmother's protege , and so is the source of Cersei's paranoia (which is kinda valid as the Tyrells did off Joffrey so that the more-controllable and non-sociopathic Tommen could marry Margy). Cersei was so paranoid about Marge's ascension that she decided to legitimize the Sparrows and allow them to reform the [[Age of Apostasy|Faith Militant]], all because she was afraid Tommen would listen to Margaery more than her.
**In the show, she marries and uses sex to control Tommen, because the show needed to hit its titty quota and because Tommen is a teenager in the show. Was arrested by the resident Chamber Militant The Sparrow and asked for a trial by faith in the books. In the show, this also happens but she tries to be pious in an attempt to save herself but ended up getting killed when Cersei blew up the Sept of Baelor.
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===House Martell===

''"Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
[[Tallarn|Desert dwelling survivalists]] who [[Dune|pride themselves on having never been conquered]] by the Targaryen dynasty (though they later married in). Moorish Spaniards, kinda. Their entire thing is that they're nothing like the rest of the Seven Kingdoms: they're descended from the Rhoynar, a group of people that used to live along one of Essos' longest rivers who practice absolute cognatic (the oldest child, regardless of gender, inherits the throne) succession and take a very liberal attitude towards sex. House Martell also has a rocky relationship with the rest of the kingdom: The Baratheons don't trust them because they were all Targaryen loyalists, the Reach doesn't like them because of historic wars between the two, and House Martell has never forgiven House Lannister for Clegane's rape and murder of Elia Martell, Rhaegar's first wife and mother of his children.
[[C.S Goto|Their story arc was completely ruined in the show, as Elia and Oberyn's daughters kill Oberyn's brother and nephew for taking too long to avenge him before being captured and killed themselves by Euron and Cersei]].
*Doran Martell: Lord of Sunspear and of royal descent. Still mad at the Lannisters about that whole "murdered-my-sister-and-infant-niece thing". Playing the longest of long games with Varys, which blew up in his face because he told ''no one in his family'' about his schemes (well, maybe Oberyn, but Oberyn is dead).
**[[What|Killed off in the show by Ellaria as part of her plan to avenge Oberyn]]. Even his actor was upset.
*Arianne Martell: One of GRRM's characters who seems to exists solely to fuck everything up at the worst conceivable moment. Still hot as Dornish girls come. See, she is technically the heir of Dorne, being the ''first-born'' daughter, and yet was shut out of most of her father's meetings and plans, which caused her to get upset because even Oberyn treats all of his bastards better than her dad treats her. After Doran ''seemingly'' accepts his own brother's death without any sort of fuss, she decides that her father is weak and plans to start ''another'' front in the War of Five Kings by putting Myrcella up on the throne. However, one of her dad's spies gives them up, and in a huge clusterfuck, Myrcella gets maimed by one of the pro-war knights. She is then taken to her father, who finally spills the beans on his grand scheme: the reason why she was sidelined by her father was because he had secretly betrothed her to her Viserys, but now that Viserys is dead, plans to see if he can broker an alliance with "Aegon," Rhaegar and Elia's son who "supposedly" was secreted away and replaced with doubles.
*Oberyn Martell ''The Viper of Dorne'': Doran Martell's brother, a bisexual swinger, former mercenary, and a drunkard (and also Inigo Montoya in Dark Fantasy). His girlfriend is a spectacularly beautiful bastard named Ellaria Sand and he has many illegitimate children, mostly daughters, collectively called "The Sand Snakes". Crippled the Tyrell heir in a joust, causing a rift between the two houses; despite this, he's actually best mates with the aforementioned heir, due to Willas Tyrell being straight up the nicest and most balanced man in the series and Oberyn being a very decent person. Known for poisoning his weapons, as well as his battle-cry. Died from a mutual kill, with Gregor Clegane crushing his skull in rather graphically, but Oberyn getting the last laugh, since he got Clegane with a horribly painful and slow-acting venom which stretched his death over days or even weeks, during which time he was ruthlessly experimented upon by a mad scientist, meaning he avenged his sister Elia who Gregor had raped and murdered. [[Sanguinius|So to sum it up, he's a spear-wielding badass whose death in battle against a major villain was deeply traumatizing for all in-universe and out]].

*Quentyn Martell: Didn't realize he was in Dark Low Fantasy and thought he was in High Fantasy, poor bastard. A member of House Martell, sent to marry Daenerys to secure an alliance between the families since the original marriage plan to hook Arianne up with Viserys won't work with Viserys dead. Leaves Westeros and goes all the way to the city of Meereen to marry her, but he's too late, as she marries the Meereenese noble Hizdahr, and like Jorah he's not her type (Dany likes her bad boys). Tries to tame two of her dragons to impress her; the attempt goes wrong, he gets horribly burnt and gradually dies in agony from his wounds.
*The Sand Snakes: Oberyn's children. All daughters he had with various women throughout his travels (all consensual encounters, mind you, which actually says a lot about Westeros that it has to be said). Mixed race and all hot with various skills including combat training and mastery of poisons. Working with Doran and Ellaria in the books.
**[[C.S Goto|Ruined in the show where they don't accomplish anything, are given atrocious dialogue (the "you need the bad pussy" line comes to mind), aren't great fighters and get killed by Euron's men, except for the one who poisoned Myrcella; she gets captured and poisoned back by Cersei so an imprisoned Ellaria is forced to watch her die and decompose.]]</div></div>

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===House Bolton===

''"Our Blades Are Sharp"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Starks' most important (and most despised) vassal, a former arch-rival made of [[Grimdark]] because their entire theme [[Dark Eldar|revolves around Torture]] and they're [[Night Lords|thoroughly awful, dishonorable, sadistic cowards who can be counted on to do every dirty trick possible before even trying to fight fair. Their sigil is a crucified and flayed man]], their castle is [[Commorragh|a complex of constant suffering called the Dreadfort]], and just look at their House motto...all of which shows how stupid the Starks were for thinking they could control them. Tied with Red Wedding collaborators the Freys as the most thoroughly vile house in the entire setting (no mean feat, all things considered).
*Roose Bolton, ''The 'Leech Lord'': A Lawful Evil sociopathic health nut who's called the Leech Lord because he gets leeched regularly, believing they get rid of bad blood. Second-most powerful Lord in the North with ambitions to depose the Starks. Since the Starks are mostly unable to think like crafty people and are blinded by excessive honour this doesn't prove too difficult. He gets his wish when he stabs Robb Stark in the back, at his uncle's wedding no less, and has anyone associated with Robb killed. He then makes over Winterfell in his bloody image and is currently trolling Stannis. Believes in the abolished practice of "[[Rape|Droit du seigneur]]" (a tradition that allowed a lord to have sex with subordinate women, whether they wanted to or not) and killed at least one man for trying to hide his wife from Roose (before fathering Ramsay with her via rape). Believed that he and his son could be as evil as they wanted as long as no one found out. Killed by Ramsey in the show, which Ramsay tried to cover with a lie despite the witnesses to his actions. May also be dead in the books, since the letter Jon receives from Winterfell in book five is addressed from Lord Ramsay Bolton.
*Ramsay Snow/Bolton: <s>A Dark Elf with shaved ears in the wrong universe</s>. <s>The Joker of Westeros</s>. The Chaotic Evil incarnate bastard son of Roose Bolton and a peasant woman he raped [[Grimdark|(under the hanging corpse of the woman's husband, for fuck's sake!)]]. One of the most fucked up people in all of the Seven Kingdoms (alongside the Mountain, Joffrey, the original Reek, the pedophile marauder Rorge and Euron), because he [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|loves to torture and kill people openly for the lulz]], such as Theon Greyjoy, who he crippled, knocked his teeth out, castrated, and brainwashed into calling himself Reek. Reek was originally a peasant appointed to try and control a young Ramsay, but instead Ramsay warped him into a mentally unstable necrophiliac before killing Reek to fake his death, but Ramsay seemed to hold some twisted affection for him. He also sent Theon's severed appendage to Theon's dad in a cutesy box with a letter mockingly detailing his evilness. Will torture anyone who points out his illegitimate heritage even though now he's legally recognized as a Bolton. Also has a pack of hunting dogs he names after women he hunts, rapes and kills. Married a fake Arya Stark and regularly mistreats her, including forced bestiality. Not a fun guy to be around. The only reason he's gotten away with it for so long (as pointed out by his father) is that no one is strong enough to stand up to him yet, but [[Powder Keg of Justice|when they are]] he's going to be killed (especially if his fate in the show is anything to go by).
**In the show, he killed his father with a knife, fed his stepmother and newborn half-brother to his dogs, then married Sansa Stark and deflowered her via rape. Ramsay was such a monster even Iwan Rheon, THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED THE GUY, hoped he'd die horribly. He got his wish: The consequences of Ramsay's actions catch up with him when Jon Snow shows up with an army capable of threatening him, and after surprise reinforcements from Littlefinger and his own fucked-up teamkilling, the Starks crush the Bolton army, forcing Ramsay to flee back to Winterfell. Despite this, the gate is smashed down, and Jon disarms him and beats him quite brutally before detaining him to await trial. Before the trial Sansa sets his dogs on him, which he had deliberately starved so they would eat Jon. Apparently they found him quite tasty. For all that Season 6 of GoT is Skub, there likely aren't many who would object to this moment.
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===House Frey===

''"We Stand Together"''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> House of weasels who are always grumpy and have a thing for overreacting to perceived slights. Wouldn't be that important except for the fact that they own the only bridge over a strategically important river, and regularly extort anyone attempting to cross it...that, and performing the Red Wedding, AKA the Magnum Opus of Grimdark that single-handedly ensures they're [[Marines Malevolent|the most hated fucks in the whole setting in-universe and out.]] Simply put, there is '''nothing''' good or nice you can say about the Freys. They're ugly inside and out, cruel, treacherous, thoroughly dishonorable, and aren't even strong warriors, being a mix of incompetent dumbasses and sadistic cowards. They'd all make excellent Skaven (especially considering they could stand to be killed by some Lizardmen).

*Walder Frey: The ancient, terrible, ornery old man in charge of the Twins. Universally detested by his peers (and the audience) for being an amoral, sociopathic opportunist, which he returns in kind for said peers "looking down on him" (can't imagine why), and will readily betray an important ally for immediate gain, or if he feels he has been slighted in some minor way, with the aforementioned Red Wedding being the most infamous example of both. His descendants are literally so numerous that no one except GRRM himself has been able to count them all, so we aren't even going to attempt it (not helped by quite a few of them being named Walder as well). Now dead in the show due to getting his throat slit by a vengeful Arya after she serves him two of his sons as meat pies. </div></div>

===Minor Houses and non-Houses===
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'''Night's Watch'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Night's Watch are an apolitical force in charge of manning The Wall, a giant ice wall that separates the relative tranquillity of the south from the Lovecraftian fucked-up-itude of the true north. They are chronically undermanned and undersupplied since nobody believes their stories of a barbarian army or the impending zombie apocalypse. Basically everybody else thinks they're in a game of [[Diplomacy]] and the Night's Watch are the only ones who realize they're actually in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], though it's been so long since the last snow elf invasion that even they had forgotten about the undead hordes and focused too much on barbarians. Too add to their problems, they are overwhelmingly comprised of petty criminals who wanted to avoid the hangman, because "taking the black", as it's colloquially known, also brings with it a full pardon for any crime committed, even murder and treason (even rape, though rapists tend to be despised among the Night's Watch). Taking the black isn't also very popular, as a common joke in the Seven Kingdoms is that out 10 people, only would one would willfully take the black, the rest would rather get hanged. They also frequently serve as a convinient catch-all solution for Lords and nobles who fell out of favor, committed treason or were outwitted in the endless Westerosi wheel of politics; lucky for them because said Lords and Nobles are usually the only ones with any fighting experience that are part of the watch and make up their leadership. They've allied with the Wildings and the North, but in the TV show, the Night's King used the undead dragon Viserion to burn a hole through The Wall.
*Jeor Mormont, ''The Old Bear'': 997th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at the start of the series. Sees Jon Snow as something of a second son (since his own son Jorah was exiled for enslaving and refused to take the black for his crimes). Leads a ranging north of the Wall to investigate reports that the Others have returned. Ends up killed during a mutiny of survivors after the Others wiped out most of his force.
*Alliser Thorne: Prick of a knight who was favourite to be the next Watch Commander, but was passed over by Jon Snow. Unable to accept Jon Snow letting the Wildlings live on the other side of the wall in an alliance against the zombie hordes, he staged a coup against Jon. It failed because Jon was brought back to life. He is now dead in the show, having been executed for his treason by Jon Snow. Despite of his many personal failings, he's one of the very few capable fighters (and a pretty good one, even) of the Watch and a skilled commander. Took the Black after siding with the Targaryens during the Sack of King's Landing in the civil war.
*Aemon Targaryen: Maester of the Citadel at Castle Black. Despite being the third born son of King Maekar I Targaryen, he declined the right to sit on the Iron Throne. One of the few people in the series to die of old age, at 102.
*Samwell Tarly, ''The Slayer'': Fat bookworm who was forced to take the black after his father Randyl threatened to murder him for being unmanly. Jon Snow's best friend among the Night's Watch, and knows everything because he "read it in a book". Despite being a self-professed coward, Sam became the first person in thousands of years to slay an Other with an obsidian dagger. George Martin himself said Sam's based on Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. Since then, he has started improving his combat skills and balls (in more ways than one for the latter, finding his spine and losing his virginity). He abandons the Night's Watch to help fight the dead and tell Jon who he really is, and winds up becoming the new Grand Maester by the end of the show.
*Eddison Tollett, ''Dolorous Edd'': Probably the most badass member of the Night's Watch. Responds to situations by making sarcastic jokes about them, and known for being a grim motherfucker in a setting of grim motherfuckers. In the show he [[Awesome|became the new Lord Commander]] while Jon was dead, but gave the title back to Jon when he was brought back to life, and then Jon handed it right back because he needed to go sort out Ramsay Bolton. Dies in Season 8 at the Battle of Winterfell.
*Benjen Stark: The [[Dune|Duncan Idaho]] of this series, the dead guy all the other characters and all the ''readers'' love so much someone has to bring him back from the dead in later books. Benjen is Eddard Stark's youngest brother and the prime motivation why Jon wants to join the Night's Watch in the first place. Joined the Watch for reasons unknown and disappears without a trace even before Jon arrives. In the TV series, he returns as a benevolent Wight that retained his free will and helps Bran to get back to the Seven Kingdoms.
*Qhorin Half-Hand: Badass extraordinaire that killed a shitton of Wildlings in his long time of service, rumoured to have spent more time north of the Wall than anyone living southerner in the setting. Lets himself get killed by Jon in a gambit to earn Mance Rayders respect.
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'''Wildlings'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Groups of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who live north of the Wall. Mostly First Men by blood, they have been heading toward the Wall for the past decade with the reputed reemergence of the Others. Nomadic, aggressive, and very much believing in "might makes right", they do not get along with anyone south of The Wall since they view them as "Kneeling weaklings". Basically every Celtic/Scandinavian/barbarian stereotype combined.
*Mance Rayder, ''The King Beyond The Wall'': A Wildling orphan who was taken in by the Night's Watch, he became their best Ranger before he deserted to join his people. He united the Wildlings and lead them south to escape the Others. Also a trained bard, but that was not enough to save him from death in the show while he's merely MIA in the books.
*Tormund Giantsbane: Claims to have a ten-inch penis, and invites his enemies to use their mouths if they want to clean it. Cool as fuck old guy who [[Furry|fucks mother-bears]] in his free time. Tough as nails motherfucker who preaches the merits of using one's cock for everything. He teams up with Jon Snow for the fight against the White Walkers, then fucks off back to the north once the Night King is dead, making him one of the most sensible people on the show. He and Jon go off to be bros at the end of the show.
*Ygritte: Wildling woman who Jon Snow ends up falling for and who returns his affections. Has red hair which is considered lucky among the Wildlings. This being ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', she ends up dying because her worldview is not compatible with Jon's.
*Craster: A sick bastard, formerly a member of the Night's Watch turned polygamous isolationist. By the way, [[Grimdark|his current wives are his many daughters and granddaughters who he fucks regularly to have more children. Girls grow up to become more wives, boys get sacrificed to the Others]]. This keeps the Others at bay - and is implied to be a way the Others reproduce themselves, and that sanctuary is why the Night's Watch barely tolerates him. Fortunately, he's been killed off in the story and his offspring go their separate ways.
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'''Commoners, Knights, and Petty Lords'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Basically any character not associated with any of the Great Houses.
* Varys, ''The Spider'': The eunuch spymaster of Westeros. You can't take a shit in the Seven Kingdoms without Varys finding out where, when, and how watery or dry it was. He does this through paid informants and his "little birds", a spy network of children who sneak through the castle's passageways and air flues to eavesdrop on everyone. Somewhat of a paradoxical character, since his literal dicklessness, reputation and political power make every character extremely vary of him (it's more or less implied that the main thing keeping him in the small council is the fact that he has got enough shit on everyone to blackmail them into submission if they would dare step out of his line) but under the surface, he is the rare example of people in Westeros that isn't an entirely self-serving scumbag and seems to show genuine care and concern for the common folk [[Just as planned|(Even if his machinations frequently put commonors in peril, but hey, such is politics)]]. To that end, he manipulated events that, according to his plan, would end with a Targaryen on the throne, to permanently stabilize the realm and rid it of the aformentioned self-serving idiots. On a sidenote, he's one of the few, if not the only person to fully comprehend how dangerous Littlefinger actually is. In the books, he's currently trying to install an adolescent Targaryen on the Iron Throne (who probably isn't even one, but he got the looks) Dead in the show, having decided to try and put Jon on the throne instead of Daenerys; Jon says no, Tyrion sells him out when he realizes Jon absolutely means it, and Dany has Drogon barbecue him.
* Petyr Baelish, ''Littlefinger'': The Master of Coin (the ASOIAF equivalent of a treasurer) and the closest person the Game of Thrones world has to a [[Daemon Prince]] of [[Tzeentch]], up to even declaring "[[Chaos]] is a Ladder". A dangerous manipulator who manages to trick and steal his way to positions of lordship and wealth because no one takes him seriously, and stabs all the Lannisters in the back when they become inconvenient. As a child, he wanted Catelyn Stark and was tricked into thinking she wanted him when her sister Lysa fucked him while he was drunk. Challenged Catelyn's betrothed Brandon Stark, Ned's older brother who was murdered by Aerys, for her hand in marriage and got his ass kicked because he was a small skinny boy and Brandon Stark was a big strapping man, making that his start of darkness. The guy responsible, directly or indirectly, for the War of the Five Kings because he was the mastermind behind poisoning Jon Arryn, the capture and execution of Ned Stark, feeding several half-truths to Catelyn to motivate her to arrest Tyrion, and eventually Joffrey's death by having Dontos and Olenna Tyrell carry out the plan to kill Joffrey and letting Tyrion take the fall; but no one in the story knows this, not even Varys. People think he can pull gold out of thin air, but he's really been buying debt while letting Robert Baratheon's extravagances and Joffrey and Cersei's dipshittery pull the country into a serious debt of its own. So he's pledged himself to [[Chaos]] and destroying Westeros all because he couldn't have Catelyn as his girlfriend, though he changed his focus to her daughter Sansa now, making him a pedophile. Hasn't yet got his comeuppance in the books, but is currently dead in the show after he was out-gambitted by Sansa and killed by Arya (though the less said about how well executed this was, the better). According to GRRM, he's based on the title character from the Great Gatsby, even though he only really resembles the character when putting on an act. [[Erebus|Basically has the role of a treacherous figure who gives bad advice on purpose and is responsible for the series of events that lead to a massive, devastating war with horrible consequences, making him one of the vilest folks in the 'verse]].
*Gregor Clegane, ''The Mountain'': A 7' 8" 400 pound mass of testosterone, muscles, steroid overdose, [[Slaanesh|utter disregard for consent]], [[Khorne|and murderous RAGE]], Gregor is Tywin Lannister's top muscle. Killed his own father and sister and permanently scarred his brother. [[Beastmen|Hobbies include rape, arson, murder, and random torture]]; he's also been married a few times but not now with the implication he kept killing his wives. He played an important part in destroying the Targaryens by killing a couple of Rhaegar's kids in rather brutal fashion, then raping and murdering his wife. Spends a few novels doing Tywin's dirty work before a Trial by Champion leads to him dying after being poisoned by Oberyn Martell. Qyburn later resurrected him as... something... called "Ser Robert Strong", and is now even stronger, less prone to psychotic rages, and is completely obedient. He's based on accounts of French knight Gilles de Rais and maybe also the scriptural giant Goliath. In the show he goes on to torture Cersei's nun jailer to death in a brutal and unspecified fashion kills Qyburn during the Siege of King's Landing and then nearly kills his little brother, only for Sandor to tackle him through a collapsing wall and into a gigantic inferno that claims both. [[Honsou|Standing out as one of ''the'' evilest pieces of shit in a world filled with them]], to the point that even the author himself has labeled him the worst character in the series.
* Sandor Clegane, ''The Hound'': Younger brother to Gregor Clegane, called the Hound because of his hound-face helm, his family's heraldry, and being the king's hired muscle without being a knight. He hates knights due to the hypocrisy of being a professional "noble warrior" but mostly since his monstrous brother is a knight, showing it's not so much of a noble promotion. Terrified of fire after Gregor put his head against a brazier for playing with one of Gregor's old toys when they were children, burning half his face, but he's still the second-strongest person in Westeros. A brutal anti-hero with a soft spot for Sansa, but a better person than his brother. After falling sick from Biter's nasty teeth, he ends up being a silent monk burying people in the Silent Isles. In the show, he joins the Brotherhood without Banners and goes north to help fuck up the White Walkers. As of Season 8, he's survived the Battle of Winterfell and is riding south with Arya to put the boots to Gregor. Dies killing his now undead brother in a pretty epic fight amidst the crumbling ruins of the Red Keep.
*Grand Maester Pycelle: A shrewd, dangerous man putting on a "harmless old man act" and a high ranking scholar from the science/medical guild the Maesters. The longest-serving member of the King's advisory staff, and is actually Tywin Lannister's biggest lackey. He convinced the Mad King to let Tywin in as Baratheon's armies were marching on the capital, where Tywin proceeded to sack the city and claim it for Robert. Gets his head bashed in by Varys in the books and murdered by Qyburn in the show.
* Qyburn: Formerly a maester, who was kicked out of the order for unethical experiments on the living (taking people and performing vivisections to be precise). Introduced as a part of a mercenary company serving Roose Bolton, which should be a red flag. He moves up in the world when he's sent to escort Brienne and Jaime back to King's Landing and ends with Cersei employing him to replace Pycelle as "science advisor" and eventually Varys's Spymaster. Serves Cersei loyally as long as she lets him indulge his sick experiments, serving as a black magic variety of the court mage. He has resurrected Gregor Clegane as... something. [[Fabius Bile]] if he traded his robot limbs, eugenics and power armour for necromancy. He overestimated his hold on Gregor and got his head caved in for it as of the second-to-last episode of the show.
*Barristan Selmy, ''The Bold'': Knight of the Kingsguard. Which Kingsguard? Take your pick. He's served pretty much every king since Aerys and understandably feels pretty bad about it. Another sad old man who pretty much just wants to die until he decides to go pledge his services to Daenerys. Even in his old age, he is considered one of the most dangerous men in Westeros. [[Fail|Dead in the show]] (to be fair they gave him a huge last stand), but [[Awesome|alive]] and [[Roboute Guilliman|appointed himself Daenerys' steward in her absence to try and fix Meereen's situation in the books]].
*Melisandre, ''The Red Witch'': A priestess of R'hllor, the god of fire. Proclaimed Stannis to be the messiah-king and is doing everything in her power to make sure he wins (considerable given that she can scry, make shadow baby assassins and set things on fire with her mind). She'd be pretty bro-tier if her god wasn't so vicious. As it stands she's kind of in the grey (in the books, the show seems to zig-zag on her being evil 'cos the showrunners seem to hate religion). Most of the people she set on fire deserved it, and she hasn't ''succeeded'' in killing any babies yet. Show version now dead from suicide via rapid ageing after ensuring the Living defeat the Dead.
*Jorah Mormont: A knight and son of Jeor Mormont, exiled for trying to sell poachers into slavery and eventually joining the exiles of House Targaryen. He is offered a pardon in exchange for spying on the Targaryens but ultimately decides to stay with them after falling in love with Daenerys. Unfortunately, he gets friend-zoned hard. Despite saving her life from an assassin while she was pregnant, she still votes him off the Khalassar after learning he was a spy. He still loves her and follows her in secret, though. In the show, he goes on a quest to prove himself to her and contracts the dangerous disease Greyscale (it's like the unholy lovechild of smallpox and leprosy), but he gets cured and is now back at her side. He dies protecting her at the Battle of Winterfell.
*[[This Guy|Davos Seaworth]], ''The Onion Knight'': A former smuggler and bannerman to House Baratheon, and a top-tier hype man, pulling speeches out on the spot on several occasions to convince people to support Stannis and later Jon. One of the most Noblebright characters in the setting, which really isn't bad for a man that only just now learned how to read. During Roberts Rebellion he ran a blockade with a cargo of contraband onions to a castle Stannis Baratheon was besieged in. In exchange for the food he had, Stannis knighted Davos, [[Rules Lawyer|but Stannis's law-worshipping mindset compelled him to remove four digits from his left hand]]. Despite this, Davos has served Stannis with unquestioning loyalty, because Stannis knighting him gave his children a future. The fact that Stannis's war for the throne has ended up killing several of his sons hasn't dented his loyalty at all. **Doesn't like Melisandre because he sees her as a user and her beliefs as brutal. He's a devout follower of the Faith of the Seven in the books and the first season of the show [[C.S Goto|but is clumsily retconned into an anti-religious atheist in later show seasons]]. In the show, he's now pledged to DA NORF and is basically Jon's Hand of the King, except he doesn't get a fancy pin. He survives the Battle of Winterfell and the Second Sack of King's Landing and becomes Master of Ships in the final episode of the show.
*Shae: A former camp follower and Tyrion Lannister's squeeze for most of the story. Fled from an abusive family and became a camp follower to earn a living. Seems to fall in love with Tyrion, but it turns out she's a gold-digging bitch. When Tyrion doesn't marry Shae she sells him out to Cersei for a better offer, then fucks Tywin when she realizes Cersei won't keep her promise. Tyrion found her in his father's bed and strangled her to death with a necklace for betraying him. The discovery of Shae's corpse in Tywin's bed - posthumously outing him as a whoremonger - upsets Cersei to the point she unpersons Shae.
*Bronn: A mercenary who acts as Tyrion's enforcer and personal killer until Cersei outbids him and he settles down with a little wife and title. Routinely kills knights by exploiting how arrogant and stupid they are even after becoming one himself. Only in it for the money, which he'll happily tell you himself. The only character other than Littlefinger to end every book in a better position than he started it. In the show, he makes the very sensible decision to sit out the fighting and wait for his promised castle (Riverrun if Cersei wins, Highgarden if Daenerys wins). He gets Highgarden and is named Lord Paramount of the Reach and Master of Coin in the final episode. Some nobles bitch about the idea of an upjumped thug receiving such high and exalted positions until he points out that their Houses were probably founded by people a lot like him.
* Brienne of Tarth, ''The Beauty'': Surprisingly badass lady knight wannabe (since no women can be knighted), legendarily unattractive but still pretty idealistic despite the shit she gets for her looks. Fate frequently gives her the shit end of the stick, because no matter how hard she tries to finish her quests, she ends up failing or stuff happens that makes it impossible. Secretly crushes on Renly and unaware he's gay. After he dies, Brienne switches her loyalty to Catelyn and helps her bring Jaime to King's Landing as Tyrion promised Sansa's return in exchange for Jaime. She later developed a crush on Jaime. Things don't go well because Jaime lost his hand and the Red Wedding happened. Next, Jaime sends her out to find and keep Sansa safe to make good on Tyrion's promise, since he isn't the complete dick everyone thinks he is. Brienne ends up getting captured by Cat, now known as Lady Stoneheart and an insane undead, who was going to hang Brienne for working with Jaime. Brienne was spared at the last moment to capture/manipulate Jaime.
**In the show, she's now sworn to House Stark and gets knighted by Jaime just before the Battle of Winterfell and then she and Jaime hook up afterwards, only for him to take off and break her heart, because remember kids, he'd rather fuck his sister than fuck an ugly chick. She is now Lady Commander of the Kingsguard as of the final episode.
* Lyanna Mormont: A badass ten-year-old girl who inherits [[Kislev|Bear Island]] after her mother and older sister die horribly in the Riverlands - at least if we are going by the show; in the book, her mother is still alive somewhere [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|waging a Guerilla War]] in the Neck and her older sister Alysanne is the de-facto head of House Mormont. Her activities include pimp-slapping bitches, leading men twice as old as her, and being completely loyal to the Starks despite all their misfortunes. [[Awesome|"Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK."]] She dies killing an undead giant at the Battle of Winterfell, which is pretty badass.
* Wyman Manderly, ''Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse'': The Lord of White Harbour and one of the few Northerners who worship the Seven. Fervently loyal to House Stark, he pays lip-service to the Iron Throne long enough for his eldest son to return home, all to mask a plan to restore the Starks to power, mostly by destabilising the Frey-Bolton alliance, building a navy, marshalling the forces of the lands east of the White Knife river, "losing" Freys in the wilderness and sending Lord Davos Seaworth to rescue Rickon Stark from Skagos. His favourite food is lamprey, although he has also developed a taste for Frey Pie. Also a remarkably graceful dancer, and can survive taking a knife to the throat.
** Wylla Manderly: Granddaughter to the above. Another badass little girl, her activities include openly declaring undying loyalty to House Stark and dying her hair green. She and Lyanna Mormont would probably be best friends if they met. [[Awesome|"The city is built upon the land [the Starks] gave us. In return, we swore that we should always be their men. Stark men!"]]
* Jon Umber, ''The Greatjon'': At first he seems to be your stereotypical, boisterous Northern Lord. However, he becomes one of Robb's most loyal supporters, being first to declare him as 'King in the North' after Ned's execution. Had his moment of awesome [[Awesome|when he killed and wounded four Freys at the Red Wedding, all the while being drunk and needing eight additional men to take him down.]]
* Beric Dondarrion, ''The Lightning Lord'': Minor lord who agreed to head an expedition to take out Gregor Clegane. This being Game of Thrones, however, his party is ambushed by the Mountain and is beaten rather badly, and he loses his life in the process. Thanks to his drunken Red Priest friend, however, he manages to come back not once, but eight times, and each time he comes back, he becomes more powerful, though at the cost of his memory. He now heads an outlaw faction of grimdark Robin Hood types called "The Brotherhood Without Banners", who are dedicated to punishing those who abuse and mistreat the smallfolk. Ironically, he's one of the few book characters to have died (permanently) in the books but remain alive in the show, except now he's dead for real as of the Battle of Winterfell.
* Thoros of Myr: Aforementioned drunken priest who is dedicated to R'hllor, though at first he doesn't really give a rat's ass about the Red God, as he prefers to party it up with wine and women, but after he 'accidentally' resurrects Beric, he becomes quite serious about his religion and vows to curb his excesses in drinking. Dies on a mission beyond the Wall to capture a wight (show-version). Bane of swordsmiths across the lands, as he likes to routinely ignite his swords with Wildfire when he gets a hold of some of the stuff, which completely destroys the blade.
* The Brave Companions: Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be a faction in this setting as fucked up as the Boltons, Freys, and Ironborn, these guys come along and prove you wrong. A bunch of "mercenaries" who are really more just complete and utter lunatics that are incapable of doing what they're paid to in any way except the bloodiest and nastiest, all with maximum [[Rape]] thrown in too (especially if Brienne of Tarth is involved, because every single fucking one of these guys wants, tries to, or threatens to rape her at some point). Led by Vargo Hoat, a goat-helmet wearing maniac who likes cutting body parts off of his victims before killing them. The rest of his band consists of a bunch of other sickos who are every bit as bad as him (except Rorge, who is even worse). To put this into perspective, the member of the group who is a pedophile priest (Septon Utt), is the ''least'' evil one, if only because he actually regrets what he does and is suggested to do what he does because of urges he can't control. The rest? Forget about it. After Vargo's gruesome death at the hands of the even worse Gregor Clegane, the surviving Brave Companions scatter, effectively dissolving the group but meaning a bunch of these assholes are still active. Cut from the TV show completely.
** Rorge: Gregor Clegane 2.0, being ''another'' big, brutish, psychotic monster who rapes people and murders children and who is a Chaotic Evil super-thug through and through (because apparently we needed another one in the setting), with the added bit of awfulness of being a child-hating pedophile. Along with Gregor Clegane, one of the absolute worst characters in the entire series (a high bar, as you've probably gathered by now). Killed by Brienne. In the TV show, he's a completely forgettable one-shot, throwaway character who gets killed by Arya before he can really do anything and doesn't come anywhere close to the awfulness of his book version.
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'''The Free Cities'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Nine city-states to the West of Essos, for the most part, the old colonies of the Valaryian Freehold. Mostly they are ruled by Merchant Princes. They look down on the Westerosi for being a bunch of up jumped backwards war-mongering morons who are only a few silverware sets and maesters away from absolute barbarism. In turn, the Westerosi look down on the Free Cities as being money-grubbing effete cowards ruled by cheesemongers who use bribery, tall walls and dirty tricks to get ahead in the world.

* Illyrio Mopatis: A rich fat bastard and a Magister of Pentos. Old buddies with Varys and a bigtime schemer.
* [[Officio Assassinorum|The Faceless Men]]: A cult of shape-shifting assassins who worship The Many-Faced God of death based in the free city of Braavos that give up personal identity. They claim descent from escaped Valyrian slaves who considered death to be a better fate than perpetual slavery. Their mission hence became being servants of the Many-Faced God of Death. You can hire them to off your rivals, but they request a steep and equivalent price. They also offer a painless, quick suicide for downtrodden and desparate people by the means of poison. Their motto is "Valar Morghulis": All Men Must Die.
* Xaro Xhoan Daxos: One of the thirteen leaders of the city of Qarth. A flamboyant, languid, bald rich man who looks after Daenerys while she stays in Qarth and gives her many gifts. He wants her dragons as much as anyone else and even tries to marry her despite his homosexual tendencies. He stops wanting the dragons later in the book series after seeing [[RIP AND TEAR|their work in Astapor]], and no longer wants her around as her anti-slavery stance is hampering his wealth, so he offers Daenerys ships to leave the area and declares war on her when she refuses. In the show, he's heterosexual, helps steal her dragons, fucks one of her handmaidens and gets locked in a vault for conspiring to have her killed. He's also black and fat in the show when he's white and lanky in the books, being Qartheen and all.
* Syrio Forel: The former First Sword of Braavos (aka the ruler's personal bodyguard) and later Arya's mentor in King's Landing. He teaches her the way of Braavosi fencing, called "Water Dancing", and sacrifices himself to save her from Lannister thugs, taking down at least six of them with a wooden sword. May have inadvertently set her on the path of becoming a badass assassin by telling her of his belief in the God of Death.

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'''The Dothraki'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Horse people who live in a country of endless grass plains referred to by others as the Dothraki sea. They only have one city, called Vaes Dothrak, which is less of a city and more of a place they all meet when important things have to be discussed. Have traits borrowed from several cultures, including Mongols and Native Americans, all filtered through European misconceptions of those cultures of course, such as the Dothraki's antipathy for heavy armour, despite the fact that the Mongols were very heavily armoured and also excelled as infantry, see the Battle of Leignitz. They fear the ocean because of its size and the fact that horses won't drink from it, calling it the "poison water".

* Khal Drogo: An Expy of <s>Genghis Khan</s> Yesukhei Baatyr (his son would have been the equivalent to Chinggis Khaan). Leads the largest Khalassar among the Dothraki. Despite being a barbarian warlord, Drogo is surprisingly intelligent and treats Daenerys well. After an assassin tries to kill her he promises to conquer Westeros for her and their unborn son and immediately starts raiding towns for slaves and ships. At one town he gets cut in a leadership challenge and Daenerys gets a captive wise woman to heal him. However, the woman hates him because his tribe destroyed her hometown, raped/slaughtered or enslaved her friends and raped her three times so she curses him to become catatonic (along with killing his unborn son), leading a devastated Daenerys to perform an arguable mercy kill by smothering him with a pillow. After she burns herself, her stillborn child and the wise woman on his funeral pyre, Daenerys survives and it brings her dragons to life. GRRM named Drogo after [[The Lord of the Rings|Frodo's father]].
* Daenerys' handmaidens.
** Doreah: Daenerys' handmaiden and a wedding gift from Illyrio. A woman from Lysene brought by her brother to teach her how to pleasure a man. In the book she dies of fever and starvation crossing a desert, in the TV show, she betrays Daenerys for [[Salamanders|Xaro's BBC]] and gets locked in a vault to starve to death.
** Irri: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches Daenerys how to ride a horse. [[PROMOTIONS|Also pleasures Daenerys twice after catching her masturbating once]], yet this canonical girl-on-girl action was left out of the show. The character was even killed off there when she survived in the books, but in this case, it was because her actress' visa had expired rather than [[C.S. Goto|author railroading]].
** Jhiqui: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches her the Dothraki language and squabbles with Irri over wanting one of Daenerys' bodyguards when he becomes a badass. Also dies in the TV show while staying alive so far in the books.

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'''Slavers Bay'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">A civilization of [[Stupid Evil]] slavers. The remains of a previous civilization that was once the big powerful empire thanks to having phalanxes of obedient, pain-resistant soldiers which Valyria conquered a long while ago because phalanxes don't do too well against motherfucking dragons. They are ruled by wealthy slave mongers who buy slaves, train them up to do specific things and generally are a bunch of stuck up, decadent, puppy-eating (literally) assholes. Basically a civilization so repugnant even most hippies will be cheering when Dany decides to conquer them.

* The Unsullied: Eunuch phalanx fighting slave soldiers trained the Spartan way to produce totally obedient infantry that never break ranks. They also don't feel pain due to drinking a special drink daily, and each one has to take a new name from the name box each day so they can't develop a sense of identity. At least until Dany "bought" the lot of them, had them sack the city which trained them, and freed them.
* Grey Worm: The Unsullied Commander and a no-nonsense badass. When given a chance to take a new name he keeps his slave name because it's the name he had when freed so he considers it lucky. He is completely loyal to Daenerys, considering her his saviour, and in the show, he falls in love with fellow freed-woman, Missandei. This being ASOIAF, however, he can only watch helplessly as his lover is beheaded in front of him by the Mountain. This drives him into a rage, and he eagerly takes part in the sacking of King's Landing in revenge for her death. After the war is over and both Daenerys and Cersei are dead, he takes the Unsullied forces to Naath, in order to fulfil his promise to Missandei that he'd protect her homeland.
* Strong Belwas: A fat but skilled eunuch gladiator. Loves liver and onions and referring to himself in the third person. Travelling companion/guide of Ser Barristan. Has an awesome scene where he beats the champion of Meereen then mocks the Meereenese by taking a shit in their direction and wiping his ass on their dead champion's cloak. Also saves Daenerys from eating poisoned sweets. [[FAIL|Left out of the show]].
* Daario Naharis: A Tyroshi mercenary captain who dyes his hair blue. Betrays his fellow commanders for Daenerys because he loves her as a queen. Fortunately for him, Daenerys loves him back and they pursue a romance for a time, though she doesn't marry him as she's still otherwise smart enough to know she has to save herself for a political marriage. Goes to Yunkai as a hostage in the war on Meereen. Also potentially a shapeshifter, if the show is to be believed.
*Missandei: A young female slave with a remarkable talent for linguistics and one of the more empathetic people in this dark world, Missandei is freed by Daenerys during her campaign to liberate Slaver's Bay, eventually becoming one of her closest confidants and advisers. While a child in the books, in the show Missandei is a grown woman, falls in love with the Unsullied leader Grey Worm, but later is captured by Cersei and beheaded by the zombified Mountain in front of all her friends, but not before telling her friends to burn the Lannisters to ashes.

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===Magic and Gods===
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> The world of ASOIAF has various religions and faiths abound, just like in real life. Similarly, they range between fucking awesome to utterly useless. Dissimilarly, some of them have very tangible, undeniable magic powers, although it is said that the magic became stronger after the rebirth of Dragons into the world, and that in the Far East, where people worship [[Lovecraft|Lovecraft references]], that magic is still alive and well, but those are all just rumors.

Blood Magic seems to be the most consistent, with practitioners paying steep prices for magic, while the druidic magic of the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods still hold strong to this day, they just don't have any practitioners left.

Magic and the Afterlife is a theme in the setting as well, most expounded by the faithful of R'hllor: fire is associated with the warmth of life, as well as light; on the other hand, death is associated with cold and darkness; death carries a harsh finality in the series, ''except when it doesn't:'' as they've shown in special cases with those resurrected by R'hllor, rebirth comes with a price, and not everyone comes back ''fully there''.

*[[Ecclesiarchy|The Faith of the Seven]]: The Catholic Church/Church of England stand-in mixed with elements of Hinduism, which gets both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters associated with it (though mostly only in the books for the former). Holds an anti-slavery stance. The god/s are considered seven aspects of one deity with three male aspects (The Smith, the Father, the Warrior), three female aspects (The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone) and a sexless one representing Death, a bit akin to how the Hindu God Vishnu has multiple aspects. The places of worship are called Septs, and their system includes Septons, nun-equivalents called Septas and a Pope equivalent called a High Septon. The High Septons all give up their names when they become one to confuse future historians (and readers).
** High Septon 1 Fatfuck: A fat, greedy man who used the position for personal gain. He ended up being [[Grimdark|torn apart in a riot]], because the people resented that he had enough food to stay fat while they were starving.
** High Septon 2 Lannister Puppet: Successor of High Septon Fatfuck. Chosen by Tyrion so the Faith would be loyal to the Lannisters. Only ''slightly'' corrupt, being a pro-Lannister yes-man. Murdered on Cersei's order in the book, while in the show he's retconned into a whoremonger who gets deposed by the Sparrows (see below).
** High Septon 3/The High Sparrow: Successor of High Septon Lannister Puppet. After the second High Septon shown in the present day of the story died, the smallfolk burst into the meeting to pick a successor and ordered their chosen candidate to be put in charge when his original successor was caught whoremongering. He'd been a wandering preacher beforehand, and his feet were dark and gnarled from lots of walking. When he reaches the position he starts [[gets shit done|getting things done]]. Since he was appointed by a smallfolk religious movement called Sparrows, he's given the moniker "The High Sparrow". The nobility underestimates him, either due to having other matters or disregard for religious people, but he turns out to be smart, well-meaning and somewhat ruthless. Under the High Sparrow, he and the other clergymen sell their fancy clothes and decorations [[Noblebright|replacing them with simple wool tunics, using the money to buy food and clothes for the poor in King's Landing]]. He also has their Knights-Templar-equivalent reformed to [[Inquisition|protect the faithful and help them root out]] [[heresy]] and sin. He also outwits Cersei and has her arrested and tried for all her evil deeds. While Cersei's scheming does lead to Margaery's arrest, Cersei confesses to some crimes while concealing others, leading to Cersei taking a nude walk of penance in front of the entire city. After this, he somewhat reined in the nobles' politicking to actually look after the commoners and the Faith, though this does make some enemies. In the show, while he still talks of helping the Smallfolk, he and the Sparrows are [[C.S Goto|flanderized]] from assorted smallfolk and clergymen tired of the nobles' lawlessness and power plays into one-dimensional stereotypes and thinly-veiled jabs at the Catholic Church [[Imperial Truth|in a shoe-horned anti-religion message]]. While they do arrest Cersei and Margaery like in the books, the High Sparrow's plans all come to nothing, as during the trial most of the Faith, including the High Sparrow himself, get blown to Kingdom Come when Cersei has her agents ignite a massive amount of magical napalm underneath the Great Sept. In the books they're much more like Martin Luther and the Lutherans, except that the Protestant Reformation wins outright.
* [[Old Ones|Old Gods]]: Native American/Japanese Kame/Druid/nature spirits that reside in places called Godswoods. The original practitioners of this faith were the Children of the Forest, non-elf looking Wood Elves, whose magics were responsible for smashing an entire Southern Warhost with tsunamis (leaving only a narrow isthmus between the North and everyone else), the Wall (it was a collaborative effort with humans), and allowing people to look into the past, and (confirmed in the show at least) influence it.
**Their powers are limited to the North, though, where the last remaining Godswoods remain, but they can grant gifted individuals awesome psychic powers like Warging (mind-controlling animals) and Greensight (Time Travel). For some reason, Martin claims they're based off the Norse Gods. Probably has to do with the way the Vikings made sacrifices to their gods, by hanging them in Ash trees, a symbol for the World Tree Yggdrasil. The Weirwood trees are sacred to the followers of the Old Gods in a similar way. Mostly worship of them is quiet and informal.
*R'hllor: The God of Fire and Light, and like the Old Gods, actually shows evidence for existing. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He gets shit done]], being one of the most common faiths East of Westeros, and his priests have powers such as fire magic and motherfucking Resurrection. Has a nasty habit for burning heretics, though. GRRM said this faith is roughly based (read: poorly modelled after) upon Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism. His nemesis is The Great Other: the god of cold and darkness, the leader of the Others, and prophesied to be defeated by the chosen one, or messianic figure: [[Star Child|Azor Ahai/The Prince That Was Promised]], a figure who is the prophesied warrior that will fight with the Great Other/Night's King during the Apocalypse. Interestingly enough, the prophecy may not refer to a single person, but three (Jon, Tyrion/Bran, and Daenerys). Supposedly, one of these three will also receive an [[Emperor's Sword|awesome flaming sword called "Lightbringer"]].
**R'hllor is very popular among the slaves and poor of the East, though Eastern nobles hate him because of that association. It's actually hard-to-tell how many "miracles" ascribed to him are actually real miracles. Stannis, absolute chad though he is, has a sword called "Lightbringer" meant to evoke the mythical one, but Aemon has [[Bullshit|noticed that it doesn't give off any heat]].
**For obvious reasons, they are ''very excited'' that there are Dragons again.
* Him of Many Faces: The god of the Dead of the religion whose followers are the [[Officio Assassinorum|Faceless Men]]. According to his cult of assassins, whom Arya joins, all gods of death are just him: since every religion has a god of death of some sort, he ''must'' be the only one that's real. Of course, your mileage may vary as to whether he's real or not, though his most awesome followers are granted shapeshifting abilities and powers to be the ultimate assassins.
* Drowned God: Cthulhu combined with Odin. Runs an underwater Valhalla were all Ironborn go whey they either if they drowned at sea, the men die a manly death or the women die in childbirth. Probably doesn't exist or he would have done something about Euron Greyjoy... at least in the books. There, Euron is [[Imperial Truth|proudly scornful]] of him, and his brother Aeron fruitlessly and endlessly mutters "no godless man can sit the Seastone Chair". In the show, Euron is perfectly happy to go through the traditional Drownie coronation ritual and Aeron performs it.
* The Night's King: This is completely different depending on whether you prefer the [[oldfag|books]] or [[newfag|show]]. Book version: A long time ago, when the Night's Watch was just barely getting set up, its Lord Commander, the thirteenth in line, decided to climb over the Wall and explore some. While in the woods to the north of the Wall, he found a beautiful [[Monstergirls|Other female]]. He fell in love with her, had [[/d/|sex with her on top of the Wall]], which somehow changed him into an albino version of [[Star Wars|Darth Maul]], and set himself up as King of the Wall, making everyone in the Watch his slaves and sacrificial fodder. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with the Starks and the Wildlings, and so they banded together to free the Watch and kick his ass, which they managed to do successfully. Now everyone thinks him as dead or a myth. Show version: he was the very first White Walker ever created by the Children, and he decided to get back at them by wiping out all life. Also, whilst he was apparently beaten in the ancient past and sealed away behind the Wall, he's still "alive" and well, [[Daemonculaba|turning infant human boys into new White Walkers]]. Also, he can apparently raise up entire legions of undead, just by raising his arms and looking completely smug about it; unlike regular Others, who can just raise up maybe a village at most. Given that he's the resident [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] of the series, it makes sense that he can take down a dragon with seemingly little effort (a simple throw of his spear), and resurrect it to be his personal steed a la Arthas. (Whether that particular nonsense is going to show up in the books is up in the air, it's suitably grimdark and not particularly [[derp]] so it might.) Then he used the dragon to blow a hole in the Wall and begin [[The End Times]] for Westeros. But [[FAIL|dead]], thanks to Arya's magic ninja haxx which let her [[what|kill the BBEG and his entire race and army of zombies ''in one blow.'']]
** The Others/The White Walkers: A mysterious race from beyond the Wall, known to [[newfag|HBO fans]] as "the White Walkers". Can be described as ice demons/snow elves with necromancy. Eight thousand years ago, they invaded Westeros during a decades-long winter (even longer than the usual years-long winters) known as "the Long Night". With an army of undead warriors, they proceeded to fuck Westeros up every which way to [[Sunday]] before the locals finally drove them out, established the Night's Watch, and built the Wall to keep them out. Like all fantasy aspects of ASOIAF, they are very cliched.
**In the TV series, it's revealed that they were created from human captives by "The Children", the pseudo-[[Elf]] fair folk race that lived in Westeros before humanity arrived, as an attempt to create a super-weapon. The idea was since humanity bred faster than the Children could keep up with, they would create icy [[lich]]-creatures that could create [[undead]] soldiers, and these would then wipe out all human life. Instead, it went disastrously wrong because it turned out that the Children actually couldn't control what they'd created, so the Others [[Ork|just want to exterminate '''all''' life.]] In both versions the Night's King is in control.
*'''Other Eastern Magic/Religions''' - The further and further east you go, the more GRRM scatters Lovecraft references to give the world flavour, like the Shadowlands and its cities of oily, black stone, Leng, and [[Deep Ones|fish people]]. They're just references, though, and will likely never be important.
**The Unsullied have their own goddess, the Lady of Spears, [[Slaanesh|whose altar they burn their dicks on as offerings]].
**The slavers worship a harpy goddess and justify their slavery through her.
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==Locations==

'''Westeros''': The continent where about 80% of the plot takes place. Scotland in the North, Siberia/Northern Scandinavia beyond the wall, Moorish Spain in the South, with the rest being England as far as climate is concerned, only much, much larger.
*The North: By far the largest of the Seven Kingdoms in size, and the least in population. [[Naggaroth|A rocky, cold and dangerous landscape where life barely tolerable]] ([[Norsca|although it's still preferrable to the eldrich lands beyond the wall]]), sometimes it even snows in summer, giving you a general idea why it's quite a shitty place to be in when compared with the more southern kingdoms. Living in it are the Northmen, culturally an inbetween of Northern English and Scots. Most of them still revere the Old Gods and practice traditions that feel very alien to those living in the south, of the First Men culture before the Andal Invasion, still holding out here and the Iron Islands. It's also damn near unconquerable by conventional means due to the narrow isthmus between it and the south being a noxious swamp; . Its ruling house at the beginning of the Story is House Stark, later House Bolton; Its capital is Winterfell.
*Iron Islands: Large, rocky archipelago off the coast of the North and the Riverlands. Their bleak and inhospitable landscape is the major reason why the Ironmen culture, the other hold out of the First Men culture in Westeros which has the unique blend of only political and not cultural Andal influence and lack of Children of the Forest influence as Weirwoods don't grow on islands and only First Men humans ever lived here during those times, is so centered around pillaging and raiding; you can't grow crops on rock. Does have a decently sized economy based around metal working, but nowhere near enough to support its populace. Their capital is Pyke.
*Riverlands: As the name says, the Riverlands are marked by several large rivers flowing through it and the large fertile valleys surrounding them. The historical whipping boy of the continent after the Andal Invasion took over the old First Men realms (minus the North and the Iron Islands), constantly fought over by the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, the Iron Islands and the Vale, to the point that it was under Iron Islands rule when Aegon Targaryen unified the continent minus Dorne. Gets buttfucked the hardest during the War of the Five Kings by a metric ton; first by the Mountain carrying out a campaign of terror against the civilian populace on Tywin's orders and second by most of the major fights between the Lannisters and the Starks taking place there. Honestly, after all the fighting, raping and pillaging happening in the Riverlands, one must wonder how many people are actually still left in them. Their ruling house is House Tully (later House Baelish); its Capital is Riverrun (later Harrenhal).
*Vale of Arryn: Mountainous Region east of the Riverlands home to (supposedly) the finest knights in Westeros due to them having constant field practice in crushing rebellion after rebellion of the native <s>Irish</s> Mountain Tribes (think Forsworn from Skyrim, only a lot more foul-mouthed) and having an absolute abundance of tiny territories to give out. The population lives more densely packed in the few large cities and townships that exist here due and traversing them is dangerous. Its ruling house is House Arryn, its capital The Eyrie, '''the''' hardest castle to take in Westeros as it is built on a mountaintop. Gulltown, one of the cities of Westeros, is the main economic hub.
*Westerlands: The second-smallest Kingdom in size but by far the richest due to its abundance of Gold and Silver Mines. Has a proud tradition of fucking everyone over by the means of money, politics or both combined. Also has a substantial importance as a major trading and naval hub in the city of Lannisport, which is the largest port on the western side of the continent. Its ruling house is House Lannister, its capital Casterly Rock. Casterly Rock was the capital of the old Kings, House Casterly, which was outsmarted by [[Lukas the Trickster|Lann the Clever]], who married the last surviving daughter and founded House Lannister.
*Crownlands: The lands directly controlled by the Iron Throne, surrounding a big bay, with a rather pleasant, mild climate. Centered around the capital King's Landing, which gets an entry of its own. Its ruling house is always the house of the current kings. Formerly divided between the Riverlands and the Stormlands.
**King's Landing: The capital of the seven kingdoms and by far its largest city. It houses every important institution on the continent, most importantly the Red Keep, where the King of the Seven Kingdoms resides and the Great Sept of Baelor, the religious center of the Faith of the Seven. Aside from the Red Keep and the Great Sept, a filth ridden, downtrodden shithole that is rife with poverty and criminals whereever you may set foot; the City Guard is openly corrupt and acts more like a government-approved gang of thugs. It seems to be something of an unofficial sport among all chacters in the books to never say anything good the city. Architecturally described like Medieval London, at the size of 1600s Paris.
*The Reach: The second-largest of the Seven Kingdoms, and the most populous. Its wide plains, dominated by fields and plantings serve as the breadbasket of the Seven Kingdoms. Also home to the oldest city in Westeros, Oldtown, which in turn is home to the Citadel of the Maesters. Its ruling house is Tyrell, its capital Highgarden. House Tyrell is matrilineally descended from Garth Greenhand like many other houses. The old ruling family, House Gardener, Garth's direct descendants, was wiped out when Aegon unleashed his dragons, with the then Lord of House Tyrell (at this point permanent stewards to House Gardener), was placed in control as he was married to the last Gardener female.
*Stormlands: The lands of House Baratheon, a mix of forested mountains and steep, stony shores: so-named for the very frequent storms that batter its coast. The weather here is so bad, their capital is known as Storm's End because all previous castles were destroyed by the weather, so this one had to be built <s>by a competent Northman architect</s> with magic. In spite of the dangerously bad weather, the area can be quite beautiful when not being battered by the elements. The Baratheons are descended from a loyal general who served the original Aegon, who was also rumored to be his half-brother. After Robert ascended the throne, control of the Stormlands was left to his youngest brother, Renly, while the middle-brother, Stannis, was assigned to guard Robert's back on the much-smaller, less prestigious island of Dragonestone.
*Dorne: The southernmost region of Westeros and the hottest (in more ways than just temperature), consists of rocky deserts in its center and lush, meditterrean areas on its coasts. The Dornish people differ a lot from other Westerosi in ethnicity and culture and have a different origin, that of the migrating Rhoynar people interbreeding with the then relatively isolated local Westerosi. [[Dune|Dorne was also the only Kingdom to successfully resist conquest by the Targaryens]] and was only brought into the fold through political marriages, and their rulers retain the title of Prince (the Rhoynar and the local Westerosi don't use king or queen, they use prince or princess), not afforded to anyone else not of the Royal Family. Its ruling house is Martell, its capital Sunspear.
*The Wall: A wall of ice of gargantuan proportions erected by the First Men to protect themselves against the Others/White Walkers long ago that marks the nothern border of Westeros proper and runs across it from west to east for three hundred miles. In the times when the Night's Watch was under full strength, it was an impenetrable fortification against anything that might dare to cross it, not just because of its sheer dimensions, but also the implication that the wall itself is reinforced by eldrich magic keeping the horrors beyond the wall at bay via unnatural means. Nowadays only three of its 19 keeps are permanently manned, leaving wide gaps in the Night's Watch defense against Wildlings, who sometimes climb over it to raid the South. The Night King tears a hole into it with one of Daenerys' Dragons in the final episode of season 7, allowing him and his undead army to pass through.
*Beyond-the-Wall:
**Craster's Keep: Not really a "keep" but the [[GRIMDARK|home of a man who fucks his own daughters and offers his sons to the Others]]. He is one of the very few "independent" wildlings and offers use of his home to the Night's Watch when they go off on scouting expeditions. Because it's full of servile (inbred) women, the men of the Night's Watch mutiny and take it over.
**Thenn: The name of both the land and its people, the Thenn consider themselves to be the ''true'' "last of the First Men," because they have laws and lords compared to the anarchist free-for-all of the other Free Folk; they don't speak common, they can actually smith, and they treat the "Magnar," the title of their king, like a god. In the show, they're just shown to be a bunch of scarred barbarians.
**Lands of Always Winter: The furthest north people have ever gone and have been able to come back from, the Lands are perpetually frozen, and the Others are said to come from here. Clearly, if you head far enough North, you'll hit a Chaos Rift and end up in the Warp.

'''The Stepstones''': Formerly a solid land bridge between Westeros and Essos, it was brought down by Children of the Forest magic in a failed attempt to stop the First Men invasion. Now an archipelago of islands infested by various ne'er-do-wells.

'''Essos''': A huge landmess (no, not a typo) about southeast of Westeros and home to many independent city-states west of the big mountain range. Generally agreed upon to be largely desolate wilderness sprinkled in with the occasional kingdoms that seem exotic and alien to Westerosi. Most of its western half used to be the center of power of the legendary Valyrian Freehold, with the Free Cities being colonies of them that survived the downfall of the Valyrian Empire hundreds of years ago. The exceptions are Slaver's Bay, conquered by the Valyrians before regaining independence after the Freehold's collapse, Qarth, Ib and some of the others.
*Old Valyria: The former center of the [[Roman Empire|all-powerful free state that ruled over most of Essos at its peak and posessed magic and technology, as well as dragons to keep control over it.]] Valyrias strength was legendary, so much so in fact that the downfall of it still influences politics in the world centuries after it occured. No one quite knows why Valyria fell, the only certain thing is that it was plagued by a sudden series of natural disasters that all but destroyed its homelands and left it in ruin. Valyrian culture only survived in bastardized forms in Volantis and, prior to their extinction, House Targaryen in Westeros. The ruins of Valyria are said to cursed and avoided by all but the most desperate of travellers - not just out of suspision but also because the free cities made a habit of using the old ruins as a leper colony for highly contagious diseases like Greyscale; having put the entire area subsequently under super-heavy quarantine.
*Free Cities: There are 9 city-states on the Western Half of Essos. 8 are former Valyrian colonies, with Braavos being the notable exception to most of the things they have in common. What ties them all together is that they're all connected by trade and feudalism isn't such a big thing here, which also makes their culture remarkably different from the Westerosi. Westerosi tend to view them as greedy opportunists while the Free Cities in turn view Westerosi as ignorant morons at best and backwards savages at worst. If you were going to have a setting based on ASOIAF and didn't want to spend the entire time shitting in the dirt or bleeding out in a ditch for some inbred noble, this is where you'd want to be:
**Braavos: The only one of the nine free cities to not be a Valyrian Colony (excepting the other countries like Qarth and Ib, who don't count among the nine). It was founded by Slaves that escaped their overlord in a marsh on the northernmost tip of Essos. It is mainly known for its massive port and the Iron Bank of Braavos, the biggest bank in the world. It also houses the House of Black and White, the central temple and headquarters of the Faceless Men.
**Pentos: Another large trading port on the western edge of Essos. It serves as the major trading hub between Westeros and the rest of Essos.
**Lys: Located on an island off the coast of Essos. Founded as a resort for Freeholders. A decadent city whose most famous export are prostitutes.
**Myr: The women here are hot, considering how often Westerosi seem to come back with wives from here. Other than that, its only notable feature is its forever-war with Lys and Tyrosh.
**Norvos: They make really good bodyguards that are taught to see their [[Executioners|axes as their waifus]].
**Qohor: Not much is known about them, except one of the brutal mercenary companies is from here, and they worship the [[Lovecraft|Black Goat.]]
**Tyrosh: Greedy slavers. Not really notable, except they're one-third of the constant warfare of the Disputed Lands along with Lys and Myr and for being extremely flamboyant.
**Volantis: The crown jewel, first colony of the Freehold and considers itself the successor state to the Freehold.
**Lorath: No, they don't speak for the trees. Lorath is the poorest of the Free Cities, and not much is known about them. Its most notable feature are the underground labyrinths that dot the island and which predate the Valyrians. Typical of Martin, the Labyrinths and a similar cult in Essos (the cult of the Pattern) are a reference to someone else's work, [[Dick|but no, he doesn't like fanfiction]].
*Ghiscari Empire and Slavers Bay: To the East of Valyria and the Free Cities, these cities pre-date Valyria. Before they were conquered, they had their own empire and worshiped the Harpy. Nowadays, they trade with the Dothraki, exchanging tribute for slaves, which they then market to the rest of the World. Vaguely the [[Middle East]] of ASOIAF. They are: Old Ghis, New Ghis, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. In the books, Dany is stuck here trying to manage the clusterfuck that is deslaverizing these lands. Currently locked in a brutal war where the newly-freed slaves are either fighting the surviving slaver-nobles, other cities, or each other.
*Qarth: What separates the "East" from the "Far East." It's to the West of Slaver Bay and East of not!China/Japan, so any traffic between the Free Cities, Slaver's bay, and them, requires them to pass through Qarth. Home to a bunch of fucking weirdo Orientalist tropes that vie for power: The Pureborn, the noble descendants of ancient Qaathi Kings and Queens that fled the sacking of their cities to Qarth, so hold no real power beyond their titles; the Ancient Guild of Spicers (it's in the name [[Memes|and it must flow]]); the Thirteen, ''another'' group of Merchants; the Tourmaline Brotherhood (more merchants!). Qarth is also the location of the House of the Undying, a group of Warlocks that drink "shade-of-the-evening," which is pretty much [[Dune|Spice from Dune]], but made from trees and not wormshit; the House of the Undying and most of its Warlocks were burnt down by Dany's dragons after they tried to steal them; they sent out some guys for revenge, but they ran into Euron where he promptly murdered them all and took their <s>spice</s> <s>nightshade</s> shade-of-the-evening. Functionally Singapore, but with a more Indo-Persian aesthetic.
*Rhoyne: Destroyed former city of the Rhoynar, who fled the Valyrian Freehold and migrated to Dorne. The former capital is currently infested by Stone-Men, Greyscale survivors who have gone feral.
*Ib: not!Dwarfs, but described more like Neanderthals than Nordic shorties. They're [[squat]], barrel-chested, with thick wiry black hair, heavy sloping eye brows and square-teeth of neanderthals, They're also incredibly hairy, and even their women have facial hair., Instead of digging holes in mountains, they travel the sees in equally-stocky whaling ships. They tend to keep to themselves, [[Meme|but are natural sailors, suitable for long voyages]].
*The Dothraki Sea: Not a sea, but the name for the not!Eurasian Plains. Before the Freehold collapsed and the Dothraki tribesmen took advantage of the chaos of the Century of Blood to conquer it and burn down all but one of the old Qaathi cities (with only Qarth itself surviving) and most of the old Kingdom of Sarnor along with other minor cities, it was known as the Great Grass Sea.
**Vaes Dothrak: The capital and only permanent Dothraki settlement. It is forbidden to carry weapons or spill blood here (doesn't mean you can't kill through other means).
*Golden Empire of Yi Ti: Not!China, with a mysterious history and pattern of legends eerily-similar to Westeros' own. Like China, has a long history of Emperors, each dynasty progressively ruling over smaller, weaker empires. The current dynasty is actually so weak, they're not taken seriously outside their capital.
**The Five Forts: In the not!Chinese version of the Long Winter/Long Night, the Empire of Yi Ti was cast into a long night that never ended, where the evil Lion of the Night was unleashed by the Bloodstone Emperor. He was beat back by the Lord of Light/Hyrkoon the Hero/but the name that the Yi Ti know him by was never stated. Just like the Wall in Westeros, the Five Forts were said to be erected by a great Emperor soon after to make sure the crisis never happens again. Just like Westeros, the Five Forts have waned in importance, now only protecting the Yi Ti from barbarians. The Five Forts are said to be made from a material of "fused black stone," similar in description to many ancient ruins all over the setting. Harrenhal is also described similarly, but Harrenhal was stone melted by dragonfire, so the idea that the Five Forts was made with the aid of dragons and/or magic has been floated by fans.
*The Jogos Nhai: not!Mongols, but they ride Zebras and are literally cone-heads.
*Asshai-by-the-Shadow: Further-Further-East, it may as well be mythic. The city of Asshai is depressingly gloomy, the entire city is composed of dark black towers made of fused, black stone that seems to "drink the light."

The South:
'''Summer Isles''': Think Avelorn, but Black. An archipelago to the Far South of Westeros, everything here is pretty idyllic. War is very formalized, prostitution is a religious rite, [[meme|there are no white people]], it's practically paradise. A deposed prince was sent to exile in Westeros and had been trying to get Robert to make the journey south to put him back on the throne, but no one really took him seriously.

'''Sothoryos''': [[Lustria|Jungle hell]].
*Yeen: Made of the same creepy black metal in Stygai, implied to be an old Empire of the Dawn Outpost. Even the death world jungle (as in, not just the animals, the actual jungle itself) refuses to go in there for fear of dying.

'''Ulthos''': not!Australia, and has absolutely no lore. Seriously, GRRM has literally never mentioned it except in relation to another place that also has no lore. It's a passing mention that his obsessive fans took note of, and when they literally helped wrote the setting book for him, their guess became canon.

==The appeal of A Song of Ice And Fire==
Exactly what catches the eyes of [[Skub|a given fan/critic/lout who complains about how bad it is anytime the show is mentioned within earshot]] to ASOIAF and its TV adaptation varies from individual to individual. Still, there's a couple of major draws.

'''The Worldbuilding:''' The main reason why this series gets compared to [[The Lord of the Rings]], ASOIAF is literally ''drowning'' under the weight of its worldbuilding, being crammed as full of facts about fictitious regions, histories, cultures, dynasties and races as GRRM can fit it. Your mileage will vary on how ''good'' that info is, but there's plenty of info in it. It is worth noting that much of the vagueness of various aspects of the world's lore comes down to the limited perspectives of each of the characters' point of view, so many places and events are often only known partially through superstition, rumors, and often second hand experiences passed down and muddled over time; all of which play quite heavily into the overall story structure of the series.

'''A vast colorful Cast:''' A lot of works of fantasy get by with a few archetypal characters (the Young Guy out to Prove themself, the Wise Wizard, the Dark Lord, the Mischievous One, the Grizzled Veteran, the Princess, the Dwarf, etc) and maybe a guy or two which rises above this. A Song of Ice and Fire has dozens of viewpoint characters and a hundreds of secondaries each with different situations, drives, motives and quirks that make them reasonably interesting. Even if you don't like one or some of them, there are plenty of others. When they die, it often hits home. Speaking of which...

'''Mainstream [[Dark Fantasy]]:''' Dark Fantasy is not exactly a mainstream niche. ASOIAF stands out by deliberately trying to market itself to the mainstream, despite embracing an abundance of dark fantasy tropes; gratuitous violence, sexuality and sexual violence, moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and a willingness to suddenly kill off any character, even the most likeable or heroic of them.

'''[[Low Fantasy]]:''' On the surface, ASOIAF is an old-school Low Fantasy setting, being a medieval-tech world with the story openly focused on the mundane lives of people struggling for political power and though supernatural elements do exist, they tend to be used sparingly.

'''[[High Fantasy]]:''' But if you scratch the surface, ASOIAF is also a High Fantasy setting, which is always the more marketable of the two, with the big backstory about how the world is facing impending doom from an army of wintery [[fey]] and their [[undead]] minions. There are also non-evil higher powers working against them, but they get swept under the rug in the show. Also, [[dragon]]s. As the more marketable genre, it's also inevitably the more skubby one, for whatever that's worth.

'''[[Magical Realm|Gratuitous Sexuality]]:''' More a thing for the TV show than the books; GRRM's scenes were [[Rape|raepy]] in the earlier volumes, and apparently our boy must have overheard the nickname "George Rape Rape Martin (I ''Like'' Rape)", because he dialed back the forced boning in #4-5. The frequent scenes of nudity and sex in the early seasons of the show were a ''big'' selling point for many people (the casting of people from the sex industry for some of these scenes also helped).

'''Not much in terms of generic fantasy tropes:''' Hate how almost every fantasy just has to have things popularized by Tolkien such as elves, dwarves, orcs and all that stuff? You're in luck because ASOIAF doesn't have a "five races" system, their accompanying stereotypes or the plot hinging on a magic item. On the other hand, it does have several generic fantasy tropes, such as [[dragon]]s, [[Medieval Stasis]], [[undead]] and at least two contenders for [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] status, so if you hate them too, well...

'''Lots of Houses and Sigils''': OK, so this is sort of a joke...except not completely. For those who are artistically minded and love coming up with their own OC groups and/or fleshing out minor characters, this setting really does invite it with the absolutely insane number of houses [[Space Marines|that each have their own distinct logo/color-scheme combo]].

==Oh Yeah, About The TV Show==
[[image:KnightsWhoSayFuck.jpg|150px|thumb|left|Yeah, pretty much.]]

{{Skubby}}

After the first three books became hits, many Hollywood producers and directors had come to the sadistic neckbeard, asking him about making a movie adaptation. At first, he was reluctant at best, due to the fact that a lot of his content would've been cut out to fit into a movie trilogy (see the Lord of the Rings live-action films). Then, a couple of dudes, David Benioff and D.B/Daniel Brett Weiss (AKA D&D, or more accurately as of the final season, Dumb & Dumber), decided to contact him and asked him at a local restaurant about turning ASOIAF into a Television show produced by HBO, the top-rated soft-core porno channel. The story goes that George asked them a very specific question (Who is Jon Snow's mother?). Satisfied with the response they gave, he gave them permission to start work on the show, which would be titled after the first book, ''Game of Thrones''. They would later go on to prove that this is not a good way of choosing who should adapt your work.

The television show casts several well-known performers, such as Sean Bean as Eddard, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, Lena Headey as Cersei, and Charles Dance as Tywin. They have also cast some comparatively less well-known actors and even ones new to cinema, such as Sophie Turner (Sansa), Maisie Williams (Arya), Kit Harington (Jon), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay), Alfie Allen (Theon), and Richard Madden (Robb)

Thus, book snobs seem to think that every episode post-season 4 is nothing more than Emmy-bait. Regardless of the fact Kit Harington still [[Fail|doesn't have an Emmy]], there's a valid contention in that regard, with the number of liberties taken overshadowing the initial appeal.

The final season (more on that below) was eventually revealed to be such a train wreck because Dumb & Dumber did not want to work on the series anymore and had let the success with the earlier seasons go to their heads. In their arrogance, instead of handing the reins to someone else, they decided to plan out their own ending and use it as an audition to Disney so they could write for Star Wars. By then, they'd run out of books to adapt, there was no superior writing for them to leech off of and there was no one to gainsay them in their echo chamber of a writer's room (even George himself was cut out). The result was absolutely shit writing that caused a glorious breakage in the [[skub]] dam that left [[Butthurt|many a fan's anus weeping]] (provided they weren't early seasons fans, book series fans, or any of the other assorted onlookers [[Lulz|taking part in the mightiest of keks]]) and, if anything proved <s>George's </s> Ramsay's quote at the beginning of the article true. Goddamn Dumb & Dumber, could you talentless Derp machines do any worse if you tried? Luckily, comeuppance came after them and Disney, having some sense, told them to fuck off with their [[Star Wars]] ideas after the backlash towards the final season. Not that Disney Star Wars has been without its share of controversy and [[Rage]], but you know it's bad when someone gets told to piss off from even that.

The Greatest Irony and Tragedy of the show's writing was that in the first few seasons, with George RR Martin consulting them and with a wealth of material from the first few books to work with, D&D were actually pretty damn good at adapting the books into a TV format. In fact, quite a few scenes were in fact not only adapted, but actually created from scratch outside of the source material. One of the most noteworthy is the iconic introduction of Tywin Lannister in Season 1 Episode 7, where we learn everything we need to know about his character with nothing but precisely chosen dialogue and a rather blunt visual metaphor of him gutting a stag he slew in a hunt, all while brutally laying into Season 1's initially perceived villain, Jaime. Contrast this with Season 5 where the show's major decline began with blunders such as the omission of fan-favorite Lady Stoneheart, literally butchering the Dorne subplot with Martell family team-killing and changing the Sparrows' movement to a militant atheist's stereotype of religion. This decline makes a lot more sense after George himself admitted that Season 5 was the first Season where he was was really locked out of the loop.

Goes to show how much they had fallen when the well ran dry and the show' writing and adaptation process was no longer the finely honed instrument it had started as.

'''TL;DR'''

[[GM|Producers Dumb&Dumber-style change characters and railroad the plot at a whim,]] [[/d/M|the tits and ultraviolence spigot is opened even wider than the books,]] and most scenes are made for the actors to show off their skills at making their signature angry/murder/brooding/etc. faces, and wrapped it up with a season of TV soon to be discussed that even Matt Ward would be 100% justified in pointing and laughing at. Seasons 1-4 are worth your time, 7 and 8 are best ignored, and 5 and 6 are the [[Skub]] ones.

===The Final <s>Dumpster Fire</s> Season===
{{Fail}}
{{HurfDurf}}
{{Plot Armour}}

{{Topquote|If you try to do something fancy with your ending and you screw up, your audience will probably remember the botched ending more than the well run marathon|JP from Terrible Writing Advice (and advice Dumb and Dumber obviously didn't heed}})

Seasons 5, 6, and especially 7 all got their share of grief from people. Mostly deserved in the case of Season 7 and [[Skub|arguably so]] for 5 and 6 (though the latter did at least finally give Ramsay his just desserts, most of the problems that cropped up in 5 and 6 happened when the show passed the book in particular plotlines and mostly served as an early warning, 7 is when things started getting criticized in general rather than individual plots or details). Season 8 though? Well, read on:

The Final Season kicks off with the Night King's army attacking Winterfell in a battle meant to be epic, but instead so chock full of tactical [[Fail|fails]] from the living, they make General Custer look like Sun Tzu. The most infamous examples include Melisandre's powers being underutilized, putting soldiers in front of trenches/walls they should be behind/standing on, no flanking charges and hiding the non-combatants in a crypt while fighting necromancers. The battle is resolved when Arya teleports directly to the BBEG and kills him with some sleight-of-hand that destroys his entire army Keystone Army trope-style and ends the winter. Also Theon, Jorah and Melisandre die, but the story sweeps their deaths under the rug like they're nameless background characters.

Then the Westerosi go full-retard and start hating Daenerys. Yes really; Dany helped end a nation-destroying winter plus a zombie apocalypse, has a claim to the throne AND is their best ally against Cersei... but they want her gone. Even Sansa suddenly turns against Dany and starts seeking the throne, despite having no claim to the rest of Westeros and Dany being easily able to kill her for treason. Everyone inexplicably starts wanting Jon to be king despite his attempt to abdicate, and Jon himself even starts thinking Aunt Daenerys might be a bad queen... but that doesn't stop him from [[Incest Smith|starting a sexual relationship with her]]. The fact that Robert's bastard son Gendry is now a lord, giving him a claim to the throne at least as strong as Dany's or Jon's, is swept under the rug. Varys also jumps ship from Dany to Jon for no reason, even trying to kill Dany in an uncharacteristically stupid move. For his efforts, Tyrion reports Varys to Daenerys, who has Varys executed by Drogon's fire-breath.

Then Daenerys press-gangs people who should logically be happy to fight for her into an army to attack King's Landing and brings them there by sea. Along the way Rhaegal, one of Daenerys' two surviving dragons, is killed by ballistae from Euron's ships. This is despite the facts that Daenerys and her dragons should've easily been able to spot the ships, they were flying well out of ballista range and Euron had no way of knowing where they'd be. After Daenerys and Drogon single-handedly destroy the Iron Fleet (amid poorly animated weather*), they reach King's Landing. Cersei's artillery does nothing despite Daenerys, all her advisors and her dragon being within lethal range plus Cersei's lack of scruples. They in turn do nothing but watch Daenerys' friend Missandei, who was captured offscreen earlier, get executed by zombie-Gregor (despite the fact Cersei and co. had no reason to believe Missandei was anyone of import to either capture or execute. Maybe someone left a copy of the script in Cersei's solar next to her Starbucks latte**)

The battle for King's Landing has Daenerys' forces break in and battle through the streets. Meanwhile Jaime snuck though the tunnels [[Fail|to find and reconcile with Cersei. The Hound regresses to his old violent self and tracks down zombie-Gregor to take him down in a battle that kills them both (although most consider this the one bright spot in the episode). Arya gives up on revenge and decides to let Cersei go despite having strong non-revenge-related reasons to kill her]]. The famed Golden Company is quickly killed off and Cersei signals a surrender by ringing the bells (the bells aren't, and have never been, signals for surrender). Then, in the capstone of bad writing for this season, Daenerys' switch flips from good to evil because the writers want it to happen, and Dany abandons her plan of freeing and leading Westeros to purging King's Landing with her dragon and army. Cersei and Jamie die together in a cave-in and Tyrion mourns their deaths despite being ready and eager to personally kill Cersei earlier. This is followed by Dany's Saruman/Hitler-esque speech that has nothing to do with her former character. Tyrion is arrested for criticizing Daenerys by saying "If this is liberation, I don't believe in liberation theology." Yes, [[Derp|the writers think theology and ideology are the same thing]] (an unsurprising mistake, given they shoehorned in anti-religious rants for the past three Seasons despite the books' even-handedness). This last one has proven to be its own personal bit of Skub, as many have argued that Daenerys going evil is in keeping with the cynical themes and tone of the setting. While this isn't wrong on its face, it does nothing to change the fact that the execution is 100% half-assed. Walter White's descent into villainy this is not, or even Anakin's arc in the Star Wars Prequels, which looks like The Godfather compared to what Season 8 does with Daenerys.

In the aftermath, Jon assassinates Daenerys for the King's Landing massacre... [[Derp|right in front of her dragon]]. Drogon, due to Jon's stronger-than-Valyrian-steel-plot-armor, doesn't kill him but melts the Iron Throne ([[What|accidentally according to the showrunners]]) while chucking a tantrum before grabbing Dany's body and flying away. Jon is somehow charged with Dany's murder despite there being no evidence that he did it, but surprisingly none of the surviving characters still loyal to Dany try to kill Jon (such as the Unsullied or the Dothraki). Despite there being several legitimate choices of king still available, including Gendry, the nobles decide to replace a dynastic monarchy with an elective one and make Bran king. Bran is nominated by Tyrion for a nonsensical reason ("he has the best story"), Tyrion somehow getting a say in the meeting despite being imprisoned for treason.

The Unsullied go to Southros under command of Grey Worm (the only one who still has a personality at this point). The Dothraki are forgotten about by everyone else. Tyrion is freed and made Hand of the King to Brann. Brienne is made Commander of the Kingsguard. [[Derp|Bronn is made Master of Coin (and Lord of Highgarden). Gendry is completely forgotten. Samwell is made the new Grand Maester]] and [[What|the North secedes and becomes independent under Queen Sansa (which definitely wouldn't cause future problems and tensions)]]. [[The Lord of the Rings|Arya sails to the West]] for some unknown reason and Jon is exiled but doesn't care because he gets to go back up north with the Wildings like he wanted. The end.

This trainwreck of a plot is a testament to how two morons can royally fuck up a show beyond any redeeming qualities the cast and crew can put forward. And even then there were screw-ups among the production staff, such as *the animators being unable to decide whether the sky is sunny or overcast when Dany and Drogon destroy the Iron Fleet - which mattered because Dany's plan to not get shot down involved having the sun behind her - and **not removing the actors' water bottles and coffee cups from the set before shooting. Hyperbole is sort of the norm here, but it really is hard to overstate how badly Season 8's finale fucks up. Game of Thrones was ''everywhere'' culturally for most of the 2010s, drawing in huge numbers of people who would otherwise never be caught dead indulging in High Fantasy works with us uber-nerds. Now, the entire Thrones fandom has practically disappeared or gone underground. Honestly, it would be an impressive achievement if it weren't so terrible.

==House of the Dragon: The ''other'' TV show==

{{Topquote|If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.|Benjamin Franklin [[Star Wars:Rebels|(and also Maul when trying to kill Kanan)]]}}

Deciding that there was still a market for Game of Thrones stuff even after the last season turned the 2010s biggest pop-culture phenomenon into a laughingstock*, HBO bet the bank on some spin-offs, the first of which is now upon us. House of the Dragon is a prequel dealing with the Dance of Dragons, a civil war between two Targaryen factions that ends up consuming Westeros and everyone in it World-War style, and featuring lots of dragons fighting dragons and the standard Westeros fare of fairly bad people doing extremely bad things. Like Game of Thrones before it, it boasts a star-studded cast, a big budget, and a lot of hype. Time will tell if it redeems the failures of the original show or repeats them. If there's a reason to be optimistic (aside from Dumb and Dumber being absent), it would be that the whole story of the Dance of Dragons is written and mapped out, meaning the writers don't have to come up with their own shit to make an ending that George hasn't yet written. Has gotten off to a strong start, so there's the hope that it will be able to redeem the legacy GoT's last two seasons absolutely ruined.

*Given that the premiere was apparently so widely watched it crashed the streaming for many people, they might actually be right.

**In fact, with Martin having more oversight over the writing of this series, and director Miguel Sapochnik actually having a passion for the setting and genre rather than just answering a mystery question to GRRM's satisfaction, the current 6 episodes have seen sky high bumps in both HBO viewership and rave reviews. The slow burn over years as the characters inch closer towards disaster has left the majority of viewers on a palpable knife's edge so far.

==GRRM and [[Your Dudes]]==
Want to make your own ASoIF setting for a role-playing game? Well, readers have enough room to fantasize about their own minor noble House (or kingdom during the Age of the Hundred Kingdoms).

A good example of what you could do is the House from the old [[/v/|"Telltale Game of Thrones"]], House Forrester. Their relationship to the canon is as follows:

House Forrester (lords of someplace in the Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Glover (overall lords of the entire Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Stark (rulers of the North).

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] had a very brief tie-in making those annoying attention-sucking Facebook games, way back when FFG did that sort of thing. Just goes to show how even the other guys [[Games Workshop|will do anything for money]].

There's also an actual tie-in tabletop RPG now, which uses its own system and looks kind of like [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] with a heavy helping of resource-management strategy feel.
Players are assuming the role of a minor House to guide to glory, or, more accurately given the setting we're in, NOT to ruin utterly in a season or two, which would still be more than many A-list players mustered in canon. Each PC has a specific position within said House, and only the role of official Head is mandatory; the rest could be wife/children/brothers and sisters/all other kinds of siblings, bastards (with rules for obtaining the legitimate recognition), maesters, sworn/subservient knights, or most of anybody else. This naturally opens up near-infinite possibilities for families screwed up seven ways to high heavens, which would make Lannister's brand of infighting-slash-inbreeding look as sane as the High Septon.

The setting is also ill-suited for "adventures in Westeros" style of gaming for two reasons:
#In the grim darkness of low fantasy, a roaming nobody with no banner to talk about, no House allegiance, no nothing isn't generally treated to a Tavern With Quest Givers, but rather more to a Tavern Where You Are Shanked For Your Sword And Boots And Dumped At The Nearest Forest. Heck, even the big wheelers and dealers are routinely seen invited to the latter when they are slow to properly introduce themselves.
#Working on your initially-puny House will quite realistically involve thy neighbours first and foremost, then liege lords from the higher House yours is sworn to, and on occasion shopping around for an advantageous marriage - there simply ain't gonna be that much spare time to "travel to see places". Both of these are also why tourism wasn't a very popular pastime in medieval Europe (aside from Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Cologne and Santiago de Compostela) and why those who were "living on the road" usually enjoyed the lowest social standing.

A note to aspiring Lords: do NOT, under any circumstances, allow your "combat-optimized" siblings an unsupervised minute in a social setting. Game's "social combat" system is a thing more brutal than the physical one, and it takes a socially-optimized character all of a few minutes to mindfuck one who is not (read: everyone but dedicated diplomats and Heads of the Houses, and not every one of the latter, to boot, as illustrated by several amazing boneheads in canon) into believing pretty much anything short of Grumpkins and Snarks. Stupid NPCs or a stupid GM will make said mindfuck obvious, allowing you to "mindfuck 'em back" without abuse of OOC info; cunning ones will not.

On a side-note; GRRM is said to take a dim view of fanfiction, saying it kills creative ability. This is kind of a double-edged statement, since a lot of George's characters here are either rehashes of his characters from previous works, references to other fictional characters (like Littlefinger and Samwell being based on Jay Gatsby and [[The Lord of the Rings|Samwise Gamgee]]), walking tropes (such as Ned Stark and Robb Stark being the "[[TVTropes|Honor Before ]] [[Lawful Stupid|Reason]]" characters) or historical references (such House Lannister ripping off House Lancaster and House Tyrell being totally-not-House-Tudor - to the point that Margaery Tyrell is played by Natalie Dormer from "The Tudors" TV show). While this makes everything he wrote just another...fanfiction, and his disapproval hypocritical. Still, given the "creative" output of the average neckbeard, he's perhaps not entirely wrong. For another layer of irony/hypocrisy, he sold the rights to make a TV series of the books to HBO, who's adaptation would eventually devolve into a glorified fanfic.

==Games==
[[image:AGot-2nd-ed-cardfan.png|thumb|250px]]
Like any fantasy author who finds themselves unexpectedly in the warm embrace of commercial success, Martin quickly licensed the shit out of his setting; spawning everything from resin miniatures to replica great swords. While most of this is worthless junk to foist on [[Neckbeard|obsessive fanboys]] /tg/ has agreed that a few of the games are made of win. The first two are a collectable [[CCG|card game]] put out in 2002 by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] and a [[Risk]]-esque board game that followed shortly after in 2003. One of [[White Wolf]]'s subsidiaries also put out a [[d20 System|d20 RPG]] in 2005 but it quickly tanked because, come on, [[White Wolf]]. Martin since wrested the rights back and developed a new version with [[Green Ronin Games]].

Now let's have some serious talks about the Game of Thrones games, because they have become some sort of endless source of [[Skub|amusement and frustration]] for the gaming fanbase. Game of Thrones is, roughly speaking, the second franchise with the most licensed board games, after [[Star Wars]]. Some of them have acquired quite a legendary status and a fanbase that goes beyond the book or series fans.

The great juggernaut for all the ASOIAF-based games is [[Fantasy Flight Games]]:
* First and foremost we have [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-board-game-second-edition/ ''A Game of Thrones: The Board Game'']: a game that after two editions still ranks high in /bgg/'s top 100, and has recently had an expansion. The board game has become some sort of meme for the modern board gamers and it could be considered the equivalent of a more advanced [[Risk]], in which dice and blank character got replaced by a very flavourful and brutal combat system and a lot of thematical mechanics fueling the engine. Overall this game has been associated with concepts such as requiring maximum player count to really be entertaining, having an amazing amount of length and depth and being a very faithful representation of the political feeling the series inspired. Almost any boardgamer or wargamer worth his salt has played this game and enjoyed its highs, its lows and the amazing amount of frustrations it brings. This is probably the most well known of all the ASOIAF games and it was released way before Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon back in 2003.<br>
:It also has a digital edition, sold on Steam and Android

* Another game that bears mention, both for its excellent mechanics and its historical significance is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-card-game-second-edition/ A Game of Thrones: The Card Game]. It is one of the most balanced card game experiences you can get, also full of flavour and with quite a great amount of balance and non-linear thinking. The best part is, unlike certain other popular card games, the game follows the living card game format: players know exactly what each booster pack brings and can buy cards in a more responsible manner, rather than playing bingo and hoping to get a rare card. Also, the sole core set already provides more replayability than some fully-fledged board games.

* Finally, the last game to mention in the [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] venerable trilogy of games is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/battles-of-westeros/ ''Battles of Westeros''], arguably the most ambitious and least successful of the three. Battles of Westeros was a fully-fledged wargame that used the [[Memoir 44]] and [[BattleLore]] rules as a base, but then evolved into its own by introducing mechanics such as commanders, tactic cards, and very creative scenario rules. Miniatures were made in 15mm and, for their time and scale, they were quite detailed; some commanders are real standouts (for example, Robb Stark's has his direwolf jumping at his side).<br>
:Thanks to its scale, the game was able to provide players with a great number of options and units at a fraction of the price of other board games. With a core set that was already stacked with units and variety, and then faction-specific expansions that added several more units and commanders. The game also came with scenario books that provided narrative play with quite creative rule variants, such as storming palisades, having decoys in escort missions, and bombarding enemies with catapults. One scenario even tried to bring to life the Battle of the Blackwater (the hybrid invasion of King's Landing by Stannis ''the God-Damn Mannis'' Baratheon). The game was incredible and quite a creative wargame, but its main issue was that the setup time was just terrible. Incredibly complex and tiresome when compared to the actual gameplay time.

There are others, such as the ASOIAF-themed [[Settlers of Catan|Catan]] expansion called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-catan-brotherhood-of-the-watch/ ''A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch''], another card game called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/hand-of-the-king/ ''A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King''], and another board game [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/game-of-thrones-the-iron-throne/#/products-section ''Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne'']. The quality of those, however, remains to be seen.

And then the miniature-producing Kickstarter juggernaut [[CMON]] decided to produce its own [[wargame]], with AMAZING miniatures. The game began with, of course, a [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-tabletop-miniatures-game Kickstarter], and after that, the game has had at least 2 dozen more releases with 3 more factions added.<br>
The game has some mechanics taken from rank and file games, such as [[Kings of War]], combining them with mechanics taken out of "battles of Westeros" particularly the tactics deck. A new page is in the works: [[ASOIAF Miniature Game]]

==Books==
*''A Game of Thrones''
*''A Clash of Kings''
*''A Storm of Swords'': Split into 2
*''A Feast for Crows'': half the characters, the point where the series goes down the toilet
*''A Dance with Dragons'': split into 2 the first is about the other half of the characters, and manages to pick things up a bit
*''The Winds of Winter'': First rumored to be ready by late 2018, then given an official release date of Summer 2020, those times have come and gone and the book is unreleased. Though he has shared chapters of the book.
*''A Dream of Spring'' : Unreleased and unlikely to ever be.
** GRRM will most likely die before writing this, though he has given an outline for how he wants the series to end that might be made public knowledge if he dies before the book series is finished.
*''The Dunk and Egg Series'': A story about a landless hedge knight travelling across Westeros with a Targaryen squire, so he can teach him how not to be an asshole to peasants.

==On The "Grimdarkness" of the Setting==

One important note: While the setting is usually held to be "Grimdark", it is also very true to Real Life in its nastiness, with real consequences for assholes. George himself has said, quote; "No matter how much I make up, there's stuff in history that's just as bad, or worse." Book one is almost exactly the beginning of the War of the Roses, except with England enlarged to a continent's size and the seasons stretched out to let the travel times work. (...And then the dragons wake up, the ice elves and their undead armies return and magic makes a comeback. It's not a perfect analogy. All that stuff is closed in their own sub plots and they don't involve the main continent in the book, that is left to "common" war and plotting.)

For an example of Grimdark, but with consequences: The King can order the execution of the head of the leading noble family of the North, for essentially no reason, but now he doesn't have hostages to exchange when their relatives and/or armies come after him seeking revenge. (And all this is modeled on various occasions where more or less '''exactly''' this kind of thing happened in real life medieval Europe.)

In other words: Truly heinous shit goes on, and there's nothing ''stopping'' that kind of shit... but there are ''consequences'' to that kind of shit that act as an effective counterbalance against being seen to do that kind of shit to the smarter nobles in the kingdom. And, because anyone can die, the shittiest characters are no more guaranteed survival than the nicest.

Also worth mentioning that there's reason to think that, despite the quote that began this page, the series may not actually end on [[The End Times|100% downer note]], as Martin has said he hopes his series will end in a way akin to the Scouring of the Shire from Lord of the Rings, which, despite the name, is more of a bittersweet ending. So who knows (though this also presumes the author will actually get around to finishing the series at all).

In sum, whether the setting fully qualifies for "Grimdark" is a matter for debate. Probably the best way of looking at is that it is Grimdark, but in a nuanced way.

==See Also==
*[[/tg/ Song of Ice and Fire Houses]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U7NpSubAJQ Weiner, Weiner weiner]

[[category: Literature]]

A Song of Ice and Fire

2022-11-11T16:14:55Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Locations */

[[image:Game_of_Thrones_Title-DVD.png|300px|thumb|WIENER PARTY! WIENER PARTY!]]

{{Spoilers}}
{{Grimdark}}
{{Sick|Among other things, the books can barely go ten pages without having another rape.}}
'''Warning: This article contains so many spoilers we're ruining books that haven't even been released yet.'''

{{Topquote|If you think this story has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.|Ramsay Bolton, nailing the grimdark theme of this series}}

{{Topquote|It matters not from whence the blood flows. Only that it flows.|George RR Martin, Exalted Champion of Khorne when explaining why so many characters get offed}}

'''''A Song of Ice and Fire''''', better known as '''''Game of Thrones''''' (though only the first book has that title) is a [[Grimdark]] fantasy book series for people who hate fantasy, or at the very least, have gotten their fill of Tolkien pretenders and want something more "distinct". Its central themes include [[Tzeentch|political Machiavellian scheming]], [[Khorne|ultraviolence]], [[Slaanesh|incest/sex with exposition/tons of rape]], and [[Nurgle|everyone trying to survive in such a Crapsack World of perpetual suffering]]. There is also lots and lots of food. Thus it has become one of the most popular series of our generation and its author, [[George R. R. Martin]], has been praised for his highly realized world and gritty low fantasy style. He was even called "the American [[Tolkien]]" by <s>Time magazine</s> gormless idiots who lump diametrically different writers together for no other reason than that they're both fantasy authors. The two authors do both have a passion (and talent) for worldbuilding and writing doorstoppers, but that's also where the similarities generally end. Still, the comparisons to Tolkien would probably explain this series' sudden spike in popularity following the TV show (at least [[Skub|to a point, anyway.]]) The great joke of an actual World War veteran writing fantasy about heroic knights and elves being compared to and contrasted with a conscientious objector who writes edgy fantasy is not lost on most (though its worth mentioning that Martin is as much of a Tolkien buff as any of us, meaning that he didn't write the series as a "fuck you" to Tolkien's work as some might assume).

The series itself is set on the [[Original character, do not steal|totally not medieval European ripoff]] realm of Westeros as it is wracked by a massive succession war drawing its realms into conflict. Everyone's picking up the pieces from the previous war until one family's bid for power starts another war (book one), A bunch of dudes declare themselves kings (book two), they're burning the continent down in their scramble for power, and somehow all the fuck-ups managed to lose anyway (book three). Just when the guys who lost the least start thinking they get to rule over the remaining chaos, more fuck ups happen and more dudes show up (book four). Sadly, winter has finally come and, unbeknownst to most people, [[Thousand Sons|evil ice wizards leading soulless undead]] [[Alpha Legion|assumed to be only myths by most people]] are about to invade the continent from the north. By the fifth book, things are going and/or will go to shit even for the bad guys.

According to a leaked fan conversation, George R. R. Martin jokingly stated the series would end with an epic cock-slap fight between Samwell Tarly and Jaime Lannister.

TL;DR: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Roses War of Roses] with a helpin' of <s>cliched fantasy</s> George's old sci-fi writing plots given a fantasy overhaul and [[/d/]]-lite.

[[ASOIAF Miniature Game|Miniature game has their own page now]]

==Characters==
{{cleanup}}
Since these books have some thousand named characters, you won't remember most of them without an obsessive disorder over details.
Here's a relatively shortlist (mostly based on the TV series rather than the books, but seems to randomly switch between the two) for the characters you'll care about. We'll also be making an effort to mostly focus on characters from the main series, rather than historical figures like Maegor Targaryen, the Dance of Dragons Blacks and Greens, and so on. Trust us, given the number of characters we already have to cover, it's for the best. The houses listed here doesn't even come close to covering them all, either.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%">
===House Stark===

''"Winter Is Coming"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Honourable, bro-tier northerners who always [[Space Wolves|compare themselves to direwolves and have a few as pets]]. They have a tendency towards being so resolutely honorable that proves to bite them in the ass due to naivete about how [[Tzeentch|Westerosi corrupt politics actually works]] (not that dishonorable characters often fare any better, but that's an "Anyone Can Die" setting for you). They're also arguably the protagonists of the setting. Basically Scotland and/or House Lancaster in the War of the Roses (but named after House York).
* Eddard Stark, ''The Quiet Wolf'': Patriarch, lord and POV death-puppet. Not nearly as stupid as everyone tries to pretend...but still kind of stupid, and very much a dead man walking. Honorable to a fault and deeply repulsed by the politicking that goes on around him, which eventually leads to a mild case of death by decapitation.
* Benjen Stark: Ned's ranger/Night's Watch brother (so the Faramir to his Boromir), who disappears later in the story and may or may not be the mysterious "Coldhands" (in the TV show he is).
* Robb Stark, ''The Young Wolf'': Shiny, King Arthur-like hero who veers between being [[Lawful Stupid]] and [[Lion El'Johnson|a brilliant military leader]]. After waging a successful war to avenge his murdered father, he was betrothed to a noblewoman but he ended having comfort sex with a virgin noblewoman which may have been arranged by her scheming bitch mother, while in softcore porno he got the hots for a commoner. Cacks it nastily: he got his head cut off and his pet's wolf's head stuck on his body, which was paraded around while his enemies chanted "HERE COMES THE KING IN THE NORTH!" In other words, he's a Scottish [[Roman Empire|Hannibal Barca]]. In the show his pregnant wife dies with him for added Grimdark, but in the books he (wisely) leaves her behind when he goes to the Red Wedding.
* Sansa Stark: Useless teenage girl extraordinaire at the start of the series with dreams of marrying a prince and "having lots of babies", but gets shat on hard by reality, being a case-study in what happens when you go into a Grimdark world thinking like a Fairy Tale Princess. Becomes Littlefinger's replacement goldfish when Catelyn's no longer around, her father got killed and her best friend was sold as a sex slave, and ended up in the worst relationship we can possibly imagine with King Joffrey. [[Grimdark|Even got deflowered via rape by Ramsey Bolton]] and married to him before managing to escape with the help of others. Currently acting as a co-ruler to her brother/cousin Jon Snow, and has learned much from her suffering, allowing her to kick Littlefinger out of the Great Game via throat slitting. While in the book Littlefinger is/was setting her up at House Arryn to claim the Vale and the North, the show version becomes QUEEN IN DA NORF in the final episode.
* Arya Stark: Little tomboy assassin. Has a kill list, but doesn't get to use it so long as she is an amnesiac apprentice of [[Officio Assassinorum|the Friendly Neighborhood Assassins Guild]]. In the books, she's still training with the Faceless Men, but in the show she's broken away from them and headed back to Westeros to get revenge on a LOT of people, giving her one of the highest kill counts in the series. She goes home to Winterfell when she hears that Jon and Sansa took it back and starts acting as a general "troubleshooter" for Sansa while scaring the hell out of everyone with all her new assassin skillz. Kills the Night King like a fucking champion in Season 8 (though in a way that doesn't actually make any sense), then rides south to add Cersei to her body count. Instead, the Hound talks her out of it and she [[The Lord of the Rings|decides to sail into the unknown west]]. Kind of the [[Mary Sue|writer's pet]] in the show, among other things getting to avenge the Red Wedding in a brutally cinematic manner even though Dumb and Dumber justified giving us a pregnant woman getting stabbed to death on-screen because Game of Thrones is above "cliches" like loved ones getting avenged in just such a way. And her aforementioned killing of the Night King that doesn't actually make any sense, since it required her getting the drop on him in a way that was ''physically impossible without out-of-universe special effects equipment''. Book version is still level-grinding to get to her TV version's skill level.
* Catelyn Stark (nee Tully): A woman who trusts the wrong people at the worst time, causing a lot of misery. Gets killed along with Robb, then comes back (books only) as Lady Stoneheart, an undead witch bent on killing all the Boltons, Freys, Greyjoys, Lannisters... pretty much everyone she thinks was tangentially involved in betraying her and her family, or somebody who just pissed her off (kind of hard to blame her though). The show writers left this part out completely, which caused much [[rage]] and [[skub]] in the fandom.
* Bran Stark: Intelligent little boy, named after the founder of House Stark, Brandon the Builder (basically Tony Stark combined with [[Leman Russ]]). He was crippled in the first sign of major [[GrimDark]]. Has prophetic dreams and becomes a [[druid]]. In the TV series, fucks things up by alerting the Others to where he's hiding, which gets all of the Children, his loyal wolf, the Three-Eyed Crow and Hodor killed. For good measure, turns out to have accidentally ''caused'' Hodor to become, well, Hodor, as he was using his druid powers to figure out why Hodor is only able to say Hodor, resulting in Hodor's gruesome death-by-zombies being beamed directly into young Hodor's brain. He's now the Three-Eyed Raven and likes going around being creepy as fuck and generally weirding people out. Becomes King of the <s>Seven</s> Six Kingdoms in a hilariously nonsensical plot twist in the finale.
* Rickon Stark: Four years old at the start, turning into a real little [[Barbarian]] from not being raised properly, because everyone who would have raised him was dead or missing. In the books, he and his wildling nanny Osha are on the cannibal-infested island of Skagos, and Davos Seaworth is on his way there to pick them up so that the northern lords who are still loyal to House Stark have a figurehead to rally behind. In the show, he ends up hanging out at the Umbers, then is handed over to Ramsay as a prisoner when Smalljon becomes afraid of the Wildlings living north of him (who were invited by Jon Snow to fight the Zombie Apocalypse), and finally dies via arrow in a sick game of "dodge the missiles" courtesy of Ramsey.
* Jon Snow, ''The White Wolf'': A bastard living in the Stark household before leaving for the Night's Watch (basically [[The Last Chancers|Colonel Schaeffer]] with more convicted rapists under his command) and excels there because nearly every one of his fellow recruits are peasants who have never had a formal days of training while Jon has had the serious training afforded to all lords. After he takes over by becoming the Watch Commander secures and alliance with the Wildlings, ancient barbarian enemies of the Night's Watch, because when the end of the world is coming you tend to think outside the box. Also gets a Wildling girlfriend, but she dies. He was taken under the wing by the Lord Commander Jora Mormont and given advice by Aemon (a Targaryen who is so '''old''' that everyone south has forgotten he existed, and unbeknownst to him, his great-great-granduncle), and managed to actually be a competent leader: after a disastrous loss of strength after the failure of the Great Ranging, and then the Wildling invasion, he unilaterally decides to let the Wildlings through in exchange for their aid in securing the Wall against the real enemy; he even impresses Stannis (The Mannis) with his honor and sense of justice. [[Grimdark|And then, all the corrupt exiles from the South (and the rejects who were left behind during the Ranging) banded together to kill him]].
**Though he's currently dead in the books as a result of mutiny, he was revived by R'hllor in the series after being stabbed to death by the senior members of the Watch. Isn't actually Eddard's bastard son, but rather the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, meaning that he is, in fact, the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. The new KING IN DA NORF according to his supporters after he killed Ramsay Bolton and took back Winterfell, and is also currently hooking up with his own aunt.
**He turns on Daenerys once he realizes she's lost it and kills her in the throne room, but [[Plot Armor|for some reason her dragon doesn't kill him despite seeing him do the the deed]]. The Unsullied want his head, but instead, King Bran exiles him to the Night's Watch and he fucks off into the far north to live with the Free Folk.
* Hodor: Hodor. Hodor, Hodor, Hodor. <s>An enormous and possibly retarded stable boy, and Bran's faithful steed.</s> Hodor. Ok, in all actual seriousness, this guy is probably one of the most tragic figures in this series (and that's saying something). [[Grimdark|The guy basically received horrible visions of his own death fighting a horde of zombies, buying time for his friends to escape by literally holding the door shut as he was hacked apart]]. This causes him to suffer a mental break, leading him to develop Immature Personality Disorder and making it so the only thing he can say is a garbled version of his friend's last request "hold the door" for all of his adult life; the logic here is that "hold the door" devolves into "hol' th' door" and eventually "Hodor". You now feel bad for at laughing at the guy.
* Osha: A Wildling woman who surrendered to the Starks and becomes their servant in exchange for not getting killed. Now dead in the show thanks to Ramsay's dickery, costing the cast another valued waifu.</div></div>

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%">

===House Targaryen===

''"Fire and Blood"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The former Dragon kings and rulers of Westeros, [[Eldar|fair-haired purple-eyed beautiful people]] who have descended from the [[Dark Age of Technology|ancient technologically-advanced superpower]] of [[Roman Empire|Valyria]], which collapsed because of [[Fall of the Eldar|their colossal hubris]]. After the anarchic [[Age of Strife|Century of Blood]], the Targaryen patriarch Aegon I, instead of reconquering the lost cause of Essos and of Valyria's former empire, looked towards the rather primitive continent of Westeros, and its squabbling Seven Kingdoms, [[Great Crusade|to establish his own Imperial dynasty and unify the Realm]]. Aegon I is essentially the Low Fantasy version of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror William the Conqueror] and/or the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]], with a little dash of [[/d/|incest]].

[[Rules Lawyer|Thanks to a loophole]], the Targaryens were immune to the moral objections relating to incest. Common sense (and common decency) took back seat to a time-honoured policy of [[/d/|catastrophic inbreeding]], which made a number of problems, the most obvious of which was that a whole bunch of them were fucking crazy. Aegon I married his older and younger sisters and had several kids with each, which would be the start of another Targaryen tradition: the occasional succession crisis. Because GRRM can't write a book without going off on a tangent (and because the Targaryens were running things for a good chunk of the setting's history), the Targaryens and their 300ish long legacy is full of rebellions and wars ripped from English History and in turn mined by HBO. Fun interregnums include the Dance of Dragons, where the Targaryens used the last of their dragons in a brutal civil-war against each other (and now a TV show), and the Blackfyre Rebellions, where the fat-fuck Aegon IV (who had Henry VII's opposite problems: he fucked everyone and had many heirs) legitimized all his bastards and even gifted one of them the dynasty's greatest treasure: the Blackfyre sword. Actually, considering how ''much'' of these rebellions were caused by half-Targaryen bastards, [[/d/|maybe they had a point?]]

Eventually, the lineage was banished to Essos after a brutal civil war: Aerys II, a crazy paranoid king that savagely executed many different people, made the wrong move of executing the Lord and Heir of the North; the two men were in King's Landing because Aery's son, Rhaegar, the '''non''-crazy one, eloped/abducted Robert Baratheon's fiance and their sister. Since he was already married and she was engaged, they left together in secret, which caused Robert the Cuck to go wild. Joining with Eddard, the new Lord of the North, and their teacher/foster-dad Jon Arryn, the three Kingdoms rebelled and Robert warhammered Rhaegar because STR > DEX.

The survivors were smuggled out/hidden from Robert, with Viserys and his then-pregnant mother hiding on their ancestral home of Dragonstone first, before fucking off to Essos when the war was truly lost; Rhaegar's ''first'' son and daughter were killed and his wife raped by the Lannister's bannermen, though Rhaegar's best friend [[Gay|who loved him very, very, very much]] claims to have helped sneak him out of Westeros and hides with him in Essos; finally, Rhaegar and Lyanna's son, Jon/Aegon, was adopted by Ned, who was made to realize that the entire civil war was a misunderstanding and that his whoremongering drunk of a foster brother would've probably been a terrible brother-in-law anyway. [[Grimdark]]. Basically, the entire British royal family, but with more incest, and a lot of dragons. Still, they occasionally did have genuinely good people like Aegon V (aka Egg), Jaeherys I the Conciliator, his wife Good Queen Alysanne and complete badasses like Brynden Bloodraven and Baelor Breakspear (too bad Bloodraven is hooked up to Old God wi-fi permanently and Breakspear died before he could become king).
Pseudo-Romans and/or the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Normandy House of Normandy].

* Aerys II, ''The Mad King'': [[Kharn|A pretty fun guy to be around]]. Had a psychotic fascination for fire, which extended to being a psychotic fascination for burning traitors, a category of people that eventually grew to include anybody he disliked for any reason, anyone who disagreed with him, and a few people who were unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. [[Goge Vandire|Teamkilled by his bodyguard Jaime for planning to burn the city down with everyone inside it, and even refused to accept his death until he actually died]].
* Daenerys Targaryen, ''Stormborn'': She was sold by her brother to a barbarian leader [[Genghis motherfucking Khan|Khal (warlord) Drogo]] in exchange for the promise that he'd use his Khalassar (Warband/tribe) to conquer Westeros. She found her self esteem as his wife, then her husband killed her idiot brother Viserys and promised to conquer the world for Daenerys, making her a full-fledged badass barbarian war queen. Unfortunately, her husband died when [[Derp|Daenerys trusted one of the slaves whose town Drogo had pillaged and burnt to heal an infected wound of his]] and his horde fell apart (though the book is somewhat ambiguous as to whether the slave did kill Drogo). Then she hatched three dragons (completely by accident when she tried to commit suicide) bringing them back from extinction, and now everyone wants to marry her because she is now one of the most powerful people around due to said dragons and being good-looking (in the books this is by the age-of-consent in Westeros standards, where girls are women when they start getting their periods and boys are men at age 13). [[Gets shit done]] except the entire fifth book, in which she mopes around about wanting to marry an annoying, flamboyant mercenary instead of saving herself for political marriage. After banging the flamboyant mercenary, she later marries a Meereenese noble who guarantees he can get her some peace (more likely [[Just As Planned|just as he planned]]).
**She also does nothing while insurgents kill her men, a horde of plagued refugees spread disease to her city and standing idly by while an enemy army besieges her walls, all for realistically political reasons because the world is a horrible place. Learns how to train her dragon. In the books she's just encountered another Khalassar after being hauled away from Meereen by Drogo. In the TV series, she takes over all the Dothraki and adds them to her army, then heads for Westeros to invade the place with her army of elite hoplites, massive horde of Dothraki and her dragons. By the time she gets to King's Landing she's taken significant losses, including two of her dragons, and is fucking her nephew (Jon Snow). Officially went Mad Queen as of S8E5, wherein she burned most of King's Landing after the city attempted to surrender and has decided to "liberate" everyone on the planet, whether they want it or not. Jon kills her in the series finale so that she won't go around burninating the rest of the world.
* The dragons: The three dragons that Daenerys hatched. They're wyverns that breathe fire, [[Awesome|have blood hot enough to melt steel]], and [[List of /tg/ Cuisine|cook their meat before eating it]]. Naturally, some of the coolest things in the story.
** Drogon; named for her late husband, Khal Drogo. Black and red, the biggest and [[Gork|most aggressive dragon]]. Starts eating people and then escapes, leading to the other two getting imprisoned. Interrupts a gladiator tournament, killing a lot of people before being whipped by Daenerys into flying her to a Khalassar that broke off from her husband's after his death. In the show, he's the last dragon standing after Viserion bites it north of the Wall and his undead body is put down at Winterfell and Rhaegal gets shot down over Dragonstone. Takes Dany's body, destroys the Iron Throne and fucks off to who knows where after Dany is killed.
** Rhaegal; named for the first of her dead brothers, Rhaegar. Green and gold, the [[Mork|cunning one]] and the loudest (with a roar "...that would have sent a hundred lions fleeing,"). Kills Quentyn Martell when the latter is trying to goad Viserion (see below). After breaking out of jail with Viserion they go "all your base are belong to us" on Meereen, killing people and taking over the pyramid of a loyal family as his lair. Last seen playing "sack the town" with Viserion in the books. Dead in the show thanks to Euron Greyjoy and some Diabolus ex Machina bullshit.
** Viserion; named for her other brother Viserys. White and gold and the [[Vulkan|friendliest]] (as dragons go, he still eats people). Dug cave for himself in his jail then moved into another pyramid after his and his brother's great escape. Gets killed by the [[Vampire Counts|Night's King in the show via a magic spear, then his corpse is reanimated to be the Night King's zombie dragon steed]] and blasts a hole in the famous Wall, allowing the armies of snow elves and zombies to start flooding Westeros. Now perma-dead thanks to the Night King biting it.
* Viserys Targaryen, ''The Beggar King'': Daenerys' physically abusive older brother. Best known for being a bully with incestuous lust for her, and an arrogant and incompetent fuck with a massive sense of entitlement. He eventually got himself killed for being an all-around jerk and whiny idiot, which culminated in him threatening his sister and unborn nephew with a sword while drunk in a sacred Dothraki place where weapons and bloodshed are forbidden on pain of death (execution is done by bloodless death - having a scarf wrapped tight around the neck and being drowned in a barrel). Daenerys' husband [[awesome|poured molten gold over his head and called it his promised crown, also ensuring his death didn't technically shed any blood in their sacred place]].
* Aegon Targaryen, ''Aegon VI'': Daenerys' nephew, the son of her brother Rhaegar. Been hiding in Essos for the entire length of the series, but recently raised an army of Westerosi exiles and threw them all a massive Welcome Home party with rape and pillage. Wants to marry his aunt because she has dragons, ''and might not actually be a member of House Targaryen'' if you believe some fans. He can actually count past 6, can multiply numbers, can read different language and has a minor understanding of geometry thus cementing him as one of the most educated people in this overwrought series. Can also do his own laundry.
**Like Dany, he has his own band of misfits following him around. While Dany has Dothraki and Unsullied, Aegon has '''The Golden Company''', a mercenary company of ten thousand, descended from the forces loyal to the Blackfyre bastards. The Golden Company has a long and storied history of invading Westeros and failing, which has led to the theories that Aegon is really a Blackfyre. Because of their long history and descent from actual nobles, the Golden Company is nothing like the mercenary rabble common in the rest of the series, even having dedicated knight, archer, and War Elephant divisions.
* Brynden Rivers ''Bloodraven'': A Targaryen bastard who came to prominence about a hundred years before the series as a sort of sorcerer, he later became known as the "Three-Eyed Raven/Crow" after encountering the Children of the Forest, and uses his powers to help advert the Long Night and train Bran. He's described as having long, white hair, missing an eye, bound to a tree, knows all and sees all, associated heavily with ravens and omens... [[Vikings|yeah, he's very much Odin, come to think of it. Just a lot more of an asshole than the Warrior King of legend.]]
**In his prime, he was pretty much just Loki. The Spymaster ''and'' Hand of the King during the Blackfyre Rebellions (a rebellion of all Aegon IV's many bastards, [[Troll|who he legitimized on his deathbed because that's how he rolled]]), he was one of the few to remain loyal. He was a sorceror and had a spy network so thorough, it was a commmon-joke that the [[Magnus the Red|one-eyed]] sorcerer had "[[Thousand Sons|a thousand eyes]], and [[Tzeentch|one]]" He had his own elite unit of archers that solved the first rebellion by sticking the claimant, his heir, and finally his twin, full of arrows.
**Exiled to the Night's Watch after assassinating after assassinating a Blackfyre after promising him safe passage, a running theme in ASOIAF.
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===House Lannister===

''"Hear Me Roar"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Monopoly|Westeros' richest family]], proud, pompous, selfish and fabulous assholes. Not much of a martial tradition but if you cross them [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7t7cnwlOgY they will fucking cut you]. You can tell they are the bad guys because they have an army of sick fucks, including a zebra-riding mercenary band and 7' 8" Khornate Champion <s>not-Goliath</s> Gregor Clegane. House York (though named after House Lancaster) combined with the House of Rothschild and the Mafia. Their unofficial motto is "A Lannister Always Pays His Debts"
* Tywin Lannister, ''The Lion of Lannister'': The Godfather, head of the house, and obsessed with his reputation as a Magnificent Bastard extraordinaire. Lawful Evil Personified. He was a most feared general whose greatest achievement was [[Exterminatus|erasing House Reyne from existence]], which was immortalised in his own sweet-yet-creepy-as-fuck theme song (The Rains of Castamere) that became used as a warning against anyone standing against him. During his tenure as Hand of the King (i.e. Prime Minister), he was a political genius who operated as the true power behind the Iron Throne, keeping the realm stable and prosperous despite the stupidity of Aerys II and Joffrey. However, despite all of his achievements, he's an [[Emperor|absolutely terrible father]], who treats his children as nothing more than tools to further his political agenda. He completely overlooks the incestuous relationship his two oldest children had, and hated Tyrion and made his life a living hell for very poor reasons. He humiliated Tyrion whenever it wouldn't threaten the family's reputation, berated Tyrion for being a whore-monger despite secretly being one himself (this is ''only'' in the show), [[Grimdark|tried to get him killed multiple times]], and as the capstone of awful parenting, he taught Tyrion not to marry commoners after he married one called Tysha - by forcing Tyrion to watch Tysha get gang-raped, forcing him to rape her too and then annulling their marriage. The only person Tywin truly loved was his wife. He eventually gets his comeuppance when Tyrion finds out the truth about the Tysha incident and kills him with a crossbow, all while mentioning that out of all his children, Tyrion was the most alike to Tywin himself. He's based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Neville,_16th_Earl_of_Warwick Warwick the Kingmaker].
* Joanna Lannister: Tywin's late wife and first cousin, meaning the next three characters are inbred as well, ironically. Dies giving birth to Tyrion, which is part of why Tywin hates him, though Cersei hates him for other reasons. Caught wind of Cersei and Jaime's incestuous tendencies, but she died before she could tell Tywin. It is implied that her ghost visits Jaime in a dream and mourns the current state of her family.
* Cersei Lannister, ''Bitch Queen'': Tywin and Joanna's first child. Twin sister to Jaime Lannister and wife to King Robert Baratheon. She fucks her brother Jaime all the time and had three of his children, whom she passed off as Robert's to grab power. She is a massive narcissist who thinks of herself as "female Tywin" and hence seeks to rule Westeros as the Queen, and will do anything to keep her power... even when [[Abbadon the Despoiler|most of her plans end up becoming utter failures]]. Crazy as all fuck and prophesied to be killed by the "little brother." This is because of a prophecy made by a witch, Cersei was a child that she'd be a beautiful queen, lose everything, her children would die before her, and the "Valonqar" would kill her. Though that does explain why she hates Tyrion as hard as all fuck, [[Just As Planned|the exact translation of the term]] that was used is "younger sibling", and not necessarily her sibling, which opens the door to all sorts of characters who hate the fuck out of her. Since Jaime is technically younger by a few seconds, him killing Cersei would be an interesting twist not without buildup. Possibly the Witch was messing with her head because of what a bitch Cersei was being to her, something Cersei never grew out of. Cersei is currently alive only because Varys wants her to be, [[Just As Planned|as she's a terrible queen who'll destabilize the realm enough for him to bring back the Targaryens]]. She was completely shaved, stripped of power in all but her royal heritage and forced to do a nude walk of penance throughout the city by the High Sparrow (ASOIAF Pope- equivalent/[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther Martin Luther] except he won the Reformation) after he uncovered her crimes. Now she's waiting for her hair to grow back and maybe thinking of revenge.
**She gets it in the show by blowing up the Great Sept of Baelor (ASOIAF [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Cathedral Canterbury Cathedral]) with everyone she doesn't like inside it, having her cousin killed near the Wildfire, killing Tyene Sand with the same poison that Tyene used on Myrcella and forcing Ellaria to watch, then capturing the nun who was her jailer and [[Grimdark|leaving her to be tortured to death by zombie Gregor Clegane]]. She is in short [[Thanquol]] disguised as a beautiful blonde woman. Gets anticlimactically squashed by a collapsing ceiling along with Jaime during Daenerys's assault on King's Landing. (her biggest issue? Not dying sooner, for the Seven's sake!)
* Jaime Lannister, ''The Kingslayer'': Younger twin brother (by about three seconds) to Cersei Lannister and commander of the Kingsguard. He loves his sister in every sense of the word and had three children with her. Killed the last king despite his oath, and is widely hated for it, even though everyone agrees that dying was a massive improvement for Aerys. The reason for this betrayal was that Aerys had a huge stockpile of Acme Brand Magic Napalm stockpiled under the city, ready to be set off the moment a siege broke through the town walls, and Jaime's options were to let it happen or kill Aerys before the crazy fuck got ''everybody'' killed. His desire to openly love his sister and win the respect he feels he deserves eventually causes Cersei to reject him. Starts off as an arrogant douche who [[Grimdark|tried to murder Bran Stark, but accidentally crippled him instead]]; as the series progressed he became progressively more bro-tier besides the whole wants-to-fuck-his-sister thing, though he eventually begins to question even this devotion after seeing what a bitch she is when she comes to power. He genuinely loves Tyrion, so much so that he actually went off on his own to get him back after he heard Catelyn had him imprisoned in the Vale. He gets freed by Robb and goes on a journey through Westeros, loses his arm, and gets a lesson in valour and knighthood from Brienne of Tarth. He starts to question his legacy after his son Joffrey makes him Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, a position that was only made available because Joff expelled the Knight who had actually earned it. Since Joff and Cersei had filled the Kingsguard with sycophants and their own thugs, Jaime's role as the Lord Commander has left a bad taste in his mouth because he is now the leader of probably the least prestigious iteration of the Kingsguard ever. Basically, [[Sigvald|Sigvald the Magnificent]] currently in the midst of a redemption arc. In the books, he is currently being lured into a trap by Lady Stoneheart.
**In the show, he has finally told Cersei to get fucked after realizing that she has well and truly lost it, and rode north to help fight the White Walkers. He survived the Battle of Winterfell, hooked up with Brienne, and then rides south [[Derp|because he just can't let Cersei go.]] Winds up getting shanked by Euron Greyjoy and dies [[Fail|via collapsing ceiling]].
* Tyrion Lannister, ''Halfman'': a very intelligent dwarf who is awesome, but hated by everyone, either because of his deformity, or because he's a Lannister. The few people who treat him well is an uncle that went missing, his brother Jaime, Jon Snow who learned a lot from him, and Varys, who at first saw him as an asset, but grew to admire his political abilities and intellect, even declaring him a friend. He seems to do much better when getting drunk with whores, rogues, bastards and barbarians. His silver tongue is one of his greatest strengths (he's witty and good at persuading people) and weaknesses (he's quick with insults and the truth in a city ruled by sociopaths and liars). Tyrion is also one of the only characters with an actual sense of the bigger picture, and an interest toward steering the world toward an outcome that ''doesn't'' involve a [[The End Times|Warhammer End Times]] scenario. **Unfortunately, the world's movers, shakers, and those who generally have the power to make a difference are increasingly either a) dead, b) scattered to the winds or c) hate his dwarf guts. Despite the increasing difficulty and fruitlessness of his task, however, [[Awesome|Tyrion still fights]]. After being framed for killing Joffrey, he killed his own father and fled Westeros. In the books, he is currently in exile in the Free Cities, weaselling his way into leading a merc band and trying to sign them up with Daenerys' forces, recognizing her as one of the few chances Westeros has got of fixing its shit (provided she can get her own shit together, which she's having a bit of trouble with).
**Since characters in this series tend to either be walking tropes, rip-offs of other fantasy characters, or historical people with different names, Tyrion is probably based on the great [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vorkosigan Miles Vorkosigan] (who was himself based on a few people including Sir Winston Churchill) and is a nod to King Richard III (a deformed but competent king later demonized by historiographers of his era). Even if he is usually the smartest one in the room at any given time, though, Tyrion is still not above having some derp moments. Exhibit A, when Tyrion asked his father what happened to his first wife (right before killing him), he took an ''obvious'' "I don't know and I don't care" response ("Wherever whores go") as if it was literal directions, and afterward keeps asking random people if they know where whores go, with predictable reactions. (Admittedly he'd just killed his ex and was probably in the middle of some serious PTSD at the time, which is not great for your brain.) The show version eventually meets Daenerys and becomes her Hand only to [[Fail|fuck up a bunch of stuff]] and lose her trust. He sells her out when he realizes that she's gone round the bend and winds up becoming Hand to King Bran.
* Kevan Lannister: Tywin's younger brother, considered "the reliable one". One of the few decent Lannisters, though saying that he is perfectly happy carrying out Tywin's bidding. Tried to talk sense into Cersei and was later called in to try and fix her mess. He did such a good job of it that Varys decided to personally thank him. With a crossbow. And a group of knife-wielding children. In the show he dies with the rest of the crowd when the Great Sept got nuked by Cersei - the manner of his book death was given over to Grand Maester Pycelle at the exact same time.
* Lancel Lannister: Kevan's son, Tywin's nephew and Tyrion, Jamie and Cersei's cousin. A callow, spoilt but well-meaning nobleman. Pretty much Joffery but mentally stable, not sadistic and capable of compassion and honor. Enters a sexual relationship with his cousin Cersei when Jamie is captured, which Tyrion uncovers and uses to blackmail Lancel into spying for him. He later has a religious experience after nearly dying and joins the Poor Fellows of the Faith of the Seven, gives up his incestuous relationship and tries to convert several of his family members (somewhat successfully with Kevan, unsuccessfully with Cersei). Still alive in the books.
**In the show, he reports Cersei to the High Sparrow (rather than the High Sparrow cleverly uncovering Cersei's plan and trapping her) and dies horribly. Cersei deliberately set him up for a particularly agonizing and drawn-out end; he's lured into a catacomb under the sept that contains a massive cache of wildfire, gets his spinal cord severed so he can't walk, and is left where he can see candles sitting in a pool of wildfire just a little too far away for him to reach it in time, so that he [[Grimdark|spends his last moments vainly trying to avert a horrible catastrophe before being incinerated]].
* Cersei and Robert's (actually Jaime's) children:
** Joffrey Baratheon: Spoiled brat and sociopath to the extreme. He's basically [[Sigvald]] during his teenage years (and likely inspired [[Phil Kelly|Kelly]] to make the character Sigvald). "Heir" of the throne, and the technical king of Westeros during the War of the Five Kings since he lives in King's Landing and sits on the throne. Turned out to be worse than Aerys. He died and there was much rejoicing. [[Fail|Except by his mother, who instead had sex on his corpse]]. Fourteen years old at the time of his death.
** Tommen Baratheon: The new king on the Iron Throne. Nine years old. Married to a teenaged shotacon wife who's (unknown to him) the granddaughter of his brother's true killer. Trying to litigate the criminalization of beets. Loves [[Cats|kittens]]. He's pretty well-rounded and non-fucked up, which is a miracle considering his parents, both putative and biological. Also seems to be trying to take kinging seriously, but his mom is trying to quash that in her subliminal attempt to hold power indefinitely, so whether it holds is another matter entirely. Prophesied to die before Cersei, which is doubly tragic due to his age and being a much better person than her.
**In the show, he commits suicide after Cersei blows up the Great Sept (head office of the fantasy knockoff Church of England), killing his godfather, great-uncle, wife, and all his religious friends, because of course her power hunger was more important than his happiness and well being.
** Myrcella Baratheon: Princess, and Cersei and "Robert's" second oldest child. Ten years old. In order to appease the Martells, Tyrion arranges a marriage with her and the youngest Martell, which pissed off everyone. In the books, she had her face fucked up because of Arianne Martell's amateur intrigues, which overlapped with poor planning, general stupidity, and another guy's backstabbing. Before the maiming, she was quite decent and non-evil. Who knows how she'll turn out now with half of her face cut off. Also prophesied to die before Cersei.
**In the show, she had a crush on Oberyn's surviving nephew but was killed by Elia in revenge for Oberyn's death, but alive in the books though missing an ear. Also, the readership all got on George's balls for maiming this girl, mostly because it was a sign that he had run out of ideas and was basically just milking Diabolus ex Machina ([[Just As Planned|or that's what he wants us to think]]).
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===House Baratheon===

''"Ours is the Fury"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Ascended to the Iron Throne after a successful rebellion against the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen. Produces no less than three claimants to the succession, each one very different from the other. Technically a cadet branch of House Targaryen as their founder Orys was allegedly a Targaryen bastard, who took the original Storm Kings (House Durrandon) deer sigil after killing the last one and fucking his only child Argella and then 200 odd years later, King Egg's daughter married their grandfather. They're pretty much the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Plantagenet House of Plantagenet].
* Robert Baratheon, ''The Usurper'': Fat, old, former badass who led the rebellion, and now the king who married Cersei Lannister. Then he fucked a bunch of other women and had lots of illegitimate kids. He was killed while mixing boar hunting and drinking, but whether this death was planned or not is uncertain. On the surface, a king with a thing for easy laughs and partying; right underneath the surface, he's irresponsible and leaves the actual ruling of a nation to his staff, deeper under the surface he's pretty much a sad, lonely old bro who would rather not have been king. Comparable to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England Henry IV], in that both were powerfully built military geniuses who overthrew the existing monarchy and later succumbed to an unhealthy lifestyle.
* Stannis '''The Mannis''' Baratheon: Robert's younger brother, an all-around badass who swings between [[Lawful Stupid]] (more so in the show than the books) and [[gets shit done|getting shit done]]. [[Judge Dredd|believes so strongly in the rule of law]] that he feels compelled to take the Iron Throne for himself despite wanting nothing to do with it. Is advised by a priestess of the God of light, Melisandre, and a lowborn smuggler named Davos Seaworth raised to knighthood and nobility. [[C.S Goto|His character is ruined in the show into an incompetent pawn of Melisandre and gets killed off just because one of the showrunners didn't like him]].
** Shireen Baratheon: Stannis's kid daughter. The sweet, charming, and intelligent little lady who was left with a deformity on her face from a disease called greyscale. Teaches Davos how to read, and is probably the most innocent person in the series alongside Tommen, Myrcella and a few others. Being the grim and dark universe A Song of Ice and Fire is, however, this means that she's likely going to end up becoming fuel for a vicious fire god. In the show she does, but in the books, she is safe and sound since Stannis isn't stupid enough to bring him with her while campaigning. His wife, on the other hand, being such an idiotic fanatical pyromaniac... well, her odds aren't exactly looking that great.
* Renly Baratheon, ''That Gay Guy'': Robert and Stannis's youngest brother. Took Loras Tyrell (a.k.a. Knight of Flowers, Pretty Boy, etc.) as his lover. Decided he was better suited to be king, though the bizarre and outdated laws of the land stated Stannis was next in line (though Joffrey and then Tommen were first since they were [[Pretend|officially]] Bobby B's legitimate kids). Was hugely popular since he had Robert's charisma, which led to him getting the most support, but he lacked Stannis's conviction and devotion to the duty of actually doing the work of a king, or even Robert's ability to wage war. Killed by Melisandre with some "help" by Stannis ''The Mannis'' for trying to steal his crown, though in the books Stannis may not have been completely aware of the role he played in Renly's death. He's basically [[That Guy]] of ASOIAF, since quite a lot of shit is his fault, indirectly or otherwise.
*Gendry Baratheon, the Bastard Son. One of Robert's many, many bastard children, and the one who gets the most page and screen time. He starts out as a humble blacksmith in King's Landing, who first comes to Ned's attention when Lord Stark is investigating the death of Jon Arryn. From there, he gets shipped off to the Night's Watch to avoid the imminent purge of Robert's bastards and winds up becoming friends with Arya and Hot Pie. After some adventuring and sexual tension with Arya (at least in the show), he joins the Brotherhood Without Banners. In the show, they sell him to Melisandre so she can use him for a blood magic ritual, while in the books he just goes on being a smith and doesn't get involved in anything particularly weird or shady. He's helping run an inn as a Brotherhood front/orphanage when he reappears in the books, but in the show, Ser Davos sets him free and tells him to fuck off, which he does for a few seasons. He eventually turns up back in King's Landing, where Davos finds him and recruits him (and his comically oversized LARPing hammer) for Team Snow. He helps Jon capture a wight to show Cersei, makes dragonglass weapons for the Army of the Living, hooks up with Arya, and fights in the Battle of Winterfell, after which Daenerys legitimizes him as the new lord of House Baratheon.</div></div>

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===House Tully===

''"Family, Duty, Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> Lords of the central riverlands. Being the obligatory central nation they spend a lot of the series being fought over like a cake in between fat kids. Basically Poland/the Netherlands, given they have so many rivers and how hard they've been fucked over.
*Edmure Tully: Basically the SoIaF universe's eternal butt monkey (because he happens to be a decent fucking person). Despite being an okay guy, he's also a useless ponce with a dense streak a mile wide and a bad habit of bragging about things he shouldn't be proud of. It took hanging in a stockade for a few months to make him experience some growth. When Jaime was brought in to unfuck the situation and end the siege at Riverrun, Jaime's "negotiation" pressured him into convincing his house to surrender, but he made sure [[Troll|that Brynden got out first]]. In the books, he's currently spending his days at the Lannister house as a hostage to make sure that the Tullys don't try to ruin the situation again.
**In the show, he disappears until the final episode, [[Fail|where he tries to make a case for himself as king]] only to get shut down by Sansa.
*Lord Hoster Tully: In GoT the only act he committed of any note was to die. In the books however he is arguably, though inadvertently, the most destructive character once you've delved into his history. The man looked down upon peasants, cripples, bastards, and broken things, which influenced his daughters and primed them for their mistreatment of such through their travels (especially Catelyn's immediate suspicion of Tyrion, [[What|despite the charge and evidence making little sense, but because he's a "Monster" of course he must have done it]]). He denied Tywin's offer to marry Tyrion to Lysa for said reasons, but he also denied Lysa to marry Petyr because of his low birth and her value of being married off to a higher bidder, even if their age differed by at least 50 years and she was pregnant with Petyr's child. He responded to this pregnancy by forcefully aborting the child via drinking Moon Tea, without her knowledge (something he would have nightmares about approaching his death). Not only did this nearly cause her death, but it destroyed her reproductive system resulting in 5 miscarriages and 2 stillbirths (an event that would lead her to aggressive paranoia so fervent that she killed her husband to prevent being separated from her only living child). All of these actions unfortunately spiraled into helping cause The War of the Five Kings.
*Brynden Tully ''the Blackfish'': He didn't catch the memo that he was part of the joke faction, and proceeds to spend the entire series fucking Lannister shit up and generally being a boss. Thought to be the black sheep in a family of fish (Thus "Blackfish", geddit?), but in spite of that status held true to the family, continuing to hold Riverrun for Robb in spite of the war pretty much being lost. When Edmure surrendered Riverrun, he escaped by swimming under the portcullis and escaping into the river, causing everyone to shit themselves because he's totally coming for revenge. Also widely accepted by the fans to be a closeted homosexual.
**In the HBO show, he gets killed when resisting arrest from Tully forces by order of Edmure. [[Rage|And it happens offscreen.]]</div></div>

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===House Arryn===

''"As High as Honor"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Mountain lords turned [[NEET|neurotic shut ins]]. Goes through lords about as quickly as you would expect a castle equipped with a door that opens into empty air. Basically Switzerland/Afghanistan, seeing as how they stayed neutral in the War of Five Kings, their land is covered by nothing but mountains, and they're constantly fighting with the local tribes. They were being entertainingly screwed over by Littlefinger until his death.
*Jon Arryn: Only appears posthumously and is the catalyst for the whole plot. Used to be a foster father of sorts to Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Was the Robert's Malcador the Sigilite during Robert's Rebellion. He was killed by Littlefinger via Lysa when he figured out that Robert's kids are bastards of Cersei and Jaime. His death was blamed on the Lannisters to destabilize Westeros.
*Lysa Arryn: Loli bride turned Lady of the Vale after the Lannisters forcibly retired her husband from life, at least officially. In reality, Littlefinger convinced her to poison her husband and blame the Lannisters [[Just As Planned|which pretty much started this whole clusterfuck to begin with]]. A closeted, crazy woman who spends the entire series in her castle "the Eyrie" being useless, breastfeeding her own son at age 10, obsessing over Littlefinger's cock, and [[Derp|refusing to help her sister and nephew in the war she and Littlefinger pretty much started]], which may have guaranteed their eventual horrific murders by their enemies. Finally gets her comeuppance when Littlefinger kicks her out the moon door (post-taunting, of course), putting her out of our collective misery. Long live the Lord Protector.
* Robert Arryn: ''Littlefuck'', Lysa's equally mentally unstable autistic son, who still sucks on his mom's tit and enjoys seeing people "fly" out the moon door to their deaths. He actually seems to be a bit smarter than you would first think and is a really, really good judge of character, except with Sansa. Secretly being poisoned by Littlefinger and Sansa so she can take over the Vale and North. Named Robin in the show because the showrunners were afraid that having two characters with the same name would be too confusing. The show version doesn't get poisoned but turns up in the series finale as the Lord of the Vale.</div></div>

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===House Greyjoy===

''"We Do Not Sow"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">[[Awesome|A house founded by Cthulhu-worshipping Norscans]]. While not actual Vikings in any sense of the word, there is little other way to describe them. They live on some islands off the coast of Westeros and almost their entire culture is based around raiding and the ocean. Their religion holds it shameful for a man to pay for personal possessions, and states they have to get things either by trade, washing up from the ocean or the "Iron Price": seizing something from the body or belongings of someone he defeated in battle rather than paying or trading for it. Also, only possessions acquired via the Iron Price command respect among the Ironborn. The nastiest form this takes is stealing women as "Salt Wives", [[Emperor's Children|effectively making them a society of rapists]]. As an interesting bit of trivia, their local variety of baptism is to be ritually drowned in seawater and resuscitated by their priests, and they don't see drowning as a bad way to go on the grounds that it means their god/gods have accepted them and they'll go to an underwater Heaven that's basically a more X-rated version of The Little Mermaid.
*Balon Greyjoy: Asshole dad, crappy ruler, and general shithead (all very common things in this world, but still) who rebelled against Robert Baratheon and failed miserably. All of his sons were killed, except for Theon, who was taken as a hostage to ensure his good behaviour. Despite being in a position to join either the Lannisters or the Starks during the War of Five Kings and thereby get whatever he wanted from either (independence and the North, or independence and Casterly Rock, respectively), he does the absolute stupidest thing possible and declares himself independent without support from anyone, attacking the North and the rest of Westeros, thereby virtually guaranteeing that he'll be on the receiving end of another one-sided battle once everyone else has sorted their shit out. In the book he at least tried to make one alliance but it was with the freaking Lannisters and not the other Kingdom seeking independence. Never got that far, though, since he was pushed off a bridge during a storm by an assassin his brother Euron sent.
*Victarion Greyjoy: Admiral of the Iron Fleet. [[Gets shit done]] while wearing [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Lokhir Fellheart's]] armour during boarding actions. Does it for vengeance, the lulz and as a ticket to Ironborn heaven (which they believe men can reach if they die in battle or by drowning). Worships both R'hllor and the Drowned God. For all his badassery, is far too stupid to realize that his black Red Priest sidekick's constant rambling about his "great destiny" is inevitably going to end in his burning to death on a sacrificial pyre. Said Red Priest impressed Victarion by surviving being marooned at sea for 3 weeks and turning Victarion's infected arm into a super-strong volcano arm. Seriously. Isn't in the show, which is lame.
*Aeron Greyjoy ''Damphair'': [[Kostaltyn|A priestly Alan Moore who drank seawater]]. Once a fun-loving party animal, he nearly drowned during the Greyjoy Rebellion and became a dour and devout priest of the Ironborn [[Cthulhu]] religion. Confirmed to have been raped by Euron when they were kids. Planned to overthrow Euron, who bribed and manipulated his way into becoming king of the Ironborn. As of the excerpts from the sixth book, he [[Grimdark|Was captured by Euron and tortured to try and make him renounce his faith, including feeding him spoiled food, drugging him and burning him. Later Euron tied Aeron, naked, to the prow of Euron's ship alongside Euron's tortured, pregnant former lover because she showed Aeron kindness by once giving him proper food]]. He tried to console her by saying their suffering will end in underwater Valhalla, [[Awesome|showing Euron failed to make him deny his faith]]. Also left out of the show.
*Theon Greyjoy: Son of the Lord/King of the Iron Islands. Had the personality of a stereotypical high school jock, being an excellent archer and womanizer and proud of it. He was given to Ned Stark by his father after Balon failed to successfully rebel against Robert Baratheon. Swore an oath to Robb, but then ditched him out of a desperate need to please his father. Ends up castrated and acts as the personal slave of Ramsay Bolton after Ramsay puts him through horrific torture to turn him into Reek. Rescued by his sister, but the psychological trauma meant it took a while before he could stop calling himself Reek and start getting back to normal mentally (physically he's now missing a few parts that don't heal or grow back). He's just been reunited with his sister in the books, but is dead in the show, thanks to charging the Night King by himself while protecting Bran.
* Asha Greyjoy: Theon's older sister and a commander of some renown which is quite a feat - almost every man on the Iron Islands except her father either tried to get in her pants or told her to [[-4 STR|stop playing around and go do some actual women's work]], before she kicked enough ass that they respected her. Rescues Theon after he escapes Ramsay but then loses him to Stannis. Is named Yara in the show because the showrunners thought her name sounded too similar to Osha the wildling chick and is also apparently [[PROMOTIONS|bisexual]]. Eventually becomes Lady of the Iron Islands in the show because she's the last Greyjoy standing. Is more or less the only Ironborn who isn't a complete asshole.
*Euron Greyjoy ''Crow's Eye'': A [[Chaos Warrior|sick fuck Lovecraftian pirate armed with unnatural sorcerous powers]] and so evil that Balon banished him from the Iron Islands. Every member of his crew is a mute because Euron ripped all their tongues out. Many of them are also the illegitimate sons [[Beastmen|of women he's raped around the world during his raids]]. Uses an eyepatch to conceal a pitch-black eye, his personal "obviously a villain" mark. Raped his brother Victarion's wife, then claimed she wanted it so Victarion had to kill her. Raped his younger brother Aeron. Also showed back up in the Iron Islands the day after Balon died, despite having been raping and pillaging in Essos before that, which is suspicious as fuck. Now the new Iron King. Plans to conquer Westeros and has some unknown plan to deal with Daenerys. Revealed in the book ''Winds of Winter'' to be [[Erebus|one of the sickest fucks in an entire setting of sick fucks (and that's saying something)]], including having a god complex while hating religion so much he [[Grimdark|tortures any clergymen he captures to try and make them give up their faiths using ironic tortures themed around their religions - such as preachers have their tongues cut out and burning priests of the fire god to death]]. Euron tried and failed to break his priest brother Aeron's faith so he lashed Aeron to the front of his ship to die [[Grimdark|alongside Euron's own pregnant lover Falia]], in what could be preparations for the [[Betrayal at Calth|ruinstorm]].
**In the show he's just a psycho pirate turned king without any magic powers or gear [[FAIL|who wants to bang Cersei and Jaime kills him in the second-to-last episode in one of the dumbest moments in an already terrible episode.]]
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===House Tyrell===

''"Growing Strong"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Lords of Highgarden and the Reach, backstabbers par-excellence, and owners of a lot of fertile land: of the Seven Kingdoms, the Reach is the "biggest," having the most people, the largest army, and a stable, if not agrarian economy; yes, the Westerlands is richer, yes, the Stormlands have/had the strongest military, and yes, the Vale is the most honor-and-chivalry obsessed, but the Reach and the Tyrells are the only ones who can compete with all three at once. Unlike the current lot of Lannisters they understand the value of good PR, balancing ruthlessness with being somewhat amicable, political savvy and not being stuck-up on honour (which they still have more of than the Lannisters do). They're a bit analogous to France. In the books, it's the Tyrells and their support that keeps the throne aloft post-Robert, first aiding Joffrey, then Tommen. They were "shrewd" enough to stay out of Robert's Rebellion and outside of his court while Tywin was in charge, so their lands are basically untouched by war: the Reach's cities are also the most beautiful, with Highgarden and Oldtown being notable for not smelling like shit and full of garbage. [[Fail|Unfortunately, they've all been wiped out in the show]].

*Mace "The Ace" Tyrell: Lord of Highgarden. Massively fat and overweight, while being stupid, overreaching and constantly mocked by everyone else, he's otherwise known as a friendly man, a good Lord when it comes to management and a good father; in the books, The Throne uses him to print gold and alleviate hunger during the War of the Five Kings, so they give him and his family a bunch of positions to keep them invested. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to save a man in the Game of Thrones. Gets killed with the rest of the noble houses when Cersei blows up the Great Sept of Baelor.
*Olenna Tyrell: The brains behind House Tyrell's schemes. Known as the ''Queen of Thorns'' for being an outspoken, prickly and venomous old lady. Schemed with Littlefinger to have Joffrey killed, but she carried it out with compressed powder "gems" hidden in Sansa's hairnet that poisoned his wine. She is to the Tyrells as Tywin is to the Lannisters, except her daughter isn't a narcissistic sociopath.
**Alive and well in the books (so far), where she's pretty much the same as the show. She has taken Margaery as her successor, which is why she made sure she'd be engaged to Tommen and had Joffrey offed.
**Became a fan-favorite for constantly dropping awesome one-liners and calling out smug and/or unpopular characters like Littlefinger and the Sand Snakes. [[Fail|Killed off in the show]] as Jaime gives her the option of drinking painless poison or whatever Cersei wanted to do to her after beseiging Highgarden. Olenna took the poison, and before she died [[Awesome|revealed to Jaime that she was the one who killed Joffrey and told him to make sure Cersei knows it]].
*Willas Tyrell: Mace Tyrell's eldest son and heir, crippled at a very young age when jousting against Oberyn Martell. Surprisingly, he and Oberyn are still bros, even though the rest of their Houses aren't very fond of each other because of this incident. Probably one of the most pleasant and sensible characters in the books, which might explain why they never included him in the TV show. Very fond of breeding animals, especially horses.
*Garlan Tyrell ''The Gallant'': Second-born son. Badass extraordinaire considered one of the best swords in Westeros, and one of the few people kind to Tyrion. Trains for real combat (often against multiple opponents by himself) unlike Loras, who's a tourney fighter. Single-handedly wrecks many notable knights fighting for Stannis during the War of The Five Kings. And he is the only person other than Tywin to put Joffrey in his place, at his own wedding. Sadly no POV chapter yet and omitted from the TV series (Loras takes credit for his deeds).
*Loras Tyrell ''The Knight of Flowers'': The Tyrell who appears most in the TV series, since his older brothers got adapted out. Considered to be an example of the perfect knight, despite his youth. Is secretly Renly's gay lover and conspired to take the throne with him and his sister. He was elevated to the Kingsguard as part of the Lannister's appeasement of the Tyrells, but also to ensure that Margaery would be safe if it turned out they couldn't kill Joff/Tommen turned out to be a sociopath too. Last seen badly injured in the books attempting to take Stannis' castle in order to to prove his honor after the Faith Militant locked up his sister, but because none of Cersei's sources could visually confirm it, it's likely that the Tyrells ([[Iron warriors|it was ''their'' forces that did the sieging]], after all) fabricated a story to get their boy out of there. In the show he ends up tortured by the members of the Faith for being gay [[C.S Goto|because the showrunners retconned them to hate gay people]], [[Protectorate of Menoth|later joins their ranks of questionable willingness]], then dies when Cersei blows up the Sept of Baelor.
*Margaery Tyrell: The would-be Queen of Westeros, she has married, in order, Renly Baratheon (gay), Joffrey Baratheon (evil), and Tommen Baratheon (8 years old) and has been crowned as queen three times. While she is nice, like Disney Princess-in-a-grimdark-setting-nice, she is still her grandmother's protege , and so is the source of Cersei's paranoia (which is kinda valid as the Tyrells did off Joffrey so that the more-controllable and non-sociopathic Tommen could marry Margy). Cersei was so paranoid about Marge's ascension that she decided to legitimize the Sparrows and allow them to reform the [[Age of Apostasy|Faith Militant]], all because she was afraid Tommen would listen to Margaery more than her.
**In the show, she marries and uses sex to control Tommen, because the show needed to hit its titty quota and because Tommen is a teenager in the show. Was arrested by the resident Chamber Militant The Sparrow and asked for a trial by faith in the books. In the show, this also happens but she tries to be pious in an attempt to save herself but ended up getting killed when Cersei blew up the Sept of Baelor.
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===House Martell===

''"Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"''
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[[Tallarn|Desert dwelling survivalists]] who [[Dune|pride themselves on having never been conquered]] by the Targaryen dynasty (though they later married in). Moorish Spaniards, kinda. Their entire thing is that they're nothing like the rest of the Seven Kingdoms: they're descended from the Rhoynar, a group of people that used to live along one of Essos' longest rivers who practice absolute cognatic (the oldest child, regardless of gender, inherits the throne) succession and take a very liberal attitude towards sex. House Martell also has a rocky relationship with the rest of the kingdom: The Baratheons don't trust them because they were all Targaryen loyalists, the Reach doesn't like them because of historic wars between the two, and House Martell has never forgiven House Lannister for Clegane's rape and murder of Elia Martell, Rhaegar's first wife and mother of his children.
[[C.S Goto|Their story arc was completely ruined in the show, as Elia and Oberyn's daughters kill Oberyn's brother and nephew for taking too long to avenge him before being captured and killed themselves by Euron and Cersei]].
*Doran Martell: Lord of Sunspear and of royal descent. Still mad at the Lannisters about that whole "murdered-my-sister-and-infant-niece thing". Playing the longest of long games with Varys, which blew up in his face because he told ''no one in his family'' about his schemes (well, maybe Oberyn, but Oberyn is dead).
**[[What|Killed off in the show by Ellaria as part of her plan to avenge Oberyn]]. Even his actor was upset.
*Arianne Martell: One of GRRM's characters who seems to exists solely to fuck everything up at the worst conceivable moment. Still hot as Dornish girls come. See, she is technically the heir of Dorne, being the ''first-born'' daughter, and yet was shut out of most of her father's meetings and plans, which caused her to get upset because even Oberyn treats all of his bastards better than her dad treats her. After Doran ''seemingly'' accepts his own brother's death without any sort of fuss, she decides that her father is weak and plans to start ''another'' front in the War of Five Kings by putting Myrcella up on the throne. However, one of her dad's spies gives them up, and in a huge clusterfuck, Myrcella gets maimed by one of the pro-war knights. She is then taken to her father, who finally spills the beans on his grand scheme: the reason why she was sidelined by her father was because he had secretly betrothed her to her Viserys, but now that Viserys is dead, plans to see if he can broker an alliance with "Aegon," Rhaegar and Elia's son who "supposedly" was secreted away and replaced with doubles.
*Oberyn Martell ''The Viper of Dorne'': Doran Martell's brother, a bisexual swinger, former mercenary, and a drunkard (and also Inigo Montoya in Dark Fantasy). His girlfriend is a spectacularly beautiful bastard named Ellaria Sand and he has many illegitimate children, mostly daughters, collectively called "The Sand Snakes". Crippled the Tyrell heir in a joust, causing a rift between the two houses; despite this, he's actually best mates with the aforementioned heir, due to Willas Tyrell being straight up the nicest and most balanced man in the series and Oberyn being a very decent person. Known for poisoning his weapons, as well as his battle-cry. Died from a mutual kill, with Gregor Clegane crushing his skull in rather graphically, but Oberyn getting the last laugh, since he got Clegane with a horribly painful and slow-acting venom which stretched his death over days or even weeks, during which time he was ruthlessly experimented upon by a mad scientist, meaning he avenged his sister Elia who Gregor had raped and murdered. [[Sanguinius|So to sum it up, he's a spear-wielding badass whose death in battle against a major villain was deeply traumatizing for all in-universe and out]].

*Quentyn Martell: Didn't realize he was in Dark Low Fantasy and thought he was in High Fantasy, poor bastard. A member of House Martell, sent to marry Daenerys to secure an alliance between the families since the original marriage plan to hook Arianne up with Viserys won't work with Viserys dead. Leaves Westeros and goes all the way to the city of Meereen to marry her, but he's too late, as she marries the Meereenese noble Hizdahr, and like Jorah he's not her type (Dany likes her bad boys). Tries to tame two of her dragons to impress her; the attempt goes wrong, he gets horribly burnt and gradually dies in agony from his wounds.
*The Sand Snakes: Oberyn's children. All daughters he had with various women throughout his travels (all consensual encounters, mind you, which actually says a lot about Westeros that it has to be said). Mixed race and all hot with various skills including combat training and mastery of poisons. Working with Doran and Ellaria in the books.
**[[C.S Goto|Ruined in the show where they don't accomplish anything, are given atrocious dialogue (the "you need the bad pussy" line comes to mind), aren't great fighters and get killed by Euron's men, except for the one who poisoned Myrcella; she gets captured and poisoned back by Cersei so an imprisoned Ellaria is forced to watch her die and decompose.]]</div></div>

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===House Bolton===

''"Our Blades Are Sharp"''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Starks' most important (and most despised) vassal, a former arch-rival made of [[Grimdark]] because their entire theme [[Dark Eldar|revolves around Torture]] and they're [[Night Lords|thoroughly awful, dishonorable, sadistic cowards who can be counted on to do every dirty trick possible before even trying to fight fair. Their sigil is a crucified and flayed man]], their castle is [[Commorragh|a complex of constant suffering called the Dreadfort]], and just look at their House motto...all of which shows how stupid the Starks were for thinking they could control them. Tied with Red Wedding collaborators the Freys as the most thoroughly vile house in the entire setting (no mean feat, all things considered).
*Roose Bolton, ''The 'Leech Lord'': A Lawful Evil sociopathic health nut who's called the Leech Lord because he gets leeched regularly, believing they get rid of bad blood. Second-most powerful Lord in the North with ambitions to depose the Starks. Since the Starks are mostly unable to think like crafty people and are blinded by excessive honour this doesn't prove too difficult. He gets his wish when he stabs Robb Stark in the back, at his uncle's wedding no less, and has anyone associated with Robb killed. He then makes over Winterfell in his bloody image and is currently trolling Stannis. Believes in the abolished practice of "[[Rape|Droit du seigneur]]" (a tradition that allowed a lord to have sex with subordinate women, whether they wanted to or not) and killed at least one man for trying to hide his wife from Roose (before fathering Ramsay with her via rape). Believed that he and his son could be as evil as they wanted as long as no one found out. Killed by Ramsey in the show, which Ramsay tried to cover with a lie despite the witnesses to his actions. May also be dead in the books, since the letter Jon receives from Winterfell in book five is addressed from Lord Ramsay Bolton.
*Ramsay Snow/Bolton: <s>A Dark Elf with shaved ears in the wrong universe</s>. <s>The Joker of Westeros</s>. The Chaotic Evil incarnate bastard son of Roose Bolton and a peasant woman he raped [[Grimdark|(under the hanging corpse of the woman's husband, for fuck's sake!)]]. One of the most fucked up people in all of the Seven Kingdoms (alongside the Mountain, Joffrey, the original Reek, the pedophile marauder Rorge and Euron), because he [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|loves to torture and kill people openly for the lulz]], such as Theon Greyjoy, who he crippled, knocked his teeth out, castrated, and brainwashed into calling himself Reek. Reek was originally a peasant appointed to try and control a young Ramsay, but instead Ramsay warped him into a mentally unstable necrophiliac before killing Reek to fake his death, but Ramsay seemed to hold some twisted affection for him. He also sent Theon's severed appendage to Theon's dad in a cutesy box with a letter mockingly detailing his evilness. Will torture anyone who points out his illegitimate heritage even though now he's legally recognized as a Bolton. Also has a pack of hunting dogs he names after women he hunts, rapes and kills. Married a fake Arya Stark and regularly mistreats her, including forced bestiality. Not a fun guy to be around. The only reason he's gotten away with it for so long (as pointed out by his father) is that no one is strong enough to stand up to him yet, but [[Powder Keg of Justice|when they are]] he's going to be killed (especially if his fate in the show is anything to go by).
**In the show, he killed his father with a knife, fed his stepmother and newborn half-brother to his dogs, then married Sansa Stark and deflowered her via rape. Ramsay was such a monster even Iwan Rheon, THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED THE GUY, hoped he'd die horribly. He got his wish: The consequences of Ramsay's actions catch up with him when Jon Snow shows up with an army capable of threatening him, and after surprise reinforcements from Littlefinger and his own fucked-up teamkilling, the Starks crush the Bolton army, forcing Ramsay to flee back to Winterfell. Despite this, the gate is smashed down, and Jon disarms him and beats him quite brutally before detaining him to await trial. Before the trial Sansa sets his dogs on him, which he had deliberately starved so they would eat Jon. Apparently they found him quite tasty. For all that Season 6 of GoT is Skub, there likely aren't many who would object to this moment.
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===House Frey===

''"We Stand Together"''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> House of weasels who are always grumpy and have a thing for overreacting to perceived slights. Wouldn't be that important except for the fact that they own the only bridge over a strategically important river, and regularly extort anyone attempting to cross it...that, and performing the Red Wedding, AKA the Magnum Opus of Grimdark that single-handedly ensures they're [[Marines Malevolent|the most hated fucks in the whole setting in-universe and out.]] Simply put, there is '''nothing''' good or nice you can say about the Freys. They're ugly inside and out, cruel, treacherous, thoroughly dishonorable, and aren't even strong warriors, being a mix of incompetent dumbasses and sadistic cowards. They'd all make excellent Skaven (especially considering they could stand to be killed by some Lizardmen).

*Walder Frey: The ancient, terrible, ornery old man in charge of the Twins. Universally detested by his peers (and the audience) for being an amoral, sociopathic opportunist, which he returns in kind for said peers "looking down on him" (can't imagine why), and will readily betray an important ally for immediate gain, or if he feels he has been slighted in some minor way, with the aforementioned Red Wedding being the most infamous example of both. His descendants are literally so numerous that no one except GRRM himself has been able to count them all, so we aren't even going to attempt it (not helped by quite a few of them being named Walder as well). Now dead in the show due to getting his throat slit by a vengeful Arya after she serves him two of his sons as meat pies. </div></div>

===Minor Houses and non-Houses===
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'''Night's Watch'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">The Night's Watch are an apolitical force in charge of manning The Wall, a giant ice wall that separates the relative tranquillity of the south from the Lovecraftian fucked-up-itude of the true north. They are chronically undermanned and undersupplied since nobody believes their stories of a barbarian army or the impending zombie apocalypse. Basically everybody else thinks they're in a game of [[Diplomacy]] and the Night's Watch are the only ones who realize they're actually in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]], though it's been so long since the last snow elf invasion that even they had forgotten about the undead hordes and focused too much on barbarians. Too add to their problems, they are overwhelmingly comprised of petty criminals who wanted to avoid the hangman, because "taking the black", as it's colloquially known, also brings with it a full pardon for any crime committed, even murder and treason (even rape, though rapists tend to be despised among the Night's Watch). Taking the black isn't also very popular, as a common joke in the Seven Kingdoms is that out 10 people, only would one would willfully take the black, the rest would rather get hanged. They also frequently serve as a convinient catch-all solution for Lords and nobles who fell out of favor, committed treason or were outwitted in the endless Westerosi wheel of politics; lucky for them because said Lords and Nobles are usually the only ones with any fighting experience that are part of the watch and make up their leadership. They've allied with the Wildings and the North, but in the TV show, the Night's King used the undead dragon Viserion to burn a hole through The Wall.
*Jeor Mormont, ''The Old Bear'': 997th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch at the start of the series. Sees Jon Snow as something of a second son (since his own son Jorah was exiled for enslaving and refused to take the black for his crimes). Leads a ranging north of the Wall to investigate reports that the Others have returned. Ends up killed during a mutiny of survivors after the Others wiped out most of his force.
*Alliser Thorne: Prick of a knight who was favourite to be the next Watch Commander, but was passed over by Jon Snow. Unable to accept Jon Snow letting the Wildlings live on the other side of the wall in an alliance against the zombie hordes, he staged a coup against Jon. It failed because Jon was brought back to life. He is now dead in the show, having been executed for his treason by Jon Snow. Despite of his many personal failings, he's one of the very few capable fighters (and a pretty good one, even) of the Watch and a skilled commander. Took the Black after siding with the Targaryens during the Sack of King's Landing in the civil war.
*Aemon Targaryen: Maester of the Citadel at Castle Black. Despite being the third born son of King Maekar I Targaryen, he declined the right to sit on the Iron Throne. One of the few people in the series to die of old age, at 102.
*Samwell Tarly, ''The Slayer'': Fat bookworm who was forced to take the black after his father Randyl threatened to murder him for being unmanly. Jon Snow's best friend among the Night's Watch, and knows everything because he "read it in a book". Despite being a self-professed coward, Sam became the first person in thousands of years to slay an Other with an obsidian dagger. George Martin himself said Sam's based on Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. Since then, he has started improving his combat skills and balls (in more ways than one for the latter, finding his spine and losing his virginity). He abandons the Night's Watch to help fight the dead and tell Jon who he really is, and winds up becoming the new Grand Maester by the end of the show.
*Eddison Tollett, ''Dolorous Edd'': Probably the most badass member of the Night's Watch. Responds to situations by making sarcastic jokes about them, and known for being a grim motherfucker in a setting of grim motherfuckers. In the show he [[Awesome|became the new Lord Commander]] while Jon was dead, but gave the title back to Jon when he was brought back to life, and then Jon handed it right back because he needed to go sort out Ramsay Bolton. Dies in Season 8 at the Battle of Winterfell.
*Benjen Stark: The [[Dune|Duncan Idaho]] of this series, the dead guy all the other characters and all the ''readers'' love so much someone has to bring him back from the dead in later books. Benjen is Eddard Stark's youngest brother and the prime motivation why Jon wants to join the Night's Watch in the first place. Joined the Watch for reasons unknown and disappears without a trace even before Jon arrives. In the TV series, he returns as a benevolent Wight that retained his free will and helps Bran to get back to the Seven Kingdoms.
*Qhorin Half-Hand: Badass extraordinaire that killed a shitton of Wildlings in his long time of service, rumoured to have spent more time north of the Wall than anyone living southerner in the setting. Lets himself get killed by Jon in a gambit to earn Mance Rayders respect.
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'''Wildlings'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Groups of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes who live north of the Wall. Mostly First Men by blood, they have been heading toward the Wall for the past decade with the reputed reemergence of the Others. Nomadic, aggressive, and very much believing in "might makes right", they do not get along with anyone south of The Wall since they view them as "Kneeling weaklings". Basically every Celtic/Scandinavian/barbarian stereotype combined.
*Mance Rayder, ''The King Beyond The Wall'': A Wildling orphan who was taken in by the Night's Watch, he became their best Ranger before he deserted to join his people. He united the Wildlings and lead them south to escape the Others. Also a trained bard, but that was not enough to save him from death in the show while he's merely MIA in the books.
*Tormund Giantsbane: Claims to have a ten-inch penis, and invites his enemies to use their mouths if they want to clean it. Cool as fuck old guy who [[Furry|fucks mother-bears]] in his free time. Tough as nails motherfucker who preaches the merits of using one's cock for everything. He teams up with Jon Snow for the fight against the White Walkers, then fucks off back to the north once the Night King is dead, making him one of the most sensible people on the show. He and Jon go off to be bros at the end of the show.
*Ygritte: Wildling woman who Jon Snow ends up falling for and who returns his affections. Has red hair which is considered lucky among the Wildlings. This being ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', she ends up dying because her worldview is not compatible with Jon's.
*Craster: A sick bastard, formerly a member of the Night's Watch turned polygamous isolationist. By the way, [[Grimdark|his current wives are his many daughters and granddaughters who he fucks regularly to have more children. Girls grow up to become more wives, boys get sacrificed to the Others]]. This keeps the Others at bay - and is implied to be a way the Others reproduce themselves, and that sanctuary is why the Night's Watch barely tolerates him. Fortunately, he's been killed off in the story and his offspring go their separate ways.
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'''Commoners, Knights, and Petty Lords'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Basically any character not associated with any of the Great Houses.
* Varys, ''The Spider'': The eunuch spymaster of Westeros. You can't take a shit in the Seven Kingdoms without Varys finding out where, when, and how watery or dry it was. He does this through paid informants and his "little birds", a spy network of children who sneak through the castle's passageways and air flues to eavesdrop on everyone. Somewhat of a paradoxical character, since his literal dicklessness, reputation and political power make every character extremely vary of him (it's more or less implied that the main thing keeping him in the small council is the fact that he has got enough shit on everyone to blackmail them into submission if they would dare step out of his line) but under the surface, he is the rare example of people in Westeros that isn't an entirely self-serving scumbag and seems to show genuine care and concern for the common folk [[Just as planned|(Even if his machinations frequently put commonors in peril, but hey, such is politics)]]. To that end, he manipulated events that, according to his plan, would end with a Targaryen on the throne, to permanently stabilize the realm and rid it of the aformentioned self-serving idiots. On a sidenote, he's one of the few, if not the only person to fully comprehend how dangerous Littlefinger actually is. In the books, he's currently trying to install an adolescent Targaryen on the Iron Throne (who probably isn't even one, but he got the looks) Dead in the show, having decided to try and put Jon on the throne instead of Daenerys; Jon says no, Tyrion sells him out when he realizes Jon absolutely means it, and Dany has Drogon barbecue him.
* Petyr Baelish, ''Littlefinger'': The Master of Coin (the ASOIAF equivalent of a treasurer) and the closest person the Game of Thrones world has to a [[Daemon Prince]] of [[Tzeentch]], up to even declaring "[[Chaos]] is a Ladder". A dangerous manipulator who manages to trick and steal his way to positions of lordship and wealth because no one takes him seriously, and stabs all the Lannisters in the back when they become inconvenient. As a child, he wanted Catelyn Stark and was tricked into thinking she wanted him when her sister Lysa fucked him while he was drunk. Challenged Catelyn's betrothed Brandon Stark, Ned's older brother who was murdered by Aerys, for her hand in marriage and got his ass kicked because he was a small skinny boy and Brandon Stark was a big strapping man, making that his start of darkness. The guy responsible, directly or indirectly, for the War of the Five Kings because he was the mastermind behind poisoning Jon Arryn, the capture and execution of Ned Stark, feeding several half-truths to Catelyn to motivate her to arrest Tyrion, and eventually Joffrey's death by having Dontos and Olenna Tyrell carry out the plan to kill Joffrey and letting Tyrion take the fall; but no one in the story knows this, not even Varys. People think he can pull gold out of thin air, but he's really been buying debt while letting Robert Baratheon's extravagances and Joffrey and Cersei's dipshittery pull the country into a serious debt of its own. So he's pledged himself to [[Chaos]] and destroying Westeros all because he couldn't have Catelyn as his girlfriend, though he changed his focus to her daughter Sansa now, making him a pedophile. Hasn't yet got his comeuppance in the books, but is currently dead in the show after he was out-gambitted by Sansa and killed by Arya (though the less said about how well executed this was, the better). According to GRRM, he's based on the title character from the Great Gatsby, even though he only really resembles the character when putting on an act. [[Erebus|Basically has the role of a treacherous figure who gives bad advice on purpose and is responsible for the series of events that lead to a massive, devastating war with horrible consequences, making him one of the vilest folks in the 'verse]].
*Gregor Clegane, ''The Mountain'': A 7' 8" 400 pound mass of testosterone, muscles, steroid overdose, [[Slaanesh|utter disregard for consent]], [[Khorne|and murderous RAGE]], Gregor is Tywin Lannister's top muscle. Killed his own father and sister and permanently scarred his brother. [[Beastmen|Hobbies include rape, arson, murder, and random torture]]; he's also been married a few times but not now with the implication he kept killing his wives. He played an important part in destroying the Targaryens by killing a couple of Rhaegar's kids in rather brutal fashion, then raping and murdering his wife. Spends a few novels doing Tywin's dirty work before a Trial by Champion leads to him dying after being poisoned by Oberyn Martell. Qyburn later resurrected him as... something... called "Ser Robert Strong", and is now even stronger, less prone to psychotic rages, and is completely obedient. He's based on accounts of French knight Gilles de Rais and maybe also the scriptural giant Goliath. In the show he goes on to torture Cersei's nun jailer to death in a brutal and unspecified fashion kills Qyburn during the Siege of King's Landing and then nearly kills his little brother, only for Sandor to tackle him through a collapsing wall and into a gigantic inferno that claims both. [[Honsou|Standing out as one of ''the'' evilest pieces of shit in a world filled with them]], to the point that even the author himself has labeled him the worst character in the series.
* Sandor Clegane, ''The Hound'': Younger brother to Gregor Clegane, called the Hound because of his hound-face helm, his family's heraldry, and being the king's hired muscle without being a knight. He hates knights due to the hypocrisy of being a professional "noble warrior" but mostly since his monstrous brother is a knight, showing it's not so much of a noble promotion. Terrified of fire after Gregor put his head against a brazier for playing with one of Gregor's old toys when they were children, burning half his face, but he's still the second-strongest person in Westeros. A brutal anti-hero with a soft spot for Sansa, but a better person than his brother. After falling sick from Biter's nasty teeth, he ends up being a silent monk burying people in the Silent Isles. In the show, he joins the Brotherhood without Banners and goes north to help fuck up the White Walkers. As of Season 8, he's survived the Battle of Winterfell and is riding south with Arya to put the boots to Gregor. Dies killing his now undead brother in a pretty epic fight amidst the crumbling ruins of the Red Keep.
*Grand Maester Pycelle: A shrewd, dangerous man putting on a "harmless old man act" and a high ranking scholar from the science/medical guild the Maesters. The longest-serving member of the King's advisory staff, and is actually Tywin Lannister's biggest lackey. He convinced the Mad King to let Tywin in as Baratheon's armies were marching on the capital, where Tywin proceeded to sack the city and claim it for Robert. Gets his head bashed in by Varys in the books and murdered by Qyburn in the show.
* Qyburn: Formerly a maester, who was kicked out of the order for unethical experiments on the living (taking people and performing vivisections to be precise). Introduced as a part of a mercenary company serving Roose Bolton, which should be a red flag. He moves up in the world when he's sent to escort Brienne and Jaime back to King's Landing and ends with Cersei employing him to replace Pycelle as "science advisor" and eventually Varys's Spymaster. Serves Cersei loyally as long as she lets him indulge his sick experiments, serving as a black magic variety of the court mage. He has resurrected Gregor Clegane as... something. [[Fabius Bile]] if he traded his robot limbs, eugenics and power armour for necromancy. He overestimated his hold on Gregor and got his head caved in for it as of the second-to-last episode of the show.
*Barristan Selmy, ''The Bold'': Knight of the Kingsguard. Which Kingsguard? Take your pick. He's served pretty much every king since Aerys and understandably feels pretty bad about it. Another sad old man who pretty much just wants to die until he decides to go pledge his services to Daenerys. Even in his old age, he is considered one of the most dangerous men in Westeros. [[Fail|Dead in the show]] (to be fair they gave him a huge last stand), but [[Awesome|alive]] and [[Roboute Guilliman|appointed himself Daenerys' steward in her absence to try and fix Meereen's situation in the books]].
*Melisandre, ''The Red Witch'': A priestess of R'hllor, the god of fire. Proclaimed Stannis to be the messiah-king and is doing everything in her power to make sure he wins (considerable given that she can scry, make shadow baby assassins and set things on fire with her mind). She'd be pretty bro-tier if her god wasn't so vicious. As it stands she's kind of in the grey (in the books, the show seems to zig-zag on her being evil 'cos the showrunners seem to hate religion). Most of the people she set on fire deserved it, and she hasn't ''succeeded'' in killing any babies yet. Show version now dead from suicide via rapid ageing after ensuring the Living defeat the Dead.
*Jorah Mormont: A knight and son of Jeor Mormont, exiled for trying to sell poachers into slavery and eventually joining the exiles of House Targaryen. He is offered a pardon in exchange for spying on the Targaryens but ultimately decides to stay with them after falling in love with Daenerys. Unfortunately, he gets friend-zoned hard. Despite saving her life from an assassin while she was pregnant, she still votes him off the Khalassar after learning he was a spy. He still loves her and follows her in secret, though. In the show, he goes on a quest to prove himself to her and contracts the dangerous disease Greyscale (it's like the unholy lovechild of smallpox and leprosy), but he gets cured and is now back at her side. He dies protecting her at the Battle of Winterfell.
*[[This Guy|Davos Seaworth]], ''The Onion Knight'': A former smuggler and bannerman to House Baratheon, and a top-tier hype man, pulling speeches out on the spot on several occasions to convince people to support Stannis and later Jon. One of the most Noblebright characters in the setting, which really isn't bad for a man that only just now learned how to read. During Roberts Rebellion he ran a blockade with a cargo of contraband onions to a castle Stannis Baratheon was besieged in. In exchange for the food he had, Stannis knighted Davos, [[Rules Lawyer|but Stannis's law-worshipping mindset compelled him to remove four digits from his left hand]]. Despite this, Davos has served Stannis with unquestioning loyalty, because Stannis knighting him gave his children a future. The fact that Stannis's war for the throne has ended up killing several of his sons hasn't dented his loyalty at all. **Doesn't like Melisandre because he sees her as a user and her beliefs as brutal. He's a devout follower of the Faith of the Seven in the books and the first season of the show [[C.S Goto|but is clumsily retconned into an anti-religious atheist in later show seasons]]. In the show, he's now pledged to DA NORF and is basically Jon's Hand of the King, except he doesn't get a fancy pin. He survives the Battle of Winterfell and the Second Sack of King's Landing and becomes Master of Ships in the final episode of the show.
*Shae: A former camp follower and Tyrion Lannister's squeeze for most of the story. Fled from an abusive family and became a camp follower to earn a living. Seems to fall in love with Tyrion, but it turns out she's a gold-digging bitch. When Tyrion doesn't marry Shae she sells him out to Cersei for a better offer, then fucks Tywin when she realizes Cersei won't keep her promise. Tyrion found her in his father's bed and strangled her to death with a necklace for betraying him. The discovery of Shae's corpse in Tywin's bed - posthumously outing him as a whoremonger - upsets Cersei to the point she unpersons Shae.
*Bronn: A mercenary who acts as Tyrion's enforcer and personal killer until Cersei outbids him and he settles down with a little wife and title. Routinely kills knights by exploiting how arrogant and stupid they are even after becoming one himself. Only in it for the money, which he'll happily tell you himself. The only character other than Littlefinger to end every book in a better position than he started it. In the show, he makes the very sensible decision to sit out the fighting and wait for his promised castle (Riverrun if Cersei wins, Highgarden if Daenerys wins). He gets Highgarden and is named Lord Paramount of the Reach and Master of Coin in the final episode. Some nobles bitch about the idea of an upjumped thug receiving such high and exalted positions until he points out that their Houses were probably founded by people a lot like him.
* Brienne of Tarth, ''The Beauty'': Surprisingly badass lady knight wannabe (since no women can be knighted), legendarily unattractive but still pretty idealistic despite the shit she gets for her looks. Fate frequently gives her the shit end of the stick, because no matter how hard she tries to finish her quests, she ends up failing or stuff happens that makes it impossible. Secretly crushes on Renly and unaware he's gay. After he dies, Brienne switches her loyalty to Catelyn and helps her bring Jaime to King's Landing as Tyrion promised Sansa's return in exchange for Jaime. She later developed a crush on Jaime. Things don't go well because Jaime lost his hand and the Red Wedding happened. Next, Jaime sends her out to find and keep Sansa safe to make good on Tyrion's promise, since he isn't the complete dick everyone thinks he is. Brienne ends up getting captured by Cat, now known as Lady Stoneheart and an insane undead, who was going to hang Brienne for working with Jaime. Brienne was spared at the last moment to capture/manipulate Jaime.
**In the show, she's now sworn to House Stark and gets knighted by Jaime just before the Battle of Winterfell and then she and Jaime hook up afterwards, only for him to take off and break her heart, because remember kids, he'd rather fuck his sister than fuck an ugly chick. She is now Lady Commander of the Kingsguard as of the final episode.
* Lyanna Mormont: A badass ten-year-old girl who inherits [[Kislev|Bear Island]] after her mother and older sister die horribly in the Riverlands - at least if we are going by the show; in the book, her mother is still alive somewhere [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|waging a Guerilla War]] in the Neck and her older sister Alysanne is the de-facto head of House Mormont. Her activities include pimp-slapping bitches, leading men twice as old as her, and being completely loyal to the Starks despite all their misfortunes. [[Awesome|"Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK."]] She dies killing an undead giant at the Battle of Winterfell, which is pretty badass.
* Wyman Manderly, ''Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse'': The Lord of White Harbour and one of the few Northerners who worship the Seven. Fervently loyal to House Stark, he pays lip-service to the Iron Throne long enough for his eldest son to return home, all to mask a plan to restore the Starks to power, mostly by destabilising the Frey-Bolton alliance, building a navy, marshalling the forces of the lands east of the White Knife river, "losing" Freys in the wilderness and sending Lord Davos Seaworth to rescue Rickon Stark from Skagos. His favourite food is lamprey, although he has also developed a taste for Frey Pie. Also a remarkably graceful dancer, and can survive taking a knife to the throat.
** Wylla Manderly: Granddaughter to the above. Another badass little girl, her activities include openly declaring undying loyalty to House Stark and dying her hair green. She and Lyanna Mormont would probably be best friends if they met. [[Awesome|"The city is built upon the land [the Starks] gave us. In return, we swore that we should always be their men. Stark men!"]]
* Jon Umber, ''The Greatjon'': At first he seems to be your stereotypical, boisterous Northern Lord. However, he becomes one of Robb's most loyal supporters, being first to declare him as 'King in the North' after Ned's execution. Had his moment of awesome [[Awesome|when he killed and wounded four Freys at the Red Wedding, all the while being drunk and needing eight additional men to take him down.]]
* Beric Dondarrion, ''The Lightning Lord'': Minor lord who agreed to head an expedition to take out Gregor Clegane. This being Game of Thrones, however, his party is ambushed by the Mountain and is beaten rather badly, and he loses his life in the process. Thanks to his drunken Red Priest friend, however, he manages to come back not once, but eight times, and each time he comes back, he becomes more powerful, though at the cost of his memory. He now heads an outlaw faction of grimdark Robin Hood types called "The Brotherhood Without Banners", who are dedicated to punishing those who abuse and mistreat the smallfolk. Ironically, he's one of the few book characters to have died (permanently) in the books but remain alive in the show, except now he's dead for real as of the Battle of Winterfell.
* Thoros of Myr: Aforementioned drunken priest who is dedicated to R'hllor, though at first he doesn't really give a rat's ass about the Red God, as he prefers to party it up with wine and women, but after he 'accidentally' resurrects Beric, he becomes quite serious about his religion and vows to curb his excesses in drinking. Dies on a mission beyond the Wall to capture a wight (show-version). Bane of swordsmiths across the lands, as he likes to routinely ignite his swords with Wildfire when he gets a hold of some of the stuff, which completely destroys the blade.
* The Brave Companions: Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be a faction in this setting as fucked up as the Boltons, Freys, and Ironborn, these guys come along and prove you wrong. A bunch of "mercenaries" who are really more just complete and utter lunatics that are incapable of doing what they're paid to in any way except the bloodiest and nastiest, all with maximum [[Rape]] thrown in too (especially if Brienne of Tarth is involved, because every single fucking one of these guys wants, tries to, or threatens to rape her at some point). Led by Vargo Hoat, a goat-helmet wearing maniac who likes cutting body parts off of his victims before killing them. The rest of his band consists of a bunch of other sickos who are every bit as bad as him (except Rorge, who is even worse). To put this into perspective, the member of the group who is a pedophile priest (Septon Utt), is the ''least'' evil one, if only because he actually regrets what he does and is suggested to do what he does because of urges he can't control. The rest? Forget about it. After Vargo's gruesome death at the hands of the even worse Gregor Clegane, the surviving Brave Companions scatter, effectively dissolving the group but meaning a bunch of these assholes are still active. Cut from the TV show completely.
** Rorge: Gregor Clegane 2.0, being ''another'' big, brutish, psychotic monster who rapes people and murders children and who is a Chaotic Evil super-thug through and through (because apparently we needed another one in the setting), with the added bit of awfulness of being a child-hating pedophile. Along with Gregor Clegane, one of the absolute worst characters in the entire series (a high bar, as you've probably gathered by now). Killed by Brienne. In the TV show, he's a completely forgettable one-shot, throwaway character who gets killed by Arya before he can really do anything and doesn't come anywhere close to the awfulness of his book version.
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'''The Free Cities'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Nine city-states to the West of Essos, for the most part, the old colonies of the Valaryian Freehold. Mostly they are ruled by Merchant Princes. They look down on the Westerosi for being a bunch of up jumped backwards war-mongering morons who are only a few silverware sets and maesters away from absolute barbarism. In turn, the Westerosi look down on the Free Cities as being money-grubbing effete cowards ruled by cheesemongers who use bribery, tall walls and dirty tricks to get ahead in the world.

* Illyrio Mopatis: A rich fat bastard and a Magister of Pentos. Old buddies with Varys and a bigtime schemer.
* [[Officio Assassinorum|The Faceless Men]]: A cult of shape-shifting assassins who worship The Many-Faced God of death based in the free city of Braavos that give up personal identity. They claim descent from escaped Valyrian slaves who considered death to be a better fate than perpetual slavery. Their mission hence became being servants of the Many-Faced God of Death. You can hire them to off your rivals, but they request a steep and equivalent price. They also offer a painless, quick suicide for downtrodden and desparate people by the means of poison. Their motto is "Valar Morghulis": All Men Must Die.
* Xaro Xhoan Daxos: One of the thirteen leaders of the city of Qarth. A flamboyant, languid, bald rich man who looks after Daenerys while she stays in Qarth and gives her many gifts. He wants her dragons as much as anyone else and even tries to marry her despite his homosexual tendencies. He stops wanting the dragons later in the book series after seeing [[RIP AND TEAR|their work in Astapor]], and no longer wants her around as her anti-slavery stance is hampering his wealth, so he offers Daenerys ships to leave the area and declares war on her when she refuses. In the show, he's heterosexual, helps steal her dragons, fucks one of her handmaidens and gets locked in a vault for conspiring to have her killed. He's also black and fat in the show when he's white and lanky in the books, being Qartheen and all.
* Syrio Forel: The former First Sword of Braavos (aka the ruler's personal bodyguard) and later Arya's mentor in King's Landing. He teaches her the way of Braavosi fencing, called "Water Dancing", and sacrifices himself to save her from Lannister thugs, taking down at least six of them with a wooden sword. May have inadvertently set her on the path of becoming a badass assassin by telling her of his belief in the God of Death.

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'''The Dothraki'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">Horse people who live in a country of endless grass plains referred to by others as the Dothraki sea. They only have one city, called Vaes Dothrak, which is less of a city and more of a place they all meet when important things have to be discussed. Have traits borrowed from several cultures, including Mongols and Native Americans, all filtered through European misconceptions of those cultures of course, such as the Dothraki's antipathy for heavy armour, despite the fact that the Mongols were very heavily armoured and also excelled as infantry, see the Battle of Leignitz. They fear the ocean because of its size and the fact that horses won't drink from it, calling it the "poison water".

* Khal Drogo: An Expy of <s>Genghis Khan</s> Yesukhei Baatyr (his son would have been the equivalent to Chinggis Khaan). Leads the largest Khalassar among the Dothraki. Despite being a barbarian warlord, Drogo is surprisingly intelligent and treats Daenerys well. After an assassin tries to kill her he promises to conquer Westeros for her and their unborn son and immediately starts raiding towns for slaves and ships. At one town he gets cut in a leadership challenge and Daenerys gets a captive wise woman to heal him. However, the woman hates him because his tribe destroyed her hometown, raped/slaughtered or enslaved her friends and raped her three times so she curses him to become catatonic (along with killing his unborn son), leading a devastated Daenerys to perform an arguable mercy kill by smothering him with a pillow. After she burns herself, her stillborn child and the wise woman on his funeral pyre, Daenerys survives and it brings her dragons to life. GRRM named Drogo after [[The Lord of the Rings|Frodo's father]].
* Daenerys' handmaidens.
** Doreah: Daenerys' handmaiden and a wedding gift from Illyrio. A woman from Lysene brought by her brother to teach her how to pleasure a man. In the book she dies of fever and starvation crossing a desert, in the TV show, she betrays Daenerys for [[Salamanders|Xaro's BBC]] and gets locked in a vault to starve to death.
** Irri: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches Daenerys how to ride a horse. [[PROMOTIONS|Also pleasures Daenerys twice after catching her masturbating once]], yet this canonical girl-on-girl action was left out of the show. The character was even killed off there when she survived in the books, but in this case, it was because her actress' visa had expired rather than [[C.S. Goto|author railroading]].
** Jhiqui: Daenerys' handmaiden who teaches her the Dothraki language and squabbles with Irri over wanting one of Daenerys' bodyguards when he becomes a badass. Also dies in the TV show while staying alive so far in the books.

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'''Slavers Bay'''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">A civilization of [[Stupid Evil]] slavers. The remains of a previous civilization that was once the big powerful empire thanks to having phalanxes of obedient, pain-resistant soldiers which Valyria conquered a long while ago because phalanxes don't do too well against motherfucking dragons. They are ruled by wealthy slave mongers who buy slaves, train them up to do specific things and generally are a bunch of stuck up, decadent, puppy-eating (literally) assholes. Basically a civilization so repugnant even most hippies will be cheering when Dany decides to conquer them.

* The Unsullied: Eunuch phalanx fighting slave soldiers trained the Spartan way to produce totally obedient infantry that never break ranks. They also don't feel pain due to drinking a special drink daily, and each one has to take a new name from the name box each day so they can't develop a sense of identity. At least until Dany "bought" the lot of them, had them sack the city which trained them, and freed them.
* Grey Worm: The Unsullied Commander and a no-nonsense badass. When given a chance to take a new name he keeps his slave name because it's the name he had when freed so he considers it lucky. He is completely loyal to Daenerys, considering her his saviour, and in the show, he falls in love with fellow freed-woman, Missandei. This being ASOIAF, however, he can only watch helplessly as his lover is beheaded in front of him by the Mountain. This drives him into a rage, and he eagerly takes part in the sacking of King's Landing in revenge for her death. After the war is over and both Daenerys and Cersei are dead, he takes the Unsullied forces to Naath, in order to fulfil his promise to Missandei that he'd protect her homeland.
* Strong Belwas: A fat but skilled eunuch gladiator. Loves liver and onions and referring to himself in the third person. Travelling companion/guide of Ser Barristan. Has an awesome scene where he beats the champion of Meereen then mocks the Meereenese by taking a shit in their direction and wiping his ass on their dead champion's cloak. Also saves Daenerys from eating poisoned sweets. [[FAIL|Left out of the show]].
* Daario Naharis: A Tyroshi mercenary captain who dyes his hair blue. Betrays his fellow commanders for Daenerys because he loves her as a queen. Fortunately for him, Daenerys loves him back and they pursue a romance for a time, though she doesn't marry him as she's still otherwise smart enough to know she has to save herself for a political marriage. Goes to Yunkai as a hostage in the war on Meereen. Also potentially a shapeshifter, if the show is to be believed.
*Missandei: A young female slave with a remarkable talent for linguistics and one of the more empathetic people in this dark world, Missandei is freed by Daenerys during her campaign to liberate Slaver's Bay, eventually becoming one of her closest confidants and advisers. While a child in the books, in the show Missandei is a grown woman, falls in love with the Unsullied leader Grey Worm, but later is captured by Cersei and beheaded by the zombified Mountain in front of all her friends, but not before telling her friends to burn the Lannisters to ashes.

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===Magic and Gods===
<div class="mw-collapsible-content"> The world of ASOIAF has various religions and faiths abound, just like in real life. Similarly, they range between fucking awesome to utterly useless. Dissimilarly, some of them have very tangible, undeniable magic powers, although it is said that the magic became stronger after the rebirth of Dragons into the world, and that in the Far East, where people worship [[Lovecraft|Lovecraft references]], that magic is still alive and well, but those are all just rumors.

Blood Magic seems to be the most consistent, with practitioners paying steep prices for magic, while the druidic magic of the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods still hold strong to this day, they just don't have any practitioners left.

Magic and the Afterlife is a theme in the setting as well, most expounded by the faithful of R'hllor: fire is associated with the warmth of life, as well as light; on the other hand, death is associated with cold and darkness; death carries a harsh finality in the series, ''except when it doesn't:'' as they've shown in special cases with those resurrected by R'hllor, rebirth comes with a price, and not everyone comes back ''fully there''.

*[[Ecclesiarchy|The Faith of the Seven]]: The Catholic Church/Church of England stand-in mixed with elements of Hinduism, which gets both sympathetic and unsympathetic characters associated with it (though mostly only in the books for the former). Holds an anti-slavery stance. The god/s are considered seven aspects of one deity with three male aspects (The Smith, the Father, the Warrior), three female aspects (The Maiden, the Mother, the Crone) and a sexless one representing Death, a bit akin to how the Hindu God Vishnu has multiple aspects. The places of worship are called Septs, and their system includes Septons, nun-equivalents called Septas and a Pope equivalent called a High Septon. The High Septons all give up their names when they become one to confuse future historians (and readers).
** High Septon 1 Fatfuck: A fat, greedy man who used the position for personal gain. He ended up being [[Grimdark|torn apart in a riot]], because the people resented that he had enough food to stay fat while they were starving.
** High Septon 2 Lannister Puppet: Successor of High Septon Fatfuck. Chosen by Tyrion so the Faith would be loyal to the Lannisters. Only ''slightly'' corrupt, being a pro-Lannister yes-man. Murdered on Cersei's order in the book, while in the show he's retconned into a whoremonger who gets deposed by the Sparrows (see below).
** High Septon 3/The High Sparrow: Successor of High Septon Lannister Puppet. After the second High Septon shown in the present day of the story died, the smallfolk burst into the meeting to pick a successor and ordered their chosen candidate to be put in charge when his original successor was caught whoremongering. He'd been a wandering preacher beforehand, and his feet were dark and gnarled from lots of walking. When he reaches the position he starts [[gets shit done|getting things done]]. Since he was appointed by a smallfolk religious movement called Sparrows, he's given the moniker "The High Sparrow". The nobility underestimates him, either due to having other matters or disregard for religious people, but he turns out to be smart, well-meaning and somewhat ruthless. Under the High Sparrow, he and the other clergymen sell their fancy clothes and decorations [[Noblebright|replacing them with simple wool tunics, using the money to buy food and clothes for the poor in King's Landing]]. He also has their Knights-Templar-equivalent reformed to [[Inquisition|protect the faithful and help them root out]] [[heresy]] and sin. He also outwits Cersei and has her arrested and tried for all her evil deeds. While Cersei's scheming does lead to Margaery's arrest, Cersei confesses to some crimes while concealing others, leading to Cersei taking a nude walk of penance in front of the entire city. After this, he somewhat reined in the nobles' politicking to actually look after the commoners and the Faith, though this does make some enemies. In the show, while he still talks of helping the Smallfolk, he and the Sparrows are [[C.S Goto|flanderized]] from assorted smallfolk and clergymen tired of the nobles' lawlessness and power plays into one-dimensional stereotypes and thinly-veiled jabs at the Catholic Church [[Imperial Truth|in a shoe-horned anti-religion message]]. While they do arrest Cersei and Margaery like in the books, the High Sparrow's plans all come to nothing, as during the trial most of the Faith, including the High Sparrow himself, get blown to Kingdom Come when Cersei has her agents ignite a massive amount of magical napalm underneath the Great Sept. In the books they're much more like Martin Luther and the Lutherans, except that the Protestant Reformation wins outright.
* [[Old Ones|Old Gods]]: Native American/Japanese Kame/Druid/nature spirits that reside in places called Godswoods. The original practitioners of this faith were the Children of the Forest, non-elf looking Wood Elves, whose magics were responsible for smashing an entire Southern Warhost with tsunamis (leaving only a narrow isthmus between the North and everyone else), the Wall (it was a collaborative effort with humans), and allowing people to look into the past, and (confirmed in the show at least) influence it.
**Their powers are limited to the North, though, where the last remaining Godswoods remain, but they can grant gifted individuals awesome psychic powers like Warging (mind-controlling animals) and Greensight (Time Travel). For some reason, Martin claims they're based off the Norse Gods. Probably has to do with the way the Vikings made sacrifices to their gods, by hanging them in Ash trees, a symbol for the World Tree Yggdrasil. The Weirwood trees are sacred to the followers of the Old Gods in a similar way. Mostly worship of them is quiet and informal.
*R'hllor: The God of Fire and Light, and like the Old Gods, actually shows evidence for existing. [[/tg/ gets shit done|He gets shit done]], being one of the most common faiths East of Westeros, and his priests have powers such as fire magic and motherfucking Resurrection. Has a nasty habit for burning heretics, though. GRRM said this faith is roughly based (read: poorly modelled after) upon Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism. His nemesis is The Great Other: the god of cold and darkness, the leader of the Others, and prophesied to be defeated by the chosen one, or messianic figure: [[Star Child|Azor Ahai/The Prince That Was Promised]], a figure who is the prophesied warrior that will fight with the Great Other/Night's King during the Apocalypse. Interestingly enough, the prophecy may not refer to a single person, but three (Jon, Tyrion/Bran, and Daenerys). Supposedly, one of these three will also receive an [[Emperor's Sword|awesome flaming sword called "Lightbringer"]].
**R'hllor is very popular among the slaves and poor of the East, though Eastern nobles hate him because of that association. It's actually hard-to-tell how many "miracles" ascribed to him are actually real miracles. Stannis, absolute chad though he is, has a sword called "Lightbringer" meant to evoke the mythical one, but Aemon has [[Bullshit|noticed that it doesn't give off any heat]].
**For obvious reasons, they are ''very excited'' that there are Dragons again.
* Him of Many Faces: The god of the Dead of the religion whose followers are the [[Officio Assassinorum|Faceless Men]]. According to his cult of assassins, whom Arya joins, all gods of death are just him: since every religion has a god of death of some sort, he ''must'' be the only one that's real. Of course, your mileage may vary as to whether he's real or not, though his most awesome followers are granted shapeshifting abilities and powers to be the ultimate assassins.
* Drowned God: Cthulhu combined with Odin. Runs an underwater Valhalla were all Ironborn go whey they either if they drowned at sea, the men die a manly death or the women die in childbirth. Probably doesn't exist or he would have done something about Euron Greyjoy... at least in the books. There, Euron is [[Imperial Truth|proudly scornful]] of him, and his brother Aeron fruitlessly and endlessly mutters "no godless man can sit the Seastone Chair". In the show, Euron is perfectly happy to go through the traditional Drownie coronation ritual and Aeron performs it.
* The Night's King: This is completely different depending on whether you prefer the [[oldfag|books]] or [[newfag|show]]. Book version: A long time ago, when the Night's Watch was just barely getting set up, its Lord Commander, the thirteenth in line, decided to climb over the Wall and explore some. While in the woods to the north of the Wall, he found a beautiful [[Monstergirls|Other female]]. He fell in love with her, had [[/d/|sex with her on top of the Wall]], which somehow changed him into an albino version of [[Star Wars|Darth Maul]], and set himself up as King of the Wall, making everyone in the Watch his slaves and sacrificial fodder. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with the Starks and the Wildlings, and so they banded together to free the Watch and kick his ass, which they managed to do successfully. Now everyone thinks him as dead or a myth. Show version: he was the very first White Walker ever created by the Children, and he decided to get back at them by wiping out all life. Also, whilst he was apparently beaten in the ancient past and sealed away behind the Wall, he's still "alive" and well, [[Daemonculaba|turning infant human boys into new White Walkers]]. Also, he can apparently raise up entire legions of undead, just by raising his arms and looking completely smug about it; unlike regular Others, who can just raise up maybe a village at most. Given that he's the resident [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] of the series, it makes sense that he can take down a dragon with seemingly little effort (a simple throw of his spear), and resurrect it to be his personal steed a la Arthas. (Whether that particular nonsense is going to show up in the books is up in the air, it's suitably grimdark and not particularly [[derp]] so it might.) Then he used the dragon to blow a hole in the Wall and begin [[The End Times]] for Westeros. But [[FAIL|dead]], thanks to Arya's magic ninja haxx which let her [[what|kill the BBEG and his entire race and army of zombies ''in one blow.'']]
** The Others/The White Walkers: A mysterious race from beyond the Wall, known to [[newfag|HBO fans]] as "the White Walkers". Can be described as ice demons/snow elves with necromancy. Eight thousand years ago, they invaded Westeros during a decades-long winter (even longer than the usual years-long winters) known as "the Long Night". With an army of undead warriors, they proceeded to fuck Westeros up every which way to [[Sunday]] before the locals finally drove them out, established the Night's Watch, and built the Wall to keep them out. Like all fantasy aspects of ASOIAF, they are very cliched.
**In the TV series, it's revealed that they were created from human captives by "The Children", the pseudo-[[Elf]] fair folk race that lived in Westeros before humanity arrived, as an attempt to create a super-weapon. The idea was since humanity bred faster than the Children could keep up with, they would create icy [[lich]]-creatures that could create [[undead]] soldiers, and these would then wipe out all human life. Instead, it went disastrously wrong because it turned out that the Children actually couldn't control what they'd created, so the Others [[Ork|just want to exterminate '''all''' life.]] In both versions the Night's King is in control.
*'''Other Eastern Magic/Religions''' - The further and further east you go, the more GRRM scatters Lovecraft references to give the world flavour, like the Shadowlands and its cities of oily, black stone, Leng, and [[Deep Ones|fish people]]. They're just references, though, and will likely never be important.
**The Unsullied have their own goddess, the Lady of Spears, [[Slaanesh|whose altar they burn their dicks on as offerings]].
**The slavers worship a harpy goddess and justify their slavery through her.
</div></div>

==Locations==

'''Westeros''': The continent where about 80% of the plot takes place. Scotland in the North, Siberia/Northern Scandinavia beyond the wall, Moorish Spain in the South, with the rest being England as far as climate is concerned, only much, much larger.
*The North: By far the largest of the Seven Kingdoms in size, and the least in population. [[Naggaroth|A rocky, cold and dangerous landscape where life barely tolerable]] ([[Norsca|although it's still preferrable to the eldrich lands beyond the wall]]), sometimes it even snows in summer, giving you a general idea why it's quite a shitty place to be in when compared with the more southern kingdoms. Living in it are the Northmen, culturally an inbetween of Northern English and Scots. Most of them still revere the Old Gods and practice traditions that feel very alien to those living in the south, of the First Men culture before the Andal Invasion, still holding out here and the Iron Islands. It's also damn near unconquerable by conventional means due to the narrow isthmus between it and the south being a noxious swamp; . Its ruling house at the beginning of the Story is House Stark, later House Bolton; Its capital is Winterfell.
*Iron Islands: Large, rocky archipelago off the coast of the North and the Riverlands. Their bleak and inhospitable landscape is the major reason why the Ironmen culture, the other hold out of the First Men culture in Westeros which has the unique blend of only political and not cultural Andal influence and lack of Children of the Forest influence as Weirwoods don't grow on islands and only First Men humans ever lived here during those times, is so centered around pillaging and raiding; you can't grow crops on rock. Does have a decently sized economy based around metal working, but nowhere near enough to support its populace. Their capital is Pyke.
*Riverlands: As the name says, the Riverlands are marked by several large rivers flowing through it and the large fertile valleys surrounding them. The historical whipping boy of the continent after the Andal Invasion took over the old First Men realms (minus the North and the Iron Islands), constantly fought over by the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, the Iron Islands and the Vale, to the point that it was under Iron Islands rule when Aegon Targaryen unified the continent minus Dorne. Gets buttfucked the hardest during the War of the Five Kings by a metric ton; first by the Mountain carrying out a campaign of terror against the civilian populace on Tywin's orders and second by most of the major fights between the Lannisters and the Starks taking place there. Honestly, after all the fighting, raping and pillaging happening in the Riverlands, one must wonder how many people are actually still left in them. Their ruling house is House Tully (later House Baelish); its Capital is Riverrun (later Harrenhal).
*Vale of Arryn: Mountainous Region east of the Riverlands home to (supposedly) the finest knights in Westeros due to them having constant field practice in crushing rebellion after rebellion of the native <s>Irish</s> Mountain Tribes (think Forsworn from Skyrim, only a lot more foul-mouthed) and having an absolute abundance of tiny territories to give out. The population lives more densely packed in the few large cities and townships that exist here due and traversing them is dangerous. Its ruling house is House Arryn, its capital The Eyrie, '''the''' hardest castle to take in Westeros as it is built on a mountaintop. Gulltown, one of the cities of Westeros, is the main economic hub.
*Westerlands: The second-smallest Kingdom in size but by far the richest due to its abundance of Gold and Silver Mines. Has a proud tradition of fucking everyone over by the means of money, politics or both combined. Also has a substantial importance as a major trading and naval hub in the city of Lannisport, which is the largest port on the western side of the continent. Its ruling house is House Lannister, its capital Casterly Rock. Casterly Rock was the capital of the old Kings, House Casterly, which was outsmarted by [[Lukas the Trickster|Lann the Clever]], who married the last surviving daughter and founded House Lannister.
*Crownlands: The lands directly controlled by the Iron Throne, surrounding a big bay, with a rather pleasant, mild climate. Centered around the capital King's Landing, which gets an entry of its own. Its ruling house is always the house of the current kings. Formerly divided between the Riverlands and the Stormlands.
**King's Landing: The capital of the seven kingdoms and by far its largest city. It houses every important institution on the continent, most importantly the Red Keep, where the King of the Seven Kingdoms resides and the Great Sept of Baelor, the religious center of the Faith of the Seven. Aside from the Red Keep and the Great Sept, a filth ridden, downtrodden shithole that is rife with poverty and criminals whereever you may set foot; the City Guard is openly corrupt and acts more like a government-approved gang of thugs. It seems to be something of an unofficial sport among all chacters in the books to never say anything good the city. Architecturally described like Medieval London, at the size of 1600s Paris.
*The Reach: The second-largest of the Seven Kingdoms, and the most populous. Its wide plains, dominated by fields and plantings serve as the breadbasket of the Seven Kingdoms. Also home to the oldest city in Westeros, Oldtown, which in turn is home to the Citadel of the Maesters. Its ruling house is Tyrell, its capital Highgarden. House Tyrell is matrilineally descended from Garth Greenhand like many other houses. The old ruling family, House Gardener, Garth's direct descendants, was wiped out when Aegon unleashed his dragons, with the then Lord of House Tyrell (at this point permanent stewards to House Gardener), was placed in control as he was married to the last Gardener female.
*Stormlands: The lands of House Baratheon, a mix of forested mountains and steep, stony shores: so-named for the very frequent storms that batter its coast. The weather here is so bad, their capital is known as Storm's End because all previous castles were destroyed by the weather, so this one had to be built <s>by a competent Northman architect</s> with magic. In spite of the dangerously bad weather, the area can be quite beautiful when not being battered by the elements. The Baratheons are descended from a loyal general who served the original Aegon, who was also rumored to be his half-brother. After Robert ascended the throne, control of the Stormlands was left to his youngest brother, Renly, while the middle-brother, Stannis, was assigned to guard Robert's back on the much-smaller, less prestigious island of Dragonestone.
*Dorne: The southernmost region of Westeros and the hottest (in more ways than just temperature), consists of rocky deserts in its center and lush, meditterrean areas on its coasts. The Dornish people differ a lot from other Westerosi in ethnicity and culture and have a different origin, that of the migrating Rhoynar people interbreeding with the then relatively isolated local Westerosi. [[Dune|Dorne was also the only Kingdom to successfully resist conquest by the Targaryens]] and was only brought into the fold through political marriages, and their rulers retain the title of Prince (the Rhoynar and the local Westerosi don't use king or queen, they use prince or princess), not afforded to anyone else not of the Royal Family. Its ruling house is Martell, its capital Sunspear.
*The Wall: A wall of ice of gargantuan proportions erected by the First Men to protect themselves against the Others/White Walkers long ago that marks the nothern border of Westeros proper and runs across it from west to east for three hundred miles. In the times when the Night's Watch was under full strength, it was an impenetrable fortification against anything that might dare to cross it, not just because of its sheer dimensions, but also the implication that the wall itself is reinforced by eldrich magic keeping the horrors beyond the wall at bay via unnatural means. Nowadays only three of its 19 keeps are permanently manned, leaving wide gaps in the Night's Watch defense against Wildlings, who sometimes climb over it to raid the South. The Night King tears a hole into it with one of Daenerys' Dragons in the final episode of season 7, allowing him and his undead army to pass through.
*Beyond-the-Wall:
**Craster's Keep: Not really a "keep" but the [[GRIMDARK|home of a man who fucks his own daughters and offers his sons to the Others]]. He is one of the very few "independent" wildlings and offers use of his home to the Night's Watch when they go off on scouting expeditions. Because it's full of servile (inbred) women, the men of the Night's Watch mutiny and take it over.
**Thenn: The name of both the land and its people, the Thenn consider themselves to be the ''true'' "last of the First Men," because they have laws and lords compared to the anarchist free-for-all of the other Free Folk; they don't speak common, they can actually smith, and they treat the "Magnar," the title of their king, like a god. In the show, they're just shown to be a bunch of scarred barbarians.
**Lands of Always Winter: The furthest north people have ever gone and have been able to come back from, the Lands are perpetually frozen, and the Others are said to come from here. Clearly, if you head far enough North, you'll hit a Chaos Rift and end up in the Warp.

'''The Stepstones''': Formerly a solid land bridge between Westeros and Essos, it was brought down by Children of the Forest magic in a failed attempt to stop the First Men invasion. Now an archipelago of islands infested by various ne'er-do-wells.

'''Essos''': A huge landmess (no, not a typo) about southeast of Westeros and home to many independent city-states west of the big mountain range. Generally agreed upon to be largely desolate wilderness sprinkled in with the occasional kingdoms that seem exotic and alien to Westerosi. Most of its western half used to be the center of power of the legendary Valyrian Freehold, with the Free Cities being colonies of them that survived the downfall of the Valyrian Empire hundreds of years ago. The exceptions are Slaver's Bay, conquered by the Valyrians before regaining independence after the Freehold's collapse, Qarth, Ib and some of the others.
*Free Cities: There are 9 city-states on the Western Half of Essos. 8 are former Valyrian colonies, with Braavos being the notable exception to most of the things they have in common. What ties them all together is that they're all connected by trade and feudalism isn't such a big thing here, which also makes their culture remarkably different from the Westerosi. Westerosi tend to view them as greedy opportunists while the Free Cities in turn view Westerosi as ignorant morons at best and backwards savages at worst. If you were going to have a setting based on ASOIAF and didn't want to spend the entire time shitting in the dirt or bleeding out in a ditch for some inbred noble, this is where you'd want to be:
**Braavos: The only one of the nine free cities to not be a Valyrian Colony (excepting the other countries like Qarth and Ib, who don't count among the nine). It was founded by Slaves that escaped their overlord in a marsh on the northernmost tip of Essos. It is mainly known for its massive port and the Iron Bank of Braavos, the biggest bank in the world. It also houses the House of Black and White, the central temple and headquarters of the Faceless Men.
**Pentos: Another large trading port on the western edge of Essos. It serves as the major trading hub between Westeros and the rest of Essos.
**Lys: Located on an island off the coast of Essos. Founded as a resort for Freeholders. A decadent city whose most famous export are prostitutes.
**Myr: The women here are hot, considering how often Westerosi seem to come back with wives from here. Other than that, its only notable feature is its forever-war with Lys and Tyrosh.
**Norvos: They make really good bodyguards that are taught to see their [[Executioners|axes as their waifus]].
**Qohor: Not much is known about them, except one of the brutal mercenary companies is from here, and they worship the [[Lovecraft|Black Goat.]]
**Tyrosh: Greedy slavers. Not really notable, except they're one-third of the constant warfare of the Disputed Lands along with Lys and Myr and for being extremely flamboyant.
**Volantis: The crown jewel, first colony of the Freehold and considers itself the successor state to the Freehold.
**Lorath: No, they don't speak for the trees. Lorath is the poorest of the Free Cities, and not much is known about them. Its most notable feature are the underground labyrinths that dot the island and which predate the Valyrians. Typical of Martin, the Labyrinths and a similar cult in Essos (the cult of the Pattern) are a reference to someone else's work, [[Dick|but no, he doesn't like fanfiction]].
*Ghiscari Empire and Slavers Bay: To the East of Valyria and the Free Cities, these cities pre-date Valyria. Before they were conquered, they had their own empire and worshiped the Harpy. Nowadays, they trade with the Dothraki, exchanging tribute for slaves, which they then market to the rest of the World. Vaguely the [[Middle East]] of ASOIAF. They are: Old Ghis, New Ghis, Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. In the books, Dany is stuck here trying to manage the clusterfuck that is deslaverizing these lands. Currently locked in a brutal war where the newly-freed slaves are either fighting the surviving slaver-nobles, other cities, or each other.
*Qarth: What separates the "East" from the "Far East." It's to the West of Slaver Bay and East of not!China/Japan, so any traffic between the Free Cities, Slaver's bay, and them, requires them to pass through Qarth. Home to a bunch of fucking weirdo Orientalist tropes that vie for power: The Pureborn, the noble descendants of ancient Qaathi Kings and Queens that fled the sacking of their cities to Qarth, so hold no real power beyond their titles; the Ancient Guild of Spicers (it's in the name [[Memes|and it must flow]]); the Thirteen, ''another'' group of Merchants; the Tourmaline Brotherhood (more merchants!). Qarth is also the location of the House of the Undying, a group of Warlocks that drink "shade-of-the-evening," which is pretty much [[Dune|Spice from Dune]], but made from trees and not wormshit; the House of the Undying and most of its Warlocks were burnt down by Dany's dragons after they tried to steal them; they sent out some guys for revenge, but they ran into Euron where he promptly murdered them all and took their <s>spice</s> <s>nightshade</s> shade-of-the-evening. Functionally Singapore, but with a more Indo-Persian aesthetic.
*Rhoyne: Destroyed former city of the Rhoynar, who fled the Valyrian Freehold and migrated to Dorne. The former capital is currently infested by Stone-Men, Greyscale survivors who have gone feral.
*Ib: not!Dwarfs, but described more like Neanderthals than Nordic shorties. They're [[squat]], barrel-chested, with thick wiry black hair, heavy sloping eye brows and square-teeth of neanderthals, They're also incredibly hairy, and even their women have facial hair., Instead of digging holes in mountains, they travel the sees in equally-stocky whaling ships. They tend to keep to themselves, [[Meme|but are natural sailors, suitable for long voyages]].
*The Dothraki Sea: Not a sea, but the name for the not!Eurasian Plains. Before the Freehold collapsed and the Dothraki tribesmen took advantage of the chaos of the Century of Blood to conquer it and burn down all but one of the old Qaathi cities (with only Qarth itself surviving) and most of the old Kingdom of Sarnor along with other minor cities, it was known as the Great Grass Sea.
**Vaes Dothrak: The capital and only permanent Dothraki settlement. It is forbidden to carry weapons or spill blood here (doesn't mean you can't kill through other means).
*Golden Empire of Yi Ti: Not!China, with a mysterious history and pattern of legends eerily-similar to Westeros' own. Like China, has a long history of Emperors, each dynasty progressively ruling over smaller, weaker empires. The current dynasty is actually so weak, they're not taken seriously outside their capital.
**The Five Forts: In the not!Chinese version of the Long Winter/Long Night, the Empire of Yi Ti was cast into a long night that never ended, where the evil Lion of the Night was unleashed by the Bloodstone Emperor. He was beat back by the Lord of Light/Hyrkoon the Hero/but the name that the Yi Ti know him by was never stated. Just like the Wall in Westeros, the Five Forts were said to be erected by a great Emperor soon after to make sure the crisis never happens again. Just like Westeros, the Five Forts have waned in importance, now only protecting the Yi Ti from barbarians. The Five Forts are said to be made from a material of "fused black stone," similar in description to many ancient ruins all over the setting. Harrenhal is also described similarly, but Harrenhal was stone melted by dragonfire, so the idea that the Five Forts was made with the aid of dragons and/or magic has been floated by fans.
*The Jogos Nhai: not!Mongols, but they ride Zebras and are literally cone-heads.
*Asshai-by-the-Shadow: Further-Further-East, it may as well be mythic. The city of Asshai is depressingly gloomy, the entire city is composed of dark black towers made of fused, black stone that seems to "drink the light."

The South:
'''Summer Isles''': Think Avelorn, but Black. An archipelago to the Far South of Westeros, everything here is pretty idyllic. War is very formalized, prostitution is a religious rite, [[meme|there are no white people]], it's practically paradise. A deposed prince was sent to exile in Westeros and had been trying to get Robert to make the journey south to put him back on the throne, but no one really took him seriously.

'''Sothoryos''': [[Lustria|Jungle hell]].
*Yeen: Made of the same creepy black metal in Stygai, implied to be an old Empire of the Dawn Outpost. Even the death world jungle (as in, not just the animals, the actual jungle itself) refuses to go in there for fear of dying.

'''Ulthos''': not!Australia, and has absolutely no lore. Seriously, GRRM has literally never mentioned it except in relation to another place that also has no lore. It's a passing mention that his obsessive fans took note of, and when they literally helped wrote the setting book for him, their guess became canon.

==The appeal of A Song of Ice And Fire==
Exactly what catches the eyes of [[Skub|a given fan/critic/lout who complains about how bad it is anytime the show is mentioned within earshot]] to ASOIAF and its TV adaptation varies from individual to individual. Still, there's a couple of major draws.

'''The Worldbuilding:''' The main reason why this series gets compared to [[The Lord of the Rings]], ASOIAF is literally ''drowning'' under the weight of its worldbuilding, being crammed as full of facts about fictitious regions, histories, cultures, dynasties and races as GRRM can fit it. Your mileage will vary on how ''good'' that info is, but there's plenty of info in it. It is worth noting that much of the vagueness of various aspects of the world's lore comes down to the limited perspectives of each of the characters' point of view, so many places and events are often only known partially through superstition, rumors, and often second hand experiences passed down and muddled over time; all of which play quite heavily into the overall story structure of the series.

'''A vast colorful Cast:''' A lot of works of fantasy get by with a few archetypal characters (the Young Guy out to Prove themself, the Wise Wizard, the Dark Lord, the Mischievous One, the Grizzled Veteran, the Princess, the Dwarf, etc) and maybe a guy or two which rises above this. A Song of Ice and Fire has dozens of viewpoint characters and a hundreds of secondaries each with different situations, drives, motives and quirks that make them reasonably interesting. Even if you don't like one or some of them, there are plenty of others. When they die, it often hits home. Speaking of which...

'''Mainstream [[Dark Fantasy]]:''' Dark Fantasy is not exactly a mainstream niche. ASOIAF stands out by deliberately trying to market itself to the mainstream, despite embracing an abundance of dark fantasy tropes; gratuitous violence, sexuality and sexual violence, moral ambiguity, political intrigue, and a willingness to suddenly kill off any character, even the most likeable or heroic of them.

'''[[Low Fantasy]]:''' On the surface, ASOIAF is an old-school Low Fantasy setting, being a medieval-tech world with the story openly focused on the mundane lives of people struggling for political power and though supernatural elements do exist, they tend to be used sparingly.

'''[[High Fantasy]]:''' But if you scratch the surface, ASOIAF is also a High Fantasy setting, which is always the more marketable of the two, with the big backstory about how the world is facing impending doom from an army of wintery [[fey]] and their [[undead]] minions. There are also non-evil higher powers working against them, but they get swept under the rug in the show. Also, [[dragon]]s. As the more marketable genre, it's also inevitably the more skubby one, for whatever that's worth.

'''[[Magical Realm|Gratuitous Sexuality]]:''' More a thing for the TV show than the books; GRRM's scenes were [[Rape|raepy]] in the earlier volumes, and apparently our boy must have overheard the nickname "George Rape Rape Martin (I ''Like'' Rape)", because he dialed back the forced boning in #4-5. The frequent scenes of nudity and sex in the early seasons of the show were a ''big'' selling point for many people (the casting of people from the sex industry for some of these scenes also helped).

'''Not much in terms of generic fantasy tropes:''' Hate how almost every fantasy just has to have things popularized by Tolkien such as elves, dwarves, orcs and all that stuff? You're in luck because ASOIAF doesn't have a "five races" system, their accompanying stereotypes or the plot hinging on a magic item. On the other hand, it does have several generic fantasy tropes, such as [[dragon]]s, [[Medieval Stasis]], [[undead]] and at least two contenders for [[BBEG|Dark Lord]] status, so if you hate them too, well...

'''Lots of Houses and Sigils''': OK, so this is sort of a joke...except not completely. For those who are artistically minded and love coming up with their own OC groups and/or fleshing out minor characters, this setting really does invite it with the absolutely insane number of houses [[Space Marines|that each have their own distinct logo/color-scheme combo]].

==Oh Yeah, About The TV Show==
[[image:KnightsWhoSayFuck.jpg|150px|thumb|left|Yeah, pretty much.]]

{{Skubby}}

After the first three books became hits, many Hollywood producers and directors had come to the sadistic neckbeard, asking him about making a movie adaptation. At first, he was reluctant at best, due to the fact that a lot of his content would've been cut out to fit into a movie trilogy (see the Lord of the Rings live-action films). Then, a couple of dudes, David Benioff and D.B/Daniel Brett Weiss (AKA D&D, or more accurately as of the final season, Dumb & Dumber), decided to contact him and asked him at a local restaurant about turning ASOIAF into a Television show produced by HBO, the top-rated soft-core porno channel. The story goes that George asked them a very specific question (Who is Jon Snow's mother?). Satisfied with the response they gave, he gave them permission to start work on the show, which would be titled after the first book, ''Game of Thrones''. They would later go on to prove that this is not a good way of choosing who should adapt your work.

The television show casts several well-known performers, such as Sean Bean as Eddard, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, Lena Headey as Cersei, and Charles Dance as Tywin. They have also cast some comparatively less well-known actors and even ones new to cinema, such as Sophie Turner (Sansa), Maisie Williams (Arya), Kit Harington (Jon), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay), Alfie Allen (Theon), and Richard Madden (Robb)

Thus, book snobs seem to think that every episode post-season 4 is nothing more than Emmy-bait. Regardless of the fact Kit Harington still [[Fail|doesn't have an Emmy]], there's a valid contention in that regard, with the number of liberties taken overshadowing the initial appeal.

The final season (more on that below) was eventually revealed to be such a train wreck because Dumb & Dumber did not want to work on the series anymore and had let the success with the earlier seasons go to their heads. In their arrogance, instead of handing the reins to someone else, they decided to plan out their own ending and use it as an audition to Disney so they could write for Star Wars. By then, they'd run out of books to adapt, there was no superior writing for them to leech off of and there was no one to gainsay them in their echo chamber of a writer's room (even George himself was cut out). The result was absolutely shit writing that caused a glorious breakage in the [[skub]] dam that left [[Butthurt|many a fan's anus weeping]] (provided they weren't early seasons fans, book series fans, or any of the other assorted onlookers [[Lulz|taking part in the mightiest of keks]]) and, if anything proved <s>George's </s> Ramsay's quote at the beginning of the article true. Goddamn Dumb & Dumber, could you talentless Derp machines do any worse if you tried? Luckily, comeuppance came after them and Disney, having some sense, told them to fuck off with their [[Star Wars]] ideas after the backlash towards the final season. Not that Disney Star Wars has been without its share of controversy and [[Rage]], but you know it's bad when someone gets told to piss off from even that.

The Greatest Irony and Tragedy of the show's writing was that in the first few seasons, with George RR Martin consulting them and with a wealth of material from the first few books to work with, D&D were actually pretty damn good at adapting the books into a TV format. In fact, quite a few scenes were in fact not only adapted, but actually created from scratch outside of the source material. One of the most noteworthy is the iconic introduction of Tywin Lannister in Season 1 Episode 7, where we learn everything we need to know about his character with nothing but precisely chosen dialogue and a rather blunt visual metaphor of him gutting a stag he slew in a hunt, all while brutally laying into Season 1's initially perceived villain, Jaime. Contrast this with Season 5 where the show's major decline began with blunders such as the omission of fan-favorite Lady Stoneheart, literally butchering the Dorne subplot with Martell family team-killing and changing the Sparrows' movement to a militant atheist's stereotype of religion. This decline makes a lot more sense after George himself admitted that Season 5 was the first Season where he was was really locked out of the loop.

Goes to show how much they had fallen when the well ran dry and the show' writing and adaptation process was no longer the finely honed instrument it had started as.

'''TL;DR'''

[[GM|Producers Dumb&Dumber-style change characters and railroad the plot at a whim,]] [[/d/M|the tits and ultraviolence spigot is opened even wider than the books,]] and most scenes are made for the actors to show off their skills at making their signature angry/murder/brooding/etc. faces, and wrapped it up with a season of TV soon to be discussed that even Matt Ward would be 100% justified in pointing and laughing at. Seasons 1-4 are worth your time, 7 and 8 are best ignored, and 5 and 6 are the [[Skub]] ones.

===The Final <s>Dumpster Fire</s> Season===
{{Fail}}
{{HurfDurf}}
{{Plot Armour}}

{{Topquote|If you try to do something fancy with your ending and you screw up, your audience will probably remember the botched ending more than the well run marathon|JP from Terrible Writing Advice (and advice Dumb and Dumber obviously didn't heed}})

Seasons 5, 6, and especially 7 all got their share of grief from people. Mostly deserved in the case of Season 7 and [[Skub|arguably so]] for 5 and 6 (though the latter did at least finally give Ramsay his just desserts, most of the problems that cropped up in 5 and 6 happened when the show passed the book in particular plotlines and mostly served as an early warning, 7 is when things started getting criticized in general rather than individual plots or details). Season 8 though? Well, read on:

The Final Season kicks off with the Night King's army attacking Winterfell in a battle meant to be epic, but instead so chock full of tactical [[Fail|fails]] from the living, they make General Custer look like Sun Tzu. The most infamous examples include Melisandre's powers being underutilized, putting soldiers in front of trenches/walls they should be behind/standing on, no flanking charges and hiding the non-combatants in a crypt while fighting necromancers. The battle is resolved when Arya teleports directly to the BBEG and kills him with some sleight-of-hand that destroys his entire army Keystone Army trope-style and ends the winter. Also Theon, Jorah and Melisandre die, but the story sweeps their deaths under the rug like they're nameless background characters.

Then the Westerosi go full-retard and start hating Daenerys. Yes really; Dany helped end a nation-destroying winter plus a zombie apocalypse, has a claim to the throne AND is their best ally against Cersei... but they want her gone. Even Sansa suddenly turns against Dany and starts seeking the throne, despite having no claim to the rest of Westeros and Dany being easily able to kill her for treason. Everyone inexplicably starts wanting Jon to be king despite his attempt to abdicate, and Jon himself even starts thinking Aunt Daenerys might be a bad queen... but that doesn't stop him from [[Incest Smith|starting a sexual relationship with her]]. The fact that Robert's bastard son Gendry is now a lord, giving him a claim to the throne at least as strong as Dany's or Jon's, is swept under the rug. Varys also jumps ship from Dany to Jon for no reason, even trying to kill Dany in an uncharacteristically stupid move. For his efforts, Tyrion reports Varys to Daenerys, who has Varys executed by Drogon's fire-breath.

Then Daenerys press-gangs people who should logically be happy to fight for her into an army to attack King's Landing and brings them there by sea. Along the way Rhaegal, one of Daenerys' two surviving dragons, is killed by ballistae from Euron's ships. This is despite the facts that Daenerys and her dragons should've easily been able to spot the ships, they were flying well out of ballista range and Euron had no way of knowing where they'd be. After Daenerys and Drogon single-handedly destroy the Iron Fleet (amid poorly animated weather*), they reach King's Landing. Cersei's artillery does nothing despite Daenerys, all her advisors and her dragon being within lethal range plus Cersei's lack of scruples. They in turn do nothing but watch Daenerys' friend Missandei, who was captured offscreen earlier, get executed by zombie-Gregor (despite the fact Cersei and co. had no reason to believe Missandei was anyone of import to either capture or execute. Maybe someone left a copy of the script in Cersei's solar next to her Starbucks latte**)

The battle for King's Landing has Daenerys' forces break in and battle through the streets. Meanwhile Jaime snuck though the tunnels [[Fail|to find and reconcile with Cersei. The Hound regresses to his old violent self and tracks down zombie-Gregor to take him down in a battle that kills them both (although most consider this the one bright spot in the episode). Arya gives up on revenge and decides to let Cersei go despite having strong non-revenge-related reasons to kill her]]. The famed Golden Company is quickly killed off and Cersei signals a surrender by ringing the bells (the bells aren't, and have never been, signals for surrender). Then, in the capstone of bad writing for this season, Daenerys' switch flips from good to evil because the writers want it to happen, and Dany abandons her plan of freeing and leading Westeros to purging King's Landing with her dragon and army. Cersei and Jamie die together in a cave-in and Tyrion mourns their deaths despite being ready and eager to personally kill Cersei earlier. This is followed by Dany's Saruman/Hitler-esque speech that has nothing to do with her former character. Tyrion is arrested for criticizing Daenerys by saying "If this is liberation, I don't believe in liberation theology." Yes, [[Derp|the writers think theology and ideology are the same thing]] (an unsurprising mistake, given they shoehorned in anti-religious rants for the past three Seasons despite the books' even-handedness). This last one has proven to be its own personal bit of Skub, as many have argued that Daenerys going evil is in keeping with the cynical themes and tone of the setting. While this isn't wrong on its face, it does nothing to change the fact that the execution is 100% half-assed. Walter White's descent into villainy this is not, or even Anakin's arc in the Star Wars Prequels, which looks like The Godfather compared to what Season 8 does with Daenerys.

In the aftermath, Jon assassinates Daenerys for the King's Landing massacre... [[Derp|right in front of her dragon]]. Drogon, due to Jon's stronger-than-Valyrian-steel-plot-armor, doesn't kill him but melts the Iron Throne ([[What|accidentally according to the showrunners]]) while chucking a tantrum before grabbing Dany's body and flying away. Jon is somehow charged with Dany's murder despite there being no evidence that he did it, but surprisingly none of the surviving characters still loyal to Dany try to kill Jon (such as the Unsullied or the Dothraki). Despite there being several legitimate choices of king still available, including Gendry, the nobles decide to replace a dynastic monarchy with an elective one and make Bran king. Bran is nominated by Tyrion for a nonsensical reason ("he has the best story"), Tyrion somehow getting a say in the meeting despite being imprisoned for treason.

The Unsullied go to Southros under command of Grey Worm (the only one who still has a personality at this point). The Dothraki are forgotten about by everyone else. Tyrion is freed and made Hand of the King to Brann. Brienne is made Commander of the Kingsguard. [[Derp|Bronn is made Master of Coin (and Lord of Highgarden). Gendry is completely forgotten. Samwell is made the new Grand Maester]] and [[What|the North secedes and becomes independent under Queen Sansa (which definitely wouldn't cause future problems and tensions)]]. [[The Lord of the Rings|Arya sails to the West]] for some unknown reason and Jon is exiled but doesn't care because he gets to go back up north with the Wildings like he wanted. The end.

This trainwreck of a plot is a testament to how two morons can royally fuck up a show beyond any redeeming qualities the cast and crew can put forward. And even then there were screw-ups among the production staff, such as *the animators being unable to decide whether the sky is sunny or overcast when Dany and Drogon destroy the Iron Fleet - which mattered because Dany's plan to not get shot down involved having the sun behind her - and **not removing the actors' water bottles and coffee cups from the set before shooting. Hyperbole is sort of the norm here, but it really is hard to overstate how badly Season 8's finale fucks up. Game of Thrones was ''everywhere'' culturally for most of the 2010s, drawing in huge numbers of people who would otherwise never be caught dead indulging in High Fantasy works with us uber-nerds. Now, the entire Thrones fandom has practically disappeared or gone underground. Honestly, it would be an impressive achievement if it weren't so terrible.

==House of the Dragon: The ''other'' TV show==

{{Topquote|If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.|Benjamin Franklin [[Star Wars:Rebels|(and also Maul when trying to kill Kanan)]]}}

Deciding that there was still a market for Game of Thrones stuff even after the last season turned the 2010s biggest pop-culture phenomenon into a laughingstock*, HBO bet the bank on some spin-offs, the first of which is now upon us. House of the Dragon is a prequel dealing with the Dance of Dragons, a civil war between two Targaryen factions that ends up consuming Westeros and everyone in it World-War style, and featuring lots of dragons fighting dragons and the standard Westeros fare of fairly bad people doing extremely bad things. Like Game of Thrones before it, it boasts a star-studded cast, a big budget, and a lot of hype. Time will tell if it redeems the failures of the original show or repeats them. If there's a reason to be optimistic (aside from Dumb and Dumber being absent), it would be that the whole story of the Dance of Dragons is written and mapped out, meaning the writers don't have to come up with their own shit to make an ending that George hasn't yet written. Has gotten off to a strong start, so there's the hope that it will be able to redeem the legacy GoT's last two seasons absolutely ruined.

*Given that the premiere was apparently so widely watched it crashed the streaming for many people, they might actually be right.

**In fact, with Martin having more oversight over the writing of this series, and director Miguel Sapochnik actually having a passion for the setting and genre rather than just answering a mystery question to GRRM's satisfaction, the current 6 episodes have seen sky high bumps in both HBO viewership and rave reviews. The slow burn over years as the characters inch closer towards disaster has left the majority of viewers on a palpable knife's edge so far.

==GRRM and [[Your Dudes]]==
Want to make your own ASoIF setting for a role-playing game? Well, readers have enough room to fantasize about their own minor noble House (or kingdom during the Age of the Hundred Kingdoms).

A good example of what you could do is the House from the old [[/v/|"Telltale Game of Thrones"]], House Forrester. Their relationship to the canon is as follows:

House Forrester (lords of someplace in the Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Glover (overall lords of the entire Wolfswood) '''-> is sworn to ->''' House Stark (rulers of the North).

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] had a very brief tie-in making those annoying attention-sucking Facebook games, way back when FFG did that sort of thing. Just goes to show how even the other guys [[Games Workshop|will do anything for money]].

There's also an actual tie-in tabletop RPG now, which uses its own system and looks kind of like [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] with a heavy helping of resource-management strategy feel.
Players are assuming the role of a minor House to guide to glory, or, more accurately given the setting we're in, NOT to ruin utterly in a season or two, which would still be more than many A-list players mustered in canon. Each PC has a specific position within said House, and only the role of official Head is mandatory; the rest could be wife/children/brothers and sisters/all other kinds of siblings, bastards (with rules for obtaining the legitimate recognition), maesters, sworn/subservient knights, or most of anybody else. This naturally opens up near-infinite possibilities for families screwed up seven ways to high heavens, which would make Lannister's brand of infighting-slash-inbreeding look as sane as the High Septon.

The setting is also ill-suited for "adventures in Westeros" style of gaming for two reasons:
#In the grim darkness of low fantasy, a roaming nobody with no banner to talk about, no House allegiance, no nothing isn't generally treated to a Tavern With Quest Givers, but rather more to a Tavern Where You Are Shanked For Your Sword And Boots And Dumped At The Nearest Forest. Heck, even the big wheelers and dealers are routinely seen invited to the latter when they are slow to properly introduce themselves.
#Working on your initially-puny House will quite realistically involve thy neighbours first and foremost, then liege lords from the higher House yours is sworn to, and on occasion shopping around for an advantageous marriage - there simply ain't gonna be that much spare time to "travel to see places". Both of these are also why tourism wasn't a very popular pastime in medieval Europe (aside from Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Cologne and Santiago de Compostela) and why those who were "living on the road" usually enjoyed the lowest social standing.

A note to aspiring Lords: do NOT, under any circumstances, allow your "combat-optimized" siblings an unsupervised minute in a social setting. Game's "social combat" system is a thing more brutal than the physical one, and it takes a socially-optimized character all of a few minutes to mindfuck one who is not (read: everyone but dedicated diplomats and Heads of the Houses, and not every one of the latter, to boot, as illustrated by several amazing boneheads in canon) into believing pretty much anything short of Grumpkins and Snarks. Stupid NPCs or a stupid GM will make said mindfuck obvious, allowing you to "mindfuck 'em back" without abuse of OOC info; cunning ones will not.

On a side-note; GRRM is said to take a dim view of fanfiction, saying it kills creative ability. This is kind of a double-edged statement, since a lot of George's characters here are either rehashes of his characters from previous works, references to other fictional characters (like Littlefinger and Samwell being based on Jay Gatsby and [[The Lord of the Rings|Samwise Gamgee]]), walking tropes (such as Ned Stark and Robb Stark being the "[[TVTropes|Honor Before ]] [[Lawful Stupid|Reason]]" characters) or historical references (such House Lannister ripping off House Lancaster and House Tyrell being totally-not-House-Tudor - to the point that Margaery Tyrell is played by Natalie Dormer from "The Tudors" TV show). While this makes everything he wrote just another...fanfiction, and his disapproval hypocritical. Still, given the "creative" output of the average neckbeard, he's perhaps not entirely wrong. For another layer of irony/hypocrisy, he sold the rights to make a TV series of the books to HBO, who's adaptation would eventually devolve into a glorified fanfic.

==Games==
[[image:AGot-2nd-ed-cardfan.png|thumb|250px]]
Like any fantasy author who finds themselves unexpectedly in the warm embrace of commercial success, Martin quickly licensed the shit out of his setting; spawning everything from resin miniatures to replica great swords. While most of this is worthless junk to foist on [[Neckbeard|obsessive fanboys]] /tg/ has agreed that a few of the games are made of win. The first two are a collectable [[CCG|card game]] put out in 2002 by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] and a [[Risk]]-esque board game that followed shortly after in 2003. One of [[White Wolf]]'s subsidiaries also put out a [[d20 System|d20 RPG]] in 2005 but it quickly tanked because, come on, [[White Wolf]]. Martin since wrested the rights back and developed a new version with [[Green Ronin Games]].

Now let's have some serious talks about the Game of Thrones games, because they have become some sort of endless source of [[Skub|amusement and frustration]] for the gaming fanbase. Game of Thrones is, roughly speaking, the second franchise with the most licensed board games, after [[Star Wars]]. Some of them have acquired quite a legendary status and a fanbase that goes beyond the book or series fans.

The great juggernaut for all the ASOIAF-based games is [[Fantasy Flight Games]]:
* First and foremost we have [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-board-game-second-edition/ ''A Game of Thrones: The Board Game'']: a game that after two editions still ranks high in /bgg/'s top 100, and has recently had an expansion. The board game has become some sort of meme for the modern board gamers and it could be considered the equivalent of a more advanced [[Risk]], in which dice and blank character got replaced by a very flavourful and brutal combat system and a lot of thematical mechanics fueling the engine. Overall this game has been associated with concepts such as requiring maximum player count to really be entertaining, having an amazing amount of length and depth and being a very faithful representation of the political feeling the series inspired. Almost any boardgamer or wargamer worth his salt has played this game and enjoyed its highs, its lows and the amazing amount of frustrations it brings. This is probably the most well known of all the ASOIAF games and it was released way before Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon back in 2003.<br>
:It also has a digital edition, sold on Steam and Android

* Another game that bears mention, both for its excellent mechanics and its historical significance is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-the-card-game-second-edition/ A Game of Thrones: The Card Game]. It is one of the most balanced card game experiences you can get, also full of flavour and with quite a great amount of balance and non-linear thinking. The best part is, unlike certain other popular card games, the game follows the living card game format: players know exactly what each booster pack brings and can buy cards in a more responsible manner, rather than playing bingo and hoping to get a rare card. Also, the sole core set already provides more replayability than some fully-fledged board games.

* Finally, the last game to mention in the [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] venerable trilogy of games is [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/battles-of-westeros/ ''Battles of Westeros''], arguably the most ambitious and least successful of the three. Battles of Westeros was a fully-fledged wargame that used the [[Memoir 44]] and [[BattleLore]] rules as a base, but then evolved into its own by introducing mechanics such as commanders, tactic cards, and very creative scenario rules. Miniatures were made in 15mm and, for their time and scale, they were quite detailed; some commanders are real standouts (for example, Robb Stark's has his direwolf jumping at his side).<br>
:Thanks to its scale, the game was able to provide players with a great number of options and units at a fraction of the price of other board games. With a core set that was already stacked with units and variety, and then faction-specific expansions that added several more units and commanders. The game also came with scenario books that provided narrative play with quite creative rule variants, such as storming palisades, having decoys in escort missions, and bombarding enemies with catapults. One scenario even tried to bring to life the Battle of the Blackwater (the hybrid invasion of King's Landing by Stannis ''the God-Damn Mannis'' Baratheon). The game was incredible and quite a creative wargame, but its main issue was that the setup time was just terrible. Incredibly complex and tiresome when compared to the actual gameplay time.

There are others, such as the ASOIAF-themed [[Settlers of Catan|Catan]] expansion called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/a-game-of-thrones-catan-brotherhood-of-the-watch/ ''A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch''], another card game called [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/hand-of-the-king/ ''A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King''], and another board game [https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/game-of-thrones-the-iron-throne/#/products-section ''Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne'']. The quality of those, however, remains to be seen.

And then the miniature-producing Kickstarter juggernaut [[CMON]] decided to produce its own [[wargame]], with AMAZING miniatures. The game began with, of course, a [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-tabletop-miniatures-game Kickstarter], and after that, the game has had at least 2 dozen more releases with 3 more factions added.<br>
The game has some mechanics taken from rank and file games, such as [[Kings of War]], combining them with mechanics taken out of "battles of Westeros" particularly the tactics deck. A new page is in the works: [[ASOIAF Miniature Game]]

==Books==
*''A Game of Thrones''
*''A Clash of Kings''
*''A Storm of Swords'': Split into 2
*''A Feast for Crows'': half the characters, the point where the series goes down the toilet
*''A Dance with Dragons'': split into 2 the first is about the other half of the characters, and manages to pick things up a bit
*''The Winds of Winter'': First rumored to be ready by late 2018, then given an official release date of Summer 2020, those times have come and gone and the book is unreleased. Though he has shared chapters of the book.
*''A Dream of Spring'' : Unreleased and unlikely to ever be.
** GRRM will most likely die before writing this, though he has given an outline for how he wants the series to end that might be made public knowledge if he dies before the book series is finished.
*''The Dunk and Egg Series'': A story about a landless hedge knight travelling across Westeros with a Targaryen squire, so he can teach him how not to be an asshole to peasants.

==On The "Grimdarkness" of the Setting==

One important note: While the setting is usually held to be "Grimdark", it is also very true to Real Life in its nastiness, with real consequences for assholes. George himself has said, quote; "No matter how much I make up, there's stuff in history that's just as bad, or worse." Book one is almost exactly the beginning of the War of the Roses, except with England enlarged to a continent's size and the seasons stretched out to let the travel times work. (...And then the dragons wake up, the ice elves and their undead armies return and magic makes a comeback. It's not a perfect analogy. All that stuff is closed in their own sub plots and they don't involve the main continent in the book, that is left to "common" war and plotting.)

For an example of Grimdark, but with consequences: The King can order the execution of the head of the leading noble family of the North, for essentially no reason, but now he doesn't have hostages to exchange when their relatives and/or armies come after him seeking revenge. (And all this is modeled on various occasions where more or less '''exactly''' this kind of thing happened in real life medieval Europe.)

In other words: Truly heinous shit goes on, and there's nothing ''stopping'' that kind of shit... but there are ''consequences'' to that kind of shit that act as an effective counterbalance against being seen to do that kind of shit to the smarter nobles in the kingdom. And, because anyone can die, the shittiest characters are no more guaranteed survival than the nicest.

Also worth mentioning that there's reason to think that, despite the quote that began this page, the series may not actually end on [[The End Times|100% downer note]], as Martin has said he hopes his series will end in a way akin to the Scouring of the Shire from Lord of the Rings, which, despite the name, is more of a bittersweet ending. So who knows (though this also presumes the author will actually get around to finishing the series at all).

In sum, whether the setting fully qualifies for "Grimdark" is a matter for debate. Probably the best way of looking at is that it is Grimdark, but in a nuanced way.

==See Also==
*[[/tg/ Song of Ice and Fire Houses]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U7NpSubAJQ Weiner, Weiner weiner]

[[category: Literature]]

The Lord of the Rings

2022-11-09T23:19:44Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it, the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien had left-wing anarchist viewpoint be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero, despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/tolkien-cliches/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in some of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. That quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. This began at the first major warning sign; the firing of Amazon's resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work, at times even meeting and working with Tolkien himself at the same university) and subsequent replacement by someone far less qualified, far less experienced and heavily invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Combined with this happening shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate protective of his father's work - it was clear there was an agenda. More bad news came out soon after; Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''. They had spent several hundred million dollars only buying rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices, and are unable to reference anything else.

Worse, it was revealed the showrunners had no screenwriting or directing credits to their name, only being hired after J.J. Abrams vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was seen as bizarre for Amazon to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Several of the main actors themselves were either inexperienced or complete newcomers, most noticeable with the actress playing Galadriel. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual, in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst.

The final nail in the coffin were Amazon's announcements that they wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day. This proved that the ''Rings of Power'' was a prestige product for some studio suits and amateur writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and even [[What|multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' launched in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote, especially in terms of visual design, dialogue, and shots. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-received films.
*Lots of the show actually end up being shockingly boring. There are large swaths of the plot where just nothing of any significance happens. One moment aside (the time Disa sings to the rock in a religious ceremony, which is admittedly a really cool scene and the only time the show manages to grasp an inkling of Tolkiens magic), a lot of time is spent on following up on the mystery boxes, intercut with action setpieces that at best have minimal stakes and at worst are completely nonsensical. Given how much of the dyanmics that are supposed to be established here end up going nowhere and/or are outright ignored/contradicted by the time of the finale, one has to wonder why the showrunners even spent time on these plotlines.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty, rude warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. She also never gives a mention or thought to her conspicuously absent husband Celeborn when starting to yield to "Halbrand's" charm. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs. Also the humans that end up siding with Adar really don't like elves and even use slurs like "knife-ear." Real subtle.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
**While we weren't expecting the most tightly written story given how light the source material is, its clear that the showrunners didn't grasp the most important aspect in Tolkein's writing; the use of theme and how every detail builds up huge core ideas in the narrative. Instead, everything that happens happens because the plot demands it, even at the expense of previous characterization. One easy example is the Harfoots, who we're told all support one another, but because we have to create drama for the harfoot plotline, are constantly leaving people on their own to die anytime they run into trouble. It's ironic that they were included solely because the showrunners thought that the were the heart and soul of Middle Earth, when audiences have largely rejected the Harfoots as bunch of [[Kender|filthy little psychopaths]].
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see (although many of the show's lore references are likely to confuse newbies as they're hardly explained well, and those who do know the are likely to rage due to the immense retconning). After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time. That being said, by the time of the finale, the ratings had dropped to catastrophic levels and even many media outlets who gave the show a chance had to admit that it was a flop. So much so that rumors abound of Amazon discreetly sidelining Payne & McKay for more competent showrunners, while desperately trying to convince audiences that season 2 will be better we promise.
</div>
</div>

==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy, while the second deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| How the heck did a little hobbit beat this?
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

Doom

2022-11-05T09:58:53Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit) */

{{/vg/}}
{{Oldschool}}
{{Cleanup}}
{{awesome}}

[[File:Doom cover poster.jpeg|thumb|If you don't already have the first level's music in your head, you may be on the wrong site.]]
{{topquote|Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...|[[Discworld|Terry Pratchett]]}}

The father of the first-person shooter, the original ass-kicking demon-slaying 3D slaughter-fest, '''''Doom''''' is a franchise that demands respect even in the hallowed halls of /tg/. It was actually inspired by a [[Dungeons & Dragons]] campaign played by the founders of id Software; John Romero had given a demon lord the key to overrunning the material plane in exchange for a magic [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|katana]] because he's an edgy little bitch like that, and John Carmack (the DM and one of the many forms of Tzeentch) decided it made a good premise for their new 3D game. The katana in question would later be used in Romero's game ''Daikatana'', which was a total failure for reasons that aren't important enough to go over right now.

The plot? In an FPS? Here's your plot: you are a Space Marine (no, not the 40K guy, a jumped-up soldier who is sent to fight on other planets, so closer to the [[Imperial Guard]]...though considering recent events he may be the equivalent of a standard Astartes, just much shorter.) stationed on Phobos. Somehow, demons broke through into our reality and slaughter everyone else. Your job? Fight your way to where, you hope, there's a ride off of this rock, and make bloody mincemeat out of everything standing between you and salvation. Standing in your way are armies of zombified fellow marines and eggheads, fireball-tossing imps, hulking flesh-eating demons, cyborg-demon monstrosities, and various other hell-spawned nasties who want to kill you horribly. Good luck. You'll need it...

Although not the very ''first'' of the FPS genre (even its predecessor, [[Wolfenstein]] 3D, wasn't the first, as the history of the genre goes back all the way into the '70s), Doom was definitive to the genre, so much so that "Doom Clone" was the standard nickname for many years afterwards. People are still playing it and making it even more awesome with [[Homebrew|their own custom modifications]] 24 years later, which isn't something you hear that often outside of /tg/; this is one of the main reasons why the franchise is so well-respected.

Fun fact: that iconic Doom monster, the Cacodemon, was actually inspired by the artwork for an Astral Dreadnought on the cover of the [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 1st edition [[Manual of the Planes]] splatbook. Also relevant to /tg/ is that Sandy Petersen, co-designer of [[Ghostbusters RPG]], creator of [[Call of Cthulhu]], and author of some [[RuneQuest]] stuff, worked on the game. He designed some levels (more in the sequel) and made some contributions to the monster design.

==Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit)==
{{topquote|Welcome to DOOM, a lightning-fast virtual reality adventure where you're the toughest space trooper ever to suck vacuum. Your mission is to shoot your way through a monster-infested holocaust. Living to tell the tale if possible.|README.TXT, Doom 1.8 shareware}}
The original Doom was fast-paced and bloody compared to what came before but wasn't afraid to vary the pace with more labyrinthine levels or make you shit your pants by dropping you into a crowd of demons when you least expected it. (Fun fact No. 2: The extra levels included in the physical version of Doom (henceforth called ''Ultimate Doom'') were built by the same guy who wrote [[Call of Cthulhu]] in just 10 weeks.) Doom II on the other hand was a circle-strafing explosion-rich gorefest and is what basically everyone thinks of when they think of both Doom and 90s FPS gameplay in general. The plot was bare-minimum: Demons took over Phobos and ate Deimos, kill them all. Or, in Doom 2's case, Demons are trying to infest Earth in revenge, kill them all AGAIN. But this time, ''it's personal''. (No, seriously, they killed your pet bunny Daisy.) The Doom engine is extremely mod-friendly for a 90's game (as both Carmack and Romero had been big into software tinkering in their day) and the modding community is still very present and perhaps even more prolific than it was back in the day. In fact, id Software actually paid some modding groups for the right to sell their works as retail (Final Doom and the Master Levels for Doom 2). Also relevant is SIGIL, John Romero's own 25th-anniversary level-pack and unofficial Episode 5 for Doom 1 that he released to the public for free (unless you wanted the special Buckethead soundtrack for [[Edgy|$6.66 USD]]). There is also an ongoing arms race among modders and hobbyists to find the absolute unlikeliest thing Doom can be run on. So far people have managed to get it to run on the following, among other things: literally any and every OS ever released by any software company ever, an ATM, a potato-powered calculator, an oscilloscope, several types of MP3 player, a computer built inside Minecraft, a pregnancy test, a piano, and [[What|itself]] (via a mod that installs a script tool in the game). If it has even a resemblance of a CPU and some RAM, it can probably run Doom.

Slightly more obscure but still relevant is Doom 64, which replaced the high-speed Explode-o-Rama with a stronger horror theme and more deliberate pace.

id Software then for a time turned toward more multiplayer-oriented games with the ''Quake'' franchise and gave Doom a well-earned rest.

===Brutal Doom===
Really worth mentioning, because BD is probably one of the most influential and important mods ever made. Kickstarted by some guy named SargentMarkIV, who in the beginning just wanted more gore in his Doom 2 playthroughs, and from then on escalated this simple graphical mod into the mother of all total conversion mods that not only reinvigorated interest in Classic Doom that was beginning to fade in the 2010s, it also served as inspiration for a number of retro shooters for a bunch of indie developers, Dusk being a prominent example, but also showed Bethesda and id Software that there actually was still some interest in fast-paced single-player FPS, which lead to the awesome-as-fuck reboot of Doom in 2016.

So what does this mod do, exactly? Hard to describe, because it does so much. In essence, it is now a complete port of the old Doom and Doom 2 optimized for modern systems and FPS gameplay standards with a lot of features and hooks that the original didn't have, like Mouselook and different keybindings. It also changes the gameplay rather dramatically with tons of modifications to enemy behaviour, actual projectiles instead of pure hitscan weapons, a whole-kit melee system if you're really into Rip-and-Tear and three new difficulties. This author cannot recommend it enough, especially since it is, some digging provided, 100% free (if you want to be extra sure, you always get the WADs for some meager bucks off steam).

===The Doom Comic===
{{topquote|'''DYNAMITE! I'M COOKING WITH GAS! I'VE GOTTA HANDFUL OF VERTEBRAE AND A HEADFUL OF MAD! YEAH, THAT'S YOUR SPINAL CORD, BABY! DIG IT!'''|You, the moment you read that heading}}
The origin of [[Rip and Tear]]. Possibly the most ridiculously, amazingly, stupidly 90's thing that has ever been put to paper with the possible exception of Image Comics. It has to be read to be believed. [https://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/ So go read it.]

===Monsters===
[[File:Reaperminis.jpg|thumb|right|Limited-edition monster minis from [[Reaper Miniatures]]. Admit it, you want <s>that Cyberdemon</s> all of them for your Daemons of Chaos army.]]
These are the monsters you'll encounter in Doom 1, Doom 2 and their spinoffs.
*'''[[Zombie|Former human]]''': Wet toilet paper. Only dangerous until you get a shotgun.
**'''Former Sergeant''': Still wet toilet paper, but full of broken glass; if one of these assholes gets behind you before you find armour you're probably dead. Likely to be your first source for shotguns.
**'''Former Commando''': Unlike the other formers, this guy is no joke: he's durable enough to not die when breathed on and his hitscan chaingun is almost as powerful as yours. Using hordes of these guys in an open arena with no cover is the pinnacle of dick moves in Doom mapping.
*'''Imp''': The first true demon you encounter with an easy-to-dodge projectile and more health than the formers. The first meaningful enemy you meet, and runner-up for ''the'' most iconic non-boss monster.
*'''Demon''': Otherwise known as '''Pinkies'''. Giant hairless gorilla with a mouth that could give a [[squig]] lessons in eating. [[Derp|They can't walk and bite at the same time]] so you can just step out of their way, but they tend to come in large groups and dance around like spastic toddlers (which makes them harder to shoot) as they run up to you.
**'''Spectre''': Demon with Predator-style optic camo. An absolute bitch to deal with in dark environments, which is naturally where you find them.
*'''Cacodemon''': Mr. [[Astral Dreadnought]] Head. These fuckers can fly (not entirely unlike a [[Beholder]]...) and you can't look up, so have fun fighting them in close quarters where they can float out of your field of view. Dangerous, but get a rapid-fire weapon and they become a joke as you stunlock them until they are all dead. ''The'' most iconic non-boss monster, partially because of its sheer WTFery but mostly because of how easy it is to chibi/make plushies out of.
**'''Pain Elemental''': [[Meme|Meatball demon.]] Like a cacodemon, but instead of shooting fireballs, it shoots Lost Souls. Has the opposite problem to the pinkies in that [[Derp|you can stand in front of its face]] and prevent the lost souls from spawning.
*'''Lost Soul''': Floating flaming skulls that fly at you at approximately SANIC miles per hour. Fairly weak, but very fast and has a habit of nibbling at you while you focus on something more dangerous.
*'''Revenant''': [[Meme|Agitating skeleton aka '''DOOT'''.]] One of the few monsters that can move anywhere near as fast as you do, plus he runs up and tries to punch your head off if you move inside the minimum range of the homing rockets he shoots. It is a fact that any given Doom map is automatically casuals-only unless the mapper adds at least 100 revenants.
*'''Mancubus''': [[Festus the Leechlord|HELLO I'M FUCKING FAT.]] Slow, but very tanky, and he has dual [[Flamer|heavy flamers]] for arms that hurt like hell. Fortunately, this also applies to any nearby demons, so you can make them kill each other for your amusement just by standing between a mancubus and another monster.
*'''Arch-vile''': One of the few monsters that that's faster than the player at a full run. Sets you on fire [[Psyker|with its mind]] and revives any monsters it comes across so you have to kill them all over again. Meeting one of these guys in a slaughtermap will make you [[Khorne|hate everything forever.]]
*'''Hell Knight''': Now we're talking. [[Space Marine]] sized and equipped with a melee punch and moderate projectile attacks (fireballs). Shooting him in the face with a shotgun will kill him pretty quickly.
**'''Baron of Hell''': Super hell knight with double the health. Big and equipped with nasty melee and projectile attacks. Shooting ''him'' in the face with a shotgun just '''pisses him off'''. Super shotguns will work though. Probably the best-known Barons are the "Bruiser Bros", the pair of Barons you fight as the bosses of the first episode.
*'''Cyberdemon''': [[Rip and tear|Is huge, and therefore has huge guts.]] Basically a (Chaos possessed?) Carnifex with a rocket launcher for an arm, and significantly faster than he looks. Without a doubt the fuckingest monster in the classic game, and practically tailor-made for soaking up BFG shots.
*'''Spider Mastermind''': Doom 1’s final boss, [[Derp|despite being inferior in almost every way to the Cyberdemon you fight earlier.]] Go figure. Even more XBOX HUEG than the Cyberdemon, but has a super-chaingun instead of a rocket launcher and refuses to let up until either you or it are dead. Has the critical weakness of BFG shots up the ass due to the way its hugeness interacts with the mechanics of the classic BFG.
**'''Arachnotron''': Baby Masterminds that go fast and shit plasma at you.
*'''The Icon of Sin''': Doom 2's final boss. [[FAIL|A wall with a demon face on it]] and a hole in its forehead that serves as its weak point. Spawns monsters to attack you, but dies pretty quickly from a few well-aimed rockets... though, you need good timing to shoot them through the hole in its head. You probably know this, but the entity that takes damage is John Romero's severed head on a pole.

===Weapons===
{{topquote|I do need a gun. I need a big gun. I need a really big gun...|Doomguy, Doom comic}}
Doomguy himself shows about as much personality as your average [[Adventurer|Murderhobo]], (there is more to him but you don’t see it until later) so the game's real main characters are the weapons.
*'''Fists''': Only good at punching through the above-mentioned wet toilet paper, and complete suicide to use on anything stronger than an Imp. [[Rip and tear|Should you find a Berserk pack, though...]]
**'''[[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw]]''': [[Meme|The great communicator.]] Stronger than your fists and capable of tearing through Cacodemons and below without much problem.
*'''Pistol''': You start the game with this and 50 bullets. Gets overshadowed by every single other weapon.
*'''Shotgun''': Now we're talking. The first gun you get that can actually kill stuff in a decent amount of time.
**'''Super Shotgun''': A double-barrelled version of the original. A complete [[rape]] machine at close range, delivering about as much damage per hit as a rocket, but falls off greatly at longer distances.
*'''Chaingun''': [[Dakka|WAAAAAAAAAAGH!]] Great at stunlocking enemies, especially the aforementioned Cacodemons.
*'''Rocket Launcher''': Capable of [[Khorne|reducing enemies to puddles of blood]] from a safe distance. Also capable of reducing ''you'' to a puddle of blood if used from an unsafe distance.
*'''Plasma Rifle''': Fires a stream of plasma balls that hit hard, move fast, and won't hurt you at close range. Unfortunately, it shares its ammo count with...
*'''BFG 9000''': The most beautiful sight any soldier can behold, at least according to the Doom comic. ''The'' gun. The '''big''' gun. '''The. Big. Fucking. Gun.''' Anything it's fired at is [[Anal circumference|in for a bad time]], especially at close range.

==Doom 3==
In the early 2000s, Doom 3 came along. It blows chunks compared to the classics, but since the classics are so damn good it ends up being pretty good anyway. Since Valve had made "story-driven" shooters and "realistic" scripted encounters the in thing, id decided to rip off Half-Life, grafting on elements of the original Doom that had been scrapped at the concept stage. Unfortunately, the gameplay was too slow and similar to the rest of the genre, the scripting and story interludes just made the gameplay even clunkier and the big technological gimmick (per-pixel lighting) meant you had to choose between seeing what you're supposed to shoot with a crappy little flashlight and actually being able to shoot it. Supposedly the lighting effects were resource-intense during development and this was the "solution" (of course we know better that they wanted to make it a quasi survival horror). Naturally, the first mod for the game was duct tape so you can use the flashlight and a gun at the same time. This mod would eventually become official when the BFG Edition re-release came around about a decade later. (However, being designed from the ground up around realistic lighting and shadows and subsequently open-sourced would later make the Doom 3 engine the ''ideal'' basis for The Dark Mod, a fan-made successor to the classic early Thief games by Looking Glass studios, after the epic and utter failure of the official fourth Thief game).

Other issues include some ''very'' clear differences in enemy abilities between scripted events and actual gameplay, with imps in scripted events and jumpscares leaping around like they're high on crystal meth, only to start slowly shuffling around like a blind 80 year old as soon as they're free to move around on their own and "attack."

Perhaps Doom 3's biggest sin is the simple fact that the guns feel weak (even if they aren't), largely lacking in any kind of oomph and impact, and the shotgun is almost completely worthless.

The plot itself is essentially a reboot - You are a generic marine who just transferred to Mars and after pissing around with all your co-workers whom you will never see in one piece again, an experiment involving a portal to Hell (This time with no reason besides the head researcher, Dr Betruger, being kinda absolutely evil - in a typically subtle move by id software, his name is literally just the German word for 'cheat,' 'fraud' or 'con artist') goes horribly awry and now the facility is completely fucked. Your task then devolves into simply surviving, as you're cut off from any command and have to make your way to various checkpoints. Along the way, you come across an ancient artifact made by the original denizens of Mars, who made it to kill all the demons, and so the demons sealed it away in Hell. After a couple of trips in and out of hell, you manage to understand how the artifact works (by feeding off the souls of slain demons) and use it to kill the Cyberdemon, their greatest champion, and bail home. You'd think this is the end...except the mad scientist responsible for this is revealed to have turned into a full-blown demon.

===Resurrection of Evil===
An expansion to Doom 3, this game takes the original game and puts a few nifty spins to make it feel unique like the gravity gun (because Half-Life 2 did it too). Instead of the classic plot, you are now a nameless space engineer who comes across a different and wholly demonic artifact called the Hell Heart. This makes you more of a target compared to before, as Hell sends out three special hunters to reclaim the heart, each of whom gives it a special ability for you to abuse once you kill them.

==Doom 4 (aka DOOM aka DOOD aka Brutal Doom HD)==
{{topquote|They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you? You will be '''worse'''. [[Rip and Tear]], until it is '''DONE'''.|A direct order from what is either [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God's]] [[Living Saint|seraphs]] or [[Khorne]] himself. Do you really need more of a mission briefing?}}

Listen to it here[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpllUQ38CKY]

Then the latest Doom came out in May 2016. This rendition can basically be described as "3d Brutal Doom II" only sexier, with features like [[Rip and tear|ripping enemies apart with your bare hands]] and having to stay on the move to avoid being torn to shreds. The plot is also as bare minimum as the original (albeit with a surprising amount of lore hidden away in the Codex...that makes one feel it’s set in the 40k verse), kicking the player straight into the action with waking up on Mars, immediately [[Rip and tear|smashing a zombie’s skull]], and basically being told: “demonic invasion, go kill everything.” Starts with a corporate big wig trying to talk you into being on his side and [[Awesome|your answer is a solid ''"FUCK YOU" fist]]. Also, the player this time around is someone the demons call the “Doom Slayer", who has travelled through “Worlds and Time” (hinting that the Doom Slayer could very well be the original Doomguy from the first two games, having also survived Doom 64 and has been travelling Hell since, later all but confirmed in the sequel), and millennia ago [[Awesome|kicked Hell’s ass so hard that the best the demons could do is seal him away so that he wouldn’t destroy Hell]].
The Slayers testament tells in sparse detail but leaves enough imagination to realise what the Legions of Hell were up against. A near-immortal being of pure hate, blessed by the Seraphims (or Khorne...which would make this a suicide attempt), capable of standing against Legions of Demons completely alone and harnessing their power as he slaughters them. THEN he fought a [[Titan (D&D)|Titan]] of "immeasurable Power and Ferocity" with only his Sword (it was a laser sword though so there's that), killing and absorbing its power to turn them on the Demons. Desperate now, the highest [[Daemon Prince|Archdevils]] realized nothing short of a God will stop the Slayer (fitting since a god summoned it in the first place), so they prepared an elaborate Trap involving what may have been a Blackstone Sarcophagus.
It speaks for itself, of what the Bait, which lured the slayer to the temple of the Blood Keep, must have been made of... or was.
Now at the peak of his might, with sword and shield of "adamantine strength", he stood before [[Chaos|the Horde]], and [[rip and tear|split heads open, punched, maimed, killed, burnt]] until finally the whole temple collapsed on him and he was sealed in the Cursed Sarcophagus.
Millennia passed until the UAC decided to deal with an Energy Crisis by quite literally [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|slamming an Oil Derrick on a Hell Portal to siphon off Hell Energy for power]], and just for giggles starts tomb raiding Hell for artifacts and treasures as well, ultimately running off with the Doomguy's sarcophagus. The demons see that the Doomguy’s prison/tomb is empty, and the subsequent invasion is actually a panicked attempt to stop the Doomguy from being woken up. Obviously, they fail and he butchers every last one of them.

Samuel Hayden is the guy in charge of the UAC, a cyborg the size of a 40k [[Space Marine]]. He and Vega, the Mars UAC AI, basically are quest givers for the most part. His subordinate Olivia Pierce pretty much ran a cult while Hayden was pillaging artifacts from Hell, [[Grimdark|being the only one to make it back from the expeditions]]. When shit hits the fan he decides to wake the Doom Slayer up with the hopes that this wild card could help take control of the facility without causing too much damage. Of course, once awake, he goes on a rampage and busts the UAC's shit, as Hayden's disregard for human life is too far for even Doomguy to take, expressing his outrage without the need for a voice actor.

So now it's up to the Doom Slayer in awesome power armor to [[Rip and Tear|rip and tear]] and dakka every demon he comes across to stop Olivia while wrecking the UAC's energy production. After going to Hell at least once due to Olivia breaking an Argent Accumulator and making it back to Mars, then after Hayden installs a "tether" to him, Hayden sends Doomguy on a quest to find the Helix Stone, picking up the most powerful version of the BFG 9000 yet on the way (more on that below). Once he reaches the Helix Stone it directs Doomguy to acquire the Crucible, a relic in the Titan's Realm. So Doomguy has to kill the Cyberdemon to get back to hell, make a long trek and fight the three Hell Guardians who guard the Crucible and returns to Mars again. To finally stop Olivia, Hayden, being the bastard that he is, even sacrifices his old creation, Vega, though unlike everyone else, at least our player character is nice enough to make a backup without anyone even bothering to ask. The Doom Slayer uses the Crucible to shut down Hell's energy wells and releases the spirits of his old friends, the Night Sentinels.

Once Olivia is found once again, she transforms into the Spider Mastermind. If you've been collecting all the stuff as you should have, she can easily be (along with the other bosses in the game) cheesed by the best weapons even on the highest difficulty, with the [[Cheese|Rich get Richer]] Rune fully upgraded. Once she's dead it's the final cutscene, where Hayden steals the "Crucible" which turns out to be an energy blade that makes a [[Lightsaber]] look like a toothpick, then sends the Doom Slayer off to who knows where with the tether he installed into the Praetor Suit earlier, disposing of a potential threat before it decides to become one. After this, you experience one of the best credit sequences made for a video game in over a decade.

Mick Gordon's soundtrack gives the game the best metal music ever. BFG Division being the standout in the soundtrack. Used for two whole levels and the final boss music is a Glitch remix of it. There is also some inspiration from RPG style FPS a la Metro 2033 and [[Samus|Metroid Prime]]; collecting Argent Energy, weapon mods, elite guard tokens, and Runes allow them to upgrade the Praetor Suit and weapons to their preferred play style. The engine allows the Doom Slayer a wide range of first-person animations, as his destruction of UAC property and actions portrays an "I'm too old for this shit" attitude; having to fight demons for centuries doesn't make for a happy camper.

The damage of the BFG 9000 itself is notable. This thing instantly vaporizes every non-boss enemy on-screen! (and them too if you exploit a glitch. However what a player does that the devs didn't intend is dubious canon.) You read that correctly, you don't have to aim it directly at your targets to kill them. You just have to find the right opening to make it kill every demon you can. As the Plasma Bolt throws out lightning or much more likely, solar flares. That would mean the Plasma the BFG fires is likely firing a fucking miniature star with each shot! The F in BFG may stand for Fermentation, Grimdark! with science!. We can wait while you Google it.

Don't be impressed just yet. A Baron of Hell is 2000 pounds and because the BFG's ordinance turns everything it comes in contact with into gibs, that means it has to have 7 Gigajoules of energy and would have to be heated up to over 100,000 degrees Celsius! [[Anal_Circumference|A temperature range which is only seen in small stars and nebula!]] That's not just [[GrimDark]], that's just fucking cold in the most brutal way possible and speaks to the insanity of the UAC for building this thing. Are we sure somebody didn't screw up the name? Though Brown Dwarf Gun 9000 doesn't sound as cool. (Though why is it green? Because it's blue-green! As blue in space equals very fucking hot! Red Giant/Supergiants/Hyper-giants are (relatively) cold because they are old, a young blue star, giant or not, is insanely hot. Red Dwarfs are insanely long-lived because they are cold and slow-burning) In all possibility, if the Doom Slayer didn't wear his Praetor Suit, firing the weapon would instantly annihilate him too! (since Photons are their own particle and antiparticle the word is valid) No apologies for the science jokes. They are necessary evils in explaining how the BFG 9000 works.

It also says a lot of the bosses as a direct hit will merely stun them (without using the weapon wheel glitch) while shaving off large portions of their health. So you need either a very advanced Powered Armor or a significant amount of mass to survive a direct hit from the plasma bolt and its flares. The only real con to using the BFG 9000 is its limited ammo of four shots. Though a good player can get around that if they set up their Runes correctly.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_gQAITzIk| Science and math mostly explained in this Youtube video ]. So yeah, the BFG 9000 shoots miniature stars.

==DOOM Eternal==
{{topquote|Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send up to them, only you. Rip and Tear until it is done!|King Novik of the Night Sentinels}}

Doom Eternal was announced at E3 and a gameplay reveal was shown at Quakecon 2018. To say that it's awesome is an understatement.
[[File:Slayer on corpses.png|400px|thumb|right|"The only thing they fear... is YOU!"
If the whole Warp, set for Khorne, actively shits their pants when the Slayer comes, you're in for [[Rip_and_tear|FUN]].]]
We are introduced to the Maykrs of Urdak, an elder race with a techno-angelic motif that serves as the Sentinels' patron. One of them was the so-called Seraphim that empowered the Doomguy even further, turning him into the nigh-godlike and unstoppable avatar of sheer [[Awesome]] that is the Doom Slayer (seriously, the Doom Slayer is compared to a [[Titan]] on the level of the Icon of Sin). They may actually be a group of [[C'tan]], but we are not sure.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. The Sentinels were betrayed from within, the Doom Slayer banished to Hell ''again'' (eventually leading to him being entombed before the events of '''Doom 2016''') and what's worse, it turns out the Maykrs were only using the Sentinels to further their own race's objectives; harvesting the souls of billions to convert into Argent Energy, so that they themselves would avoid undergoing a painful process known as "transfiguration", which is apparently like Alzheimer's except you also mutate into one ugly mofo. What's more, the current invasion of Earth was the result of one of their long-term plans, with humanity as simply one more race that was to receive "penance" in their place (read: the Maykrs are using Hell energy to prolong their lives, and willingly let Demons eat entire worlds to that end). Yet more evidence that these guys are C’tan.

The game picks up a few months after the end of the previous game with Samuel Hayden returning to Earth after the destruction of the Argent Tower on Mars that was the only way of getting free, unlimited energy out of Hell. But, he has the Crucible (confiscated from the Doom Slayer at the ending of 2016) with which he starts developing a synthesized form of Argent energy while the UAC begins to completely fall under the control of their leaders, the Hell Priests who entombed the Slayer so long ago. They start sacrificing humans left and right to start a ritual that will allow the demons to consume Earth, terraforming the land to living flesh and molten lava and killing all that resist. A full-scale demonic incursion is now underway on Earth, with billions of dead, over two-thirds of Earth consumed while half of the UAC has gone full Quisling to the invaders, with the other half putting up a token [[Planetary Defense Force| resistance as the Armoured Response Coalition (ARC)]]. All hope seems lost...

''"...We watched as the horde overwhelmed the very best and most advanced machinery and weapons technology that we could muster against the opposition. It was useless, they moved too quickly, they cared not for themselves, only sought out the blood of humanity. They were willing to sacrifice their own to get to the heart of our world. We slaughtered thousands and millions more followed, but then HE came - he cut through them like a sickle through a field - his fury surpassing their own. He is faster - more relentless - unyielding. I believe him now to be more than just a man - he is...DOOM."'' --Dr. Elena Richardson.

Equipped with his new <s>Praetor</s>Predator suit (3 guesses why it is called that, the first two don't count), he seeks his prey from his orbital fortress-monastery (fittingly called the Fortress of DOOM), with the now-recovered VEGA acting as his mission control from the station. Striking with merciless fury surpassing that of the Death Company, Flesh Tearers, World Eaters (Primarch included) and Skarbrand '''combined''', he will stop at nothing to destroy the demonic hordes. Read: Personally [[Rip_and_tear|kill. Every. Single. Demon. With extreme prejudice.]]

Immediately after defeating the guardian of Hell Priest Deag Nilox off-screen, the Slayer pinpoints his whereabouts on Earth, teleports onto his Hell Barge (a giant church carried on the back of a thrall-titan), kicks all doors in and vice grips the head off of the Priest, immediately reducing the demonic consumption of the Earth by 36.8%. He then gatecrashes the nearby Citadel, interrupting the ritual of the Priests with Nilox's severed head, before scaring them away by pumping his shotgun. He is then confronted by the Khan Maykr, the C'tan by any other name telling him even he goes too far this time.

Since the Hell Priests classify as Alpha Plus Psykers (the first one being able to command his own legion of Titans AND shield himself from even nuclear bombardment), they can only be found with a Celestial Locator, which the Slayer's Fortress is currently missing. To construct a Locator, the Slayer goes to Exultia (an Argenta city) to retrieve the Celestial Casing, only to be scolded by the late King Novik for killing the Priests; despite their transgressions, they were once Argenta themselves and it is against Sentinel Law to kill one of their own. When Novik decrees that Humanity are "no longer your people to save", the Slayer realizes that no ordinary individual will help him and enters [[Warp|Hell]], and it's even more magnificent than Doom 2016, with gigantic walls and corridors made of flesh, abandoned [[Warlord_Battle_Titan| Sentinel Atlas Mechs]] and the remains of the Titan Demons that were killed by them, and near everything you could think of; even the Tower Of Babel is in the background. Here the Slayer finds Valen, known by most as the Betrayer, repenting in his exile. After telling the Slayer that saving humanity will only make his burden worse, the Betrayer nevertheless installs the Celestial Power Core for the Slayer, as well as giving him a nondescript device he may need later.

Now able to locate the other Priests, the Slayer goes to Deag Ranak's UAC Cultist base in the Arctic to retrieve a relic from his past. That relic is none other than the '''Super Shotgun'''. The Diabolical Musket. [[Khorne|Lucifer]]'s Bane. Two ornately carved barrels of buckshot-spewing glory complemented by the Meathook; a pair of demon-gouging blades attached to a chain and possibly the most metal interpretation of a grappling hook to date.

After thoroughly wrecking Ranak's operations, Doomguy takes a cultist monorail to the neighbouring Doom Hunter base situated over an ancient Sentinel city. As yet more proof the Maykrs are [[C'tan]], the priest recovered an extinct race of Earth-native creatures once bred by the demons to destroy the Slayer (take a wild guess why exactly they went extinct) and, with nothing better to do, turned these things into [[Necron Destroyer|Semi-Organic Necron Destroyers]], labelling them “Doom Hunters”, and calling him a heretic...which is [[HERESY|{{BLAM|'''''BLASTPHAMY'''''}}]]. After [[Rip and tear|losing]] them and complaining about it, the Priest, in the face of his impending DOOM, tries to bribe the Slayer, which [[Fail|literally costs him his head]].

Now furious, the Khan Makyr leads the last Priest to safety, while demonic activity on Earth skyrockets. Realizing Earth needs immediate backup at the Super Gore Nest in Europe after a failed attack from the [[Imperial_Guard|ARC Resistance Forces]] (with a casualty rate of over 87%), the Slayer arrives at what can only be described as a border between Slaanesh's and Nurgle's Domains. Every building in the vicinity has grown flesh, teeth and openings that look like both mouths and birth canals, the air is filled with toxicity and tentacles have sprouted everywhere in pulls of nukage and pus. But after a nuclear meltdown of the local reactor which conveniently houses the heart of the Super Gore Nest, the problem is quickly taken care of.

Back to searching and destroying the last Priest, VEGA is sure that Samuel Hayden would be able to locate him immediately. However, a combined Demon attack on his headquarters, the ARC Complex, left him badly wounded. Fighting his way through the demon-infested complex and up its tower, the Slayer reaches the remains of Hayden's mech body, throwing it through the portal back to the Fortress of Doom and pocketing the Demonic Crucible that Hayden took from him for good measure. Just as the Slayer himself is about to leave, the Earth beneath him quakes and a red portal opens up, and from it emerges the Marauder. Imagine a heretic [[Adeptus_Custodes|Custodes]] empowered by Khorne but with battle tactics from Tzeentch, the endurance of Nurgle and the speed of Slaanesh. These guys are absolutely no joke (yes, there are more of them) and if you haven't been playing like your life depended on it, prepare to be absolutely [[Anal_Circumference|curbstomped]].

Meanwhile, its clear that Samuel Hayden knows *way* more about the Slayer, Hell, and the Maykrs than he let on in the last game, strongly hinting that Samuel may in fact be a Maykr himself (which begs the question of what he was up to if he understood just how dangerous Hell was and how Argent Energy was made). He tells us that the last Priest is hiding in Sentinel Prime - the Sentinel Capital of Argent D'Nur - and that the last Slipgate into the city is in the lost city of Hebeth, hidden deep within the core of [[Mars|Mars]]. But instead of calling the [[Adeptus_Mechanicus|Mechanicus]] to help, the Slayer enters the Martian moon of Phobos, where the battleship-sized BFG 10,000 is stationed, takes the gun over, targets Mars and [[Exterminatus|blasts the Core open]]... despite Samuel’s protests. He then steals the BFG 10k's power core (which is none other than the BFG 9,000) and navigates the spaceborne chunks of Martian terrain and UAC facilities to reach the core, at one point hopping into a giant mass driver and blast himself to his next destination, [[Angry_Marines|streaking across the ruined Martian sky like a rage-fueled missile]].

Now on Sentinel Prime, the game goes into who the Doom Slayer really is. It turns out the Doom Slayer really ''is'' the classic [[Doomguy]] from Doom 1, 2, and 64, who after staying behind in <s>the Warp</s> Hell he is eventually spat out, [[Gotrek_%26_Felix#Gotrek_in_the_Age_of_Sigmar|half-delirious and nuts from his experience of fighting off its hordes for an eternity]], unto the world of Argent D'Nur, where he is found by the ''Night Sentinels'', [[Grey Knights|an order of techno-Viking paladins dedicated to fighting demons]]. He is nursed back to sanity, and joins their order, eventually rising through their ranks due to the sheer [[Rip and Tear]] he was capable of.

The final Priest, Deag Grav, is hiding in the Colosseum. Despite being the one who ultimately corrupted the Betrayer, he is confident that the Slayer would never kill him in the arena, as breaking Sentinel Law would forfeit his sovereignty amongst the Argenta. He then sends out his guardian; the Gladiator, a goatlike <s>classic</s> Hell Knight carrying a shield that imprisons the soul of its former master, and one that effectively renders its bearer immortal. However, with the generous application of Doomblade to the shield's eye, the Slayer frees the soul and destroys the shield, and soon also destroys the Gladiator's face for good measure. Sacrificing his sovereignty with the Argenta, the Slayer finally shoots Deag Grav to death. And by "shoot to death", we mean blow his head clean off with the Super Shotgun as he smugly declares how "Earth will be consumed, regardless of what--" {{BLAM|'''''KHSPLAT'''''}}. The Khan Maykr is rather pissed about this, declaring the Slayer a "fool" as he teleports out of the arena, warded off by now-hostile Argenta soldiers.

As soon as he gets back home, the Khan Maykr hacks into the Fortress of Doom, turning off the power and flooding the bridge with Demons. The attack obviously fails like so many other attempts, Hayden mocking her as the Slayer restores power with the Demonic Crucible he retrieved earlier. Now the plans of the Khan Maykr are ruined, as there are no more priests to maintain the Hell gates, giving the remnant Earth Resistance a chance to prevail if they manage kill all the remaining demons. As a desperate last resort, the Khan Maykr declares her intentions to resurrect the Icon of Sin to devour Earth in its entirety. Of course, the prospect of seeing ''another'' Earth brought to ruin has made the Doom Slayer rightly [[Rage|pissed]], and suffice to say, [[Not As Planned|the Maykrs have no idea what they've just unleashed]].

So it's time for the Doomslayer to recover his own Crucible in Taras Nabad, an Argenta city where the Slayer ruled over as a warrior-king (as Sentinel Law dictates that only the mightiest warrior can rule the Argenta) and the site of the first recorded demon attack on that world. It is also here where the Slayer was granted his powers from the Seraphim, who utilised the Divinity Machine - a device typically used to cleanse impurities from Sentinels - to imbue Doomguy with godlike speed and strength on the eave of the first demon invasion.

The Crucible itself was stuck into the heart of a Titan during the last battle, and has remained so since removing the blade would cause the Titan to rise once more. As such, the Doom Slayer simply breaks the blade off from the hilt to permanently prevent the Titan's resurrection, though now a new blade must be reforged for the Crucible. The Slayer travels further into the city, retrieving a Crucible energy medallion from his personal vault, passing through his throne room (complete with a massive demon skull for a throne) and working his way to the forges at the city's Power Core. Having reforged the blade in a scene straight out of He-Man, he jumps down into the chamber below to test the blade on fresh demon meat.

Once again making a lightsaber look like a glorified glow stick, the Crucible is a one-hit kill on all but the strongest (boss-tier) enemies, with each kill consuming one of three Crucible charges that can only be replenished by non-respawning pickups that appear at pre-determined points in each level onwards.

With Crucible reforged, Doomguy sets out to assault the Khan Maykr in her home dimension of Urdak, bringing along VEGA so that he may create an exit portal for him. To make it to Urdak, however, Doomguy must fight his way through Nekravol, the City of the Damned. It's a [[Grimdark|place of biblical torment, fire and brimstone, cages bursting with humans piled up like livestock]], their souls awaiting judgement by the sightless brain-demon Kalibas. Those that are judged unworthy are discarded to the toxic wastes of the Blood Swamps. The rest are sent to the Tower of Babel in the centre of the city, [[Commorragh| a place where human souls are "tenderized" and tortured until all hope is broken and every sense but the pain is gone.]] Only then are their souls extracted to form Hell Energy which is refined further with Sentinel Energy (provided by the Elemental Wraiths seen in ''2016'') to form pure Argent Energy, with their soulless bodies being left to eventually corrupt into new demons. It's a process that every [[Haemonculus]] pays respect to. As it is, things that are worthy of being called "holy" are often more horrendous than the horrors of Hell itself. The Slayer rips and tears through all of that mercilessly, destroying the Argent conduit at the apex of the soul spire within the tower. Its destruction results in uncontrolled Argent energy being cast into the sky, which the Slayer uses to surf up to the portal to Urdak.

The Slayer has now reached his destination. Urdak, "Heaven", a completely unnatural location in true H.R. Giger aesthetic, littered with technological grey stone, constructs of white/gold/crimson metals and blood-red trees. In true Doomguy fashion, he interrupts the ritual that will resurrect the Icon of Sin, using the device given to him by the Betrayer - a dagger - to stab the heart of the Betrayer's son, with which the Maykrs planned to control the titanic demon with. [[Not_as_planned|The Icon wakes up, corrupts the entire realm, and invites all sorts of demons to ravage Urdak]] before leaving for Earth. Making his way through the corrupted realm, he sets out to create an exit portal for Earth with VEGA's help, though the latter question to Hayden if he is "the Father" upon interfacing with Urdak's computers. With the portal ready, Doomguy is interrupted by the Khan Maykr herself. In true Eldar fashion, she accuses Doomguy of all the bad things that SHE did which broke the seal to Urdak, and that the use of countless souls from thousands of other species as Argent Energy for her race is justified in her traditions. Doomguy then slaps the shit out of her, and even in her final moments, she tells us that we have doomed all of creation. It’s likely she’s lying to hide the fact that she’s a C’tan.

Back on Earth, the Slayer navigates through a city where the Icon is rampaging, its mere presence generating [[Eye of Terror|a black hole that threatens to drag Earth and the rest of the universe into Hell]]. After chasing the Icon through skyscrapers, the final fight against the Icon of Sin begins. Now with a full-body, it is no longer a static wall boss fight but a semi-static torso. The fight is split into two stages; the first focusing on destroying the Titan's Maykr armour, and the second on blowing the Icon's body parts into chunks of viscera, tendons and bone, until you finish it with your Crucible, by [[Awesome|slamming it into its forehead]] and breaking the blade off from the hilt.

===DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1===
The first half of a two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

The Icon may be dead, but now that the demons have free reign over Urdak and have yet to let go of whatever fleeting hold they have on Earth, it's up to Doomguy to clean up the mess he left behind. This cleanup begins on the UAC Atlantica, an oceanic climate and environmental research station where the body of the Seraphim is hidden. Samuel informs the Slayer that only the Seraphim can provide a long term solution to the demons (besides killing them all). After acquiring the key to the Seraphim's chamber, the Facility AI self destructs the whole platform to prevent the Slayer from leaving, which only serves to mildly annoy him. Navigating the destroyed platform, the Slayer then travels to the bottom of the Ocean with only his pure rage against the pressure, reaching the underwater portion of the facility and fighting in a Kill Room with TWO Marauders. He then reaches a chamber with a Maykr in it, where Samuel declares that he will transfer his consciousness into it, stating that he is there to help the Slayer, as he has always.

Big surprise; Samuel Hayden - or rather, Samur Maykr - is the Seraphim and VEGA is the Father, the creator of the Universe. However, Samur transferring his consciousness back into his old Maykr body was not all that well thought out, as he is now beginning to undergo transfiguration, a process that all Maykrs eventually succumb to without either a steady supply of Argent Energy or the physical presence of the Father.(Might have been going insane because of said transfiguration, since his personality did a whole 180.)

It is revealed that when the Universe and the Father came to be, he created Urdak and a second greater realm, Jekkad, alongside Davoth - the first of many godlike beings known as Primevals - to rule and guide it as the Father had led Urdak. However, Davoth and the people of Jekkad grew to become loathe Urdak, jealous over not being made privy to the latter's secrets of eternal life. Davoth defeated many lesser gods created by the Father, absorbing them and becoming more powerful than originally intended, forcing the Father to seal Jekkad away from the rest of the realms. Henceforth, Davoth became the ever more power-hungry, hateful and bloodthirsty [[Khorne|Dark Lord]], whose corrupted will eventually transformed Jekkad into the very same Hell that we know today. Aware that the continued existence of both him and the Dark Lord would eventually tear creation apart, the Father confronted his first creation in Hell and tore Davoth's soul out. With Samur's assistance, the Father also withdrew from the physical plane, placing his life sphere in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

To resurrect the Father, the Slayer must travel to Ingmore's Sanctum, located in the heart of the Blood Swamps in Hell. While it sounds incredibly stupid to put the soul the creator of the universe in what can only be described as the worst excesses of Nurgle's private Garden, the Sanctum itself can only be accessed by those who pass the Trial of Maligog, Maligog being an extremely enormous and ancient thrall-Titan. The Slayer carves through the foetid wasteland, dealing with toxic plants and tentacles the size of skyscrapers, and completes the trials with ease.

Maligog grants passage to the sanctum by carrying the Slayer to it, where Samur is already awaiting him to retrieve the Fathers life sphere for the sake of Urdak and Humanity. However, the rapid procession of his transfiguration causes Samur to let out a slip of his tongue; He only seeks the Father's resurrection to save himself. Doomguy has other plans; he denies Samur the Father's life sphere and destroys it right in front of him, leaving the Maykr to scream in agony. While one may consider it heresy of the utmost order to deny God a physical form, there is a method to the Slayer's madness.

When the Father tore out Davoth's soul, he could not bring himself to destroy the life sphere he held, as he still harboured love towards his first creation. Instead, he elected to place it in the Hall of Souls alongside his own. If the Dark Lord were to ever be resurrected, only a primeval like himself could ever hope to defeat him. Defeating Davoth in this manner would also strip Jekkad of its bindings to him, forever scattered the stars and destroying all demons outside of Hell.

Thus was the Doom Slayer's intentions; destroy the Father's life sphere so that he cannot interfere with the Slayer, ''then'' summon the Dark Lord with his life sphere of pure darkness, and face him mano-a-mano. With the assistance of an ARC Intern, the Slayer returns to Urdak and navigates the crimson forests of the Holt, guided by the AI remnant of the Father and facing off against Hell-corrupted Blood Maykrs along the way. He reaches the oldest and most holy place in the realm, the Luminarium, where life spheres may be presented to reconstitute their owners to physical form. It is here where Samur fully embraces his transfiguration, becoming a purple Lovecraftian abomination in a desperate attempt to stop the Slayer, only to be bailed out by the Fathers remaining presence when brought to the brink of death. Presenting the life sphere to the Seraphs of the Luminarium, the Dark Lord is restored to his physical form, with the biggest surprise of all being that the Dark Lord is literally Doomguy's Hellish doppelganger!

Bad News: Mick Gordon isn't coming back this time around (due to some internal issues, he was let go). Good News: Andrew Hulshult and David Levi, another rather well-known composers who helped compose for some other shooters (Dusk, Amid Evil, Rise of the Triad 2013) are coming to take his place. While it's clear Hulshult and Levi might not be able to imitate Gordon, it's obvious they don't disappoint.

===DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2===
The second half of the two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

With the Dark Lord fully restored, Doomguy attempts to end things quickly with a single blast from the Super Shotgun. This, unfortunately, doesn't work, with the Dark Lord pointing out that blood can't be spilled in the super-sacred Luminarium. He then makes his exit, challenging the Slayer to face him in the city of Immora. The only known entrance to the city is the Gate of Divum, a portal that sits unpowered on Earth.

To that end, the Slayer returns to Argent D'Nur, seeking passage to the World Spear; an enormous crystal that pierced the planet before the time of the Sentinels, which had brought forth the Elemental Wraiths that gave life to the planet. Passing through an Argenta city, Doomguy is contacted by the Betrayer, who offers his Sentinel Hammer as thanks for freeing his son's soul. After riding a goddamn dragon, the Slayer enters the World Spear and discovers that it is, in reality, [[Tomb World|an enormous spaceship housing millions of Wraiths in stasis]].

Retrieving a Wraith crystal as a power source, the Slayer then travels to the Reclaimed Earth, where nature is healing and returning from the hell-blasted wastes that Earth once was during the demonic invasion. Navigating through the abandoned city and eventually, the UAC facility housing the Gate of Divum, the Slayer activates the portal and heads through it, arriving on the hellscape outskirts of Immora.

The battle of Immora can best be described as laying siege on Khorne's Brass Citadel, breaking in, seeing him get up from his throne, dig up his own oversized suit of power armour <s>that is clearly compensating for something</s> and fight you to the death. On the opposite end, the Slayer was [[awesome|ready to siege the citadel on his own]], getting support from the remaining [[Grey Knights|Night]] [[Legion of the Damned|Sentinels]] bringing their entire army and join him in smashing the Dark Lord's shit (and we finally get to see those fuckhuge mecha in the fortress and Exultia actually walk, AND hitting equally huge Titan demons in the face), having been rallied by Valen offscreen (presumably over the several months between Eternal and Ancient Gods Part 1).

The Dark Lord faces you with his immortal body, [[Contemptor-Galatus_Dreadnought|his own set of Praetor Armor]], and worst of all, he has all of your best abilities (he's got his own, bigger sword; and if he hits you, he regenerates his own health back).

In the middle of the final duel, the Dark Lord reveals the awful truth to the Slayer (which the player can spoil for themselves if they read the codex entries): he was the original Father. Davoth was the first being, Jekkad the first realm, and he had created Urdak, the Father and the Maykrs to unlock the secrets of eternal life. The Maykrs were indeed successful in uncovering this secret, but deemed the knowledge too dangerous to share, ultimately betraying him and sealing away Jekkad. History was rewritten, painting VEGA as the bearer of the title "the Father"... whereupon the true Father [[RAGE|became evil, renamed Himself the Dark Lord, and tried to destroy the universe]] as revenge. Whoops.

In his efforts to destroy the Maykrs, the father sought to undo them from within. Planting a seed of suspicion within the Khan Maykr that a "chosen one" would usurp her, Davoth guided the construction of the Divinity Machine to help rout out this Beast, imbued with a portion of his essence hidden prior to the Dark Lord's fall. During the siege of Taras Nabad, the Dark Lord whispered to the mind of Samur Maykr, convincing him that the Khan Maykr would lead them to ruin. This prompted the Seraphim to free a random individual from the holding cells and give rise to the Slayer; a pawn in the Dark Lord's grand plan to eradicate the Maykrs, which came to pass as foretold.

However, there was one small flaw in this plan: The Dark Lord had such [[Tzeentch|astoundingly poor luck that, out of all of the imprisoned menials that Samur could have shoved into the Divinity Machine and ascend to godhood]], it was the one angry foreigner whose previous experiences with Hell had manifested into an absolute, rage-induced, zero-tolerance stance on anything remotely demonic in origin or association. The Doom Slayer remained predictably unswayed by this revelation, and the battle resumed. Two personifications of unrestrained Rage, potentially fighting for all eternity, able to heal themselves as they inflict unspeakable carnage upon creation until the Dark Lord finally goes down. Even near death he still reaches his sword to fight on, but finally gives in, having created the Slayer in what amounts to an incredibly convoluted but awesome suicide by battle. With his final words, Davoth asks the Slayer if he has anything to say to his Creator before striking him down, to which Doomguy responds with a generous application of Doomblade to the Dark Lord's heart, followed by a simple "No".

After slaying the Dark Lord, you'd think everything would be good right? Well, for a moment it is, as demons all around Earth, Argent D'Nur and Urdak all go up in flames. But then something strange happens. Remember how the Divinity Machine basically upgraded the Doom Slayer with a piece of Davoth's essence? Turns out that with the Dark Lord dead, everything associated with him has gone inert, including the Doom Slayer. As he falls unconscious, we see him interred into a sarcophagus by the Seraphs, sealed away in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

''"So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again."'' - Corrax

===Demons===
Doom 2016 by itself has more demons than the classic games do, even though not all of them return from those games. Doom Eternal ups the count even more, although not all demons from 2016 return. Some demons are upgraded versions of a base model and have been sorted as such. Doom Eternal also introduces a classification system, which sorts each demon into five distinct classes: Fodder, Heavy, Super Heavy, Ambient and Bosses.

====Fodder====
Weak, easily-dispatched demons and your chief targets for Glory Kills, the Chainsaw, Flame Belch, Ice Bomb and all the other ways with which to keep your health, armour and ammo stocked up. While not entirely non-lethal, these demons (typically) have low health, easily exploitable weaknesses and, in Eternal, only consume a single fuel unit when Chainsawed.

*'''The Possessed/Zombies''': In 2016, Possessed were humans that underwent horrific mutations due to the Lazarus Wave released by Olivia Pierce on the Mars Outpost, with the standard ones coming in Worker, Scientist and Unwilling (Hell) sub-variants. In Eternal, Zombies are the emaciated husks of humans stripped of their soul and mutated by demonic corruption, coming in Earth, Hell and UAC Cultist subvariants. In both cases: wet toilet paper. They are some of the weakest enemies in the games and can easily be dispatched.
**'''Possessed Soldiers/Blaster Zombie Soldiers''': Unlike their gormless lesser brethren, Possessed Soldiers move faster and with more tact, are hardier and can use a plasma gun fused to their arm to lay down suppressive fire or launch exploding energy balls. They're still not much of a threat. Eternal's Blaster Zombies are little more than Possessed Soldiers with a Classic Doom Zombieman coat of paint and jet boots for jumping large gaps/heights, so make sure to keep some distance.
**'''Possessed Security/Shield Zombie Soldiers''': Wet toilet paper with shards of glass. Equipped with shields and shotguns, these can really ruin your day if you let them. The most effective strategy against them in 2016 is either to chainsaw them or use the Plasma Rifle's stun bomb to disable their shields. While Eternals Shield Zombies still hit just as hard, their threat level dropped off the abyss thanks to their energy shields ''violently exploding'' in response to absorbing too many Plasma Rifle bolts, creating an especially powerful blast if detonated via Microwave Beam. Also received a similar Classic Doom paint job, resembling the bald Shotgun Sergeants.
**'''Hell Razer''': 2016 exclusive, Hell Razers fight at a distance with arm-mounted laser cannons, which are actually parasites converting a human into a Hell Razer. Fire slowly and have distinct tells to their attacks. Don't pose too much of a threat: dodge their attack, get close and shotgun them.
**'''Mecha Zombies''': New in Eternal, these gore-covered terminator knockoffs are armed with metal claws, a plasma gun and a flamethrower, the latter of which they will flail about to hit you. Still fairly ineffectual.
**'''Screechers''': Introduced in TAG Part 2, these purple-recoloured Hell Zombies have bugger-all health and produce an annoying scream on death, providing short-lived attack damage, speed and damage resistance buffs to all nearby demons. In other words; shoot these guys first if you want a real challenge in TAG Part 2's fights.
**'''Riot Soldiers''': HOLY SHIT, TAG PART 2 BROUGHT BACK THE CHAINGUNNERS and they're pathetic. Basically Shield Zombie Soldiers, but with an invincible shield, immunity to headshots and frontal attacks, a laughably easy-to-dodge minigun and an embarrassingly pathetic weakness to explosives from the sides and behind.
*'''Imps''': The fodder from the original game, now quick as a hiccup. They jump all over the place, pelting you with fireballs and clawing at you if you get too close. Because they're one of the first enemies you face they don't pose much of a threat; your Combat Shotgun makes quick work of them (especially with the Explosive Shot/Sticky Bomb mod), and they gain an explicit weakness to bullet weapons (Heavy Cannon and Chaingun) in Eternal.
**'''Gargoyles''': Added in Eternal. Pretty much Imps with wings and [[Tyranid|scything talons]], they jump around and spit acid at you. They'll occasionally hover in place to fire off an acid volley, causing them to become instantly staggered for a Glory Kill when hit during this attack, so take your opportunity.
**'''Stone Imps''': Introduced in TAG Part 2. These once-dead Imps that have been [[Salamanders_(Chapter)|ritually cast into magma and reborn with grey, rock-like skin]]. Their stony hides offer stupidly high resistance to all but the pounding impacts of the Combat Shotgun's Full Auto mode and the Sentinel Hammer. They also spindash around like grey, fireball-chucking Sonics.
*'''Lost Souls''': Horned, burning skulls that scream, fling themselves at you and explode for an annoying amount of damage. At least in 2016; in Eternal, they also appear when summoned by a Pain Elemental which is when they function more or less the same.
*'''Makyr Drones''': The generic rank-and-file of the Maykrs. Annoyingly resilient for Fodder demons (to the point that it takes ''three'' Chainsaw fuel units to kill them as opposed to one) and armed with rapid-fire laser turrets, headshotting them with (almost) any weapon is a guaranteed insta-kill that provides ammo as well.

====Heavy====
Making up the bulk of Hell's forces, these brutes run the gamut of heavy-hitting bruisers, powerful glass cannons and bullet-soaking tanks. Using a chainsaw on them in Eternal uses up its entire tank of three fuel units, making it an absolute last-resort option.

*'''Hell Knights''': [[World Eaters|Big dudes who revel in wrecking your shit]]. They are fast, closing the distance to pummel you or to perform a leaping ground slam for a short-ranged area of effect attack. Keep your distance and pump them full of lead to take them down quickly if you don't want to be taken out yourself. In Eternal, they gain a crippling weakness to Chaingun fire.
**'''Dread Knights''': Cybernetically enhanced Hell Knights. These super-soldiers are rigged with a chemical delivery system, which constantly pumps the demon full of adrenaline to keep them in a state of perpetual rage, and rewards them with massive dopamine hits for every kill they make. Appearing only in Eternal, their most prominent feature is a pair of energy blades, which considerably extends their melee range and causes their ground slams to leave a lingering, damaging energy pool for a bit. Can fire lasers from their blades at you, and shares a weakness to the Chaingun, as with other Hell Nobles.
*'''Revenants''': [[Meme|DOOT]]. Made from humans in a gruesome process, the Revenants have jetpacks that let them fly around to put themselves in the perfect possession to launch missile barrages at you. They can also claw at you for significant damage, so keep your distance and take them out. In Eternal, you're able to shoot off their shoulder cannons, and doing so both permanently grounds them and restricts their attacks to the easily-evaded claw swipes. Surprisingly classified as airborne demons, making them into potent Ballista chow. Their meme potential is so great that a trumpet-equipped Revenant Battlmode skin was included as a pre-order bonus for Doom Eternal.
*'''Cacodemons''': [[Star Wars|They fly now!]] Their spit attacks slow and disorient you, and their bite attack does a lot of damage. But because they fly now you can easily pick them off with your rocket launcher or gauss cannon. In Eternal, they decided to min-max; their bite takes off a surprisingly large chunk of your health and is often paired with an aggressively distant lunge, while their shock-balls can be fired in a multi-shot volley. But it comes with devastating weakness: a single Combat Shotgun Stickybomb or Equipment Cannon Frag Grenade into their mouths causes them to swallow it, instantly staggering them for an easy glory kill. As airborne demons, they also gain a weakness to Ballista attacks, dying in one Arbalest bolt.
**'''Pain Elementals''': Meatball Daemons Returning in Doom Eternal, they endlessly summon/chuck the homing suicide bomber Lost Souls at you. While they don't swallow any grenades like their Cacodemon compatriots, they ''do'' share the innate weakness of all airborne demons against the Ballista. Despite this, they are still more of a threat than their vestigial-limbed buddies could ever be, especally because they will usually be flanked by one or two of them.
*'''Mancubi''': Big fat bastards equipped with heavy cannons to blast you with fireballs and flamethrowers to keep you at a distance. They're big, slow targets with slow attacks so if you can keep your distance they're not too big a threat. In Eternal, these Heavy demons got faster (and fatter) but you can blast their arm cannons off, stripping them of their flamethrower attack and severely nerfing the damage of their fireballs. After that, sustained Chaingun fire or a few rockets/Super Shotgun blasts will easily take them out.
**'''Cyber-Mancubi''': Heavily armoured versions of the Mancubus. They fire globs of acid that linger on terrain for a bit, limiting your movement options, but lack the flamethrower attack. In 2016 you just pour more damage into them to take them out. In Eternal, their armour is destructible and can be stripped instantly with a single Blood Punch, making it easier for you to deal with them. But because their cannons are armoured you can't blast them off like you can with the regular Mancubi.
*'''Pinkies''': Ol' faithful is now covered in chitinous natural armour (which is harder than you would think), turning them into living battering rams (in more ways than one). They (still) roar and charge in on you, dealing significant damage upon impact. The armour soaks most damage they take from the front, so circle behind them and [[Meme|attack their weak point for massive damage]]. In Eternal, they gain the Heavy demon classification and a crippling weakness to the Blood Punch, being the only attack that can kill them without deliberately striking their weak point.
**'''Spectres''': As the Pinky, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. A bit harder to deal with because of this, but thankfully a lot less common and lack the armour plating...in 2016 that is, in eternal they have there armor back but are slightly easier to spot. blood punch them to kill them quickly.
*'''Summoners''': Only appearing in 2016, Summoners are pared-down versions of the Archvile. They possess lithe bodies that let them easily zip around and set up a summon circle away from your location, allowing them to call in aid. Sustained fire from just about any weapon will take them down.
**'''Harvesters''': Unique to 2016's multiplayer, the only demon to be so. Harvesters move around and instead of summoning other demons will shoot balls of plasma and drain life from other players, allowing them to supercharge their regular attacks.
*'''Arachnotrons''': Back in Doom Eternal, the Arachnotrons are walking gun platforms that can cling to ceilings to get a better vantage point to shoot at you. Their plasma turrets are mounted on an exposed, scorpion-like tail, which can be destroyed to limited their attacks to the more manageable and telegraphed bomb volley. Their resemblance to the Spider Mastermind from 2016 is intentional: the UAC cloned them using the Spider Mastermind's genetic material. [[Looted|and when the demonic invasion began, the automated facility making them was taken over by the possesed]]...[[Just As Planned|Which was planned]]
*'''Carcasses''': Debuting as Heavy demons in Doom Eternal, the Carcass' attacks are not that powerful and they don't have a lot of health. What they do have is the ability to summon energy barriers, blocking your ability to move around freely, home in on them, glory kill other demons and use explosive weapons safely. Your primary target in an encounter because eliminating them makes a fight a lot easier. Thankfully, these barriers share the same explosive vulnerability to plasma fire as the Shield Zombies' Shields.
*'''Prowlers''': Originally added in 2016's multiplayer, they were promoted to regular enemies in Eternal. They function the same as Imps but with more health and they can teleport, often right behind you to claw at you.
**'''Cursed Prowlers''': A thing that can only be the product of Nurgle's diseased mind, introduced in TAG Part 2. The attacks of these mercifully rare green Prowlers curse players with a necrotic, blood-magic poison that deals damage over time and ''prevents dashing''. The only way to break this curse is to kill the offending Cursed Prowler; easier said than done since, while cursed, the Prowler cannot be locked-on (so no easy Meathook for you) and can only be killed by a blood punch.
*'''Whiplashes''': The first all-female demons introduced in Doom Eternal resembling [[lamia]]e, but don't expect any monster girls. They are as nasty as any Heavy demon in Doom, and they use their great speed to slither in and around the battlefield, dodging heavy-hitting weapons before hacking away at your health from a distance with a pair of chained whips. Difficult to hit, but once you start hitting them they'll go down eventually. That, or use a Lock-On Burst from the Rocket Launcher to delete them.
**'''Spectre Whiplashes''': Introduced in TAG Part 1. As the Whiplashes, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. Now you can't cheese them with Lock-On Rockets (unless you Ice Bomb them first) and they don't even have the courtesy of being weaker like the Pinky Spectres.
*'''Blood Maykrs''': Definitely not [[Blood Angels]]. The normal Maykr Angel population after getting corrupted by Hell. They shield themselves with a golden aura that negates all damage and attack with energy volleys from their spears. Once they notice that such things would never work, they will lower their shield to perform powerful attacks with Argent energy discs and spears, which drastically slow the player on-hit. A headshot instakills them like their Maykr Drone counterparts, while sustained gunfire on their body works too.

====Super Heavy====
The toughest, most lethal demons this side of [[Eye of Terror|Doom's Gate]], these beasts are the deadliest standard troops and are often summoned in as mini-bosses. They also can't be cheated out with an instant kill from the Chainsaw, meaning you'll need to put some actual effort into taking them down.

*'''Barons of Hell''': [[Bloodthirster|Big red bastards]] who are the toughest regular enemies in 2016. They hit like trucks and can blast you with powerful balls of green fire. The best way to deal with them is a heavily upgraded chainsaw or the BFG to not deal with their bullshit. In Eternal, they return as the Fireborne Barons; a Super-Heavy class demon that is immune to the chainsaw and cannot be one-shot by the BFG, so you'll have your work cut out for you. Befitting their name, Fireborne Barons are also [[Salamanders_(Chapter)|coated in flames with obsidian skin]] and have burning blades coming from their lower arms, which fits given how much more dangerous they are. The Fireborne Barons are described as a clan of Barons who have merged with the flaming inferno of Hell itself and their blood is replaced by lava.
**'''Armoured Barons''': Introduced in TAG Part 2, these Fireborne Barons are encased in grey/cobalt armour provided from the city of Immora, granting them outright immunity to all weaponry besides the Plasma Rifle (especially its Microwave Beam). Armoured Barons have had their right hand replaced by a studded morning star, which they will launch at the player at terrifying speeds. However, said mace also flashes green when preparing to launch, allowing a player to snipe it and instantly shatter the Baron's armour. The player only has a short window to damage and kill the Armoured Baron before its shell regenerates, which can be lengthed via the application of either the Ice Bomb or Sentinel Hammer.
*'''Doom Hunters''': First introduced as a boss in Eternal. A species of earth-native demons driven to extinction by the Doom Slayer and brought back by the Hell Priest Deag Ranak, the Doom Hunters resemble [[Necron Destroyer]]s with a cannon and a dual-chainsaw for arms and missiles that can be fired from its hover sled. They have an energy shield that you need to deplete to be able to damage them directly, though it's possible to attack their Blood-Punch-vulnerable hover sled directly first to disconnect the main body from it. Infamous for being a boss that is lazily reused during the course of the game, as early as [[Rage|THE VERY NEXT COMBAT ARENA AFTER FIGHTING THE FIRST ONE]]. However, the mook versions don't have immunity to Ice Grenades.
*'''Marauders''': [[Chaos_Space_Marine|Former Night Sentinels corrupted by Hell]], the Marauders are fast, deadly and a pain to kill. They possess energy shields that block all incoming damage, including the BFG, Crucible, and Unmakyr (though not splash damage from explosives), can pelt energy beams from long-range, blast you with their own ''Super Shotgun'' at close range, and can summon spirit wolves to hunt you down if you shoot their shield too often. If baited into sprinting at you and brought into mid-range, their eyes will flash green as they swing their axe at you: use this as an opening to blast them with your Super Shotgun or Ballista, then quickly switch between the two until their stagger expires. Repeat this, rip and tear, done. Becomes kind of a joke in TAG Part 2, since the Sentinel Hammer can lengthen the period that they remain stunned enough to kill them without resistance. this is balanced out by the fact that the will double, and even Triple team you.
*'''Archviles''': '''OH FUCK NO, NOT THESE ASSHOLES AGAIN''' receiving a buff from its previous appearance (yes you read that right) an Archvile can put up barriers of fire to keep you away while they Summon more demons. If you don't interrupt them you'll be facing a more difficult fight, especially if they summon a MOTHERFUCKING MARAUDER. Even when not summoning they are tough and can dish out a lot of damage, setting the ground beneath you aflame or throwing massive fireballs or sweeping fire waves in your direction, while any friends they successfully summon receives a buff that lasts until the Archvile's death. In short, after taking out all Carcasses in an area, they are your next target if you want to win a fight, and no the daemons they summon '''do not''' go away after the Archvile dies, rip and tear it before it rips and tears you a new asshole. the buff is there ridiculous amount of health (for what they are) hit them with your BFG or crucible to save yourself the trouble.
*'''Tyrants''': Pretty much downgraded Cyberdemons (Looking more like the classic Cyber rather than 2016's beefy Balgaar monstrosity) and one of the most powerful common enemies in the game. Packing a powerful hybrid rocket launcher/laser cannon, a laser blade and the ability to fire missile barrages, paired with a MASSIVE pool of health, these Super-Heavies should be eliminated as fast as you can so that you can deal with the rest of the demons. The fastest way to do so is with the Crucible, which will hack a Tyrant up in no time. [[FAIL|Just make sure that you actually hit the Tyrant itself and not the fodder running around it]]. Otherwise, just exploit its slow turning speed to dedicate as much ammunition you have on hand to shoot at it until it dies.

====Ambient====
These demons aren't active participants in a fight, acting more like obstacles that can disrupt and, rarely, help the Slayer in his crusade.

*'''Possessed Engineers/Cueballs''': Little more than walking bombs in 2016. Either shoot them to detonate them or melee them to launch them and have them detonate on impact. Returning as Cueballs in Eternal, these demons replace the "walking" part with "standing gormlessly in one spot, ignorant of any fighting going on around them". This allows the Slayer to use them as flying, explosive barrels if shot at the right angle.
*'''Tentacles''': Introduced in Eternal, these annoying bastards pop out of fleshy glory holes from Slaanesh's wet dreams to take cheap swipes when the Slayer comes near. Takes advantage of purple goo and other shallow puddles of liquid to conceal themselves.
**'''Giant Tentacles''': No. This skyscraper-tall pile of Slaaneshi-fueled bullet sponge can fuck off back to the Blood Swamps where they're introduced.
*'''Buff Totems''': Unholy crosses with eyes in their centre, introduced in Eternal. Will spawn in pre-determined spots in a given arena, buffing nearby demons with enhanced speed and attack damage while also constantly summoning in additional demons until the totem itself is destroyed. Its effects can also be temporarily nullified by the ice bomb, not that this would be pertinent information to know.
*'''Turrets''': Introduced in TAG Part 1, these fell-steel columns house a demonic eye that will occasionally pop out of the top to take cheap potshots at you, not unlike a long-range tentacle. They'll duck back into their containers if the player's reticle lingers on them for too long, encouraging flick-shots from the Heavy Cannon's Precision Bolt and/or the Ballista to eliminate quickly.
*'''Spirits''': The ghostly Remains of 2016's Summoners, introduced TAG Part 1. The Spirit will spawn in possessing another demon, taking away their fear and ability to feel pain. In effect, Possessed demons are immune to the Chainsaw, Ice Bombs and faltering, while also gaining a massive buff to movement/projectile speed, damage resilience and aggression. If a Possessed Demon has any destructible weakpoints, like the Mancubus or Revenant, said weakpoints are also rendered permanently invincible. Even so, Possessed Demons will still give in with enough Dakka, causing the Spirit to escape its fallen host and begin to possess the next toughest demon in the field after a short while. There exist only two methods to destroy a Spirit; Ghostbusting it with the Plasma Rifle's Microwave Beam, OR by killing every other demon remaining on the field and watching the Spirit, unable to manifest itself in Realspace anymore, fade out of existence.
*'''Demonic troopers''': The Imperial Guard of the city of Immora, and the greatest of Hell's warrior-caste in TAG PArt 2. On paper, if the Night Sentinels were an Astartes chapter, these troopers would be their Chaos Astartes equivalent. In gameplay, these red-clad chumps aren't even worthy of being called pushovers. Being immune to the Chainsaw and Glory Kills sounds scary... until you discover that they die in one hit from almost ''any'' source of damage, even including the marginally non-lethal Meathook and Flame Belch. A recent Update gave them more health and resistance against weapons but they still get pretty much slaugthered. This could also show just HOW deadly the Slayer has become, as only beings that are nearly completly fueled up with Hell energy are able to stand only seconds longer against him.

====Bosses====
The bigwigs of Hell, ranging in power and influence from greater daemons to Chaos Gods/C'tan-tier entities in their own right. These enormous creatures are characterised by having their own dedicated health bars on the UI, fights that often go into multiple phases, dedicated arenas and resistance or outright immunity to the Slayer's superweapons.

*'''The Cyberdemon''': A Baalgar-class Shadow Lord, reclaimed from the UAC's expeditions to Hell and the crown jewel of their Demon weaponisation program. Also hinted to be the original Cyberdemon slain by Doomguy atop the Tower of Babel all the way back in Doom 1, having brought himself back to life out of sheer psychotic hatred at Doom Guy. He does it again in the middle of the boss fight after the Slayer teleports to hell, though the kill after this sticks as the Slayer impales its head with its own horn.
*'''The Hell Guards''': Three armoured suits powered by wormlike creatures, tasked with defending the Demonic Crucible from those who seek to claim it from its resting place in the Necropolis. The Slayer destroys the suits and tears the worms.
*'''The Spider Mastermind''': The Aranea Imperatrix, resurrected via the unholy union of the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and a female "keyholder", Olivia Pierce. Gets her head blown apart by being forced to deepthroat the BFG-9000, killing the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and putting Pierce out of her misery.
*'''The Gladiator''': The Last Living Hell Knight of DOOM II and, unlike the Doom Hunter, has survived the extinction event that is the Slayer. In fear of the rampage suffered by the old Hell Knights, the Gladiator killed his master and imprisoned his soul in his shield, making it almost invincible without an exorcism. Its fight is split into two distinct phases.
** Phase 1: The Gladiator is armed with a flail attached to a retractable chain for close and distant attacks, and bears a gargantuan soul-vessel shield. The shield itself blocks all incoming damage, can fire a ghostly afterimage of itself when forcibly coaxed, and can be slammed on the ground as either a close range AOE attack or to summon demons to the arena. Like the Marauder, if the Gladiator's eyes blink green you have an opening to shoot him with any weapon, though the Ballista or Super Shotgun is still preferable. A headshot will stagger him for a glory kill, but the Slayer will simply beat the shit out of him. One thing to note is that his shield will also blink way before the Gladiator actually performs an attack; once for a quick attack, and twice for a heavy attack. Phase 1 ends with the Slayer knocking the Gladiator down for long enough to stab its shield in its eye, destroy it outright and freeing the dead masters soul stuck in it.
** Phase 2: Now vulnerable, the Gladiator goes ballistic with TWO flails, spinning one as an attack-deflecting shield before chaining all-out flail whips and leaping slams. The best approach now is to shoot at it when it isn't spinning its flail, especially when its trying to force you into a game of energy jump-rope by boxing you in with both its flails. After weathering down the beast to its bones, the Slayer finishes off the last Classic Hell Knight by crushing its skull beneath its own flail.
*'''The Khan Maykr''': The supreme ruler of Urdak following the Father's disappearance, whose speech, mannerisms and goals make her come across as a haughty, insufferable fusion of an Eldar and a C'Tan. Once her energy barrier is down due to sustained firepower, Slayer needs to get close to her to Blood Punch her in her Energy Sphere five times. During the encounter she has a tendency to deny Slayer the ground (quite literally) by temporary making it damage him with power surges, that get bigger after every punch. Also, the only ammo source during that encounter (not counting few ammo boxes) are Makyr Drones.
*'''The Icon of Sin''': A legendary titan, resurrected into the body of the Son of the Betrayer, [[Chaos_Spawn|deformed and warped beyond recognition]], his very existence in Realspace causing destruction and madness. Its described that, if left unchecked, it will drag the entire dimension to Hell through a supermassive black hole - so basically if one of the Chaos Gods themselves manifested in Realspace. The Khan Maykr thought It could be controlled using the Soul of the Betrayer's Son, putting it into [[Power_Armour|Power Armour]] for insurance. But then, the Doom Slayer stabbed the heart containing the son's soul with a dagger provided by the Betrayer ([[Matt_Ward|though without carving the Name of the Betrayer into it]]), setting the soul free and, with it, the beast from Maykr control over. The battle itself is, on paper, pretty easy: eight pieces of the Icon's armour must be destroyed (head, both upper arms, both forearms, both pectorals and abdomen) using your whole arsenal. While doing so, lesser demons will try to harass you and distract you from the Icon. Just don't forget, you're fighting a ''Titan'', and fists that big tend to ''hurt''. With the armour's destruction, the whole process starts again in the second phase, but this time, you chip away at the flesh and bone of those same regions until the Icon collapses, giving you time to ram your Crucible into Its Brain.

*'''The Trial of Maligog''': An endurance test involving giant eyeballs housed in giant cubes, and the final challenge before one may be allowed passage to the Hall of Souls.
*'''Samur Maykr''': The Seraphim, the right-hand man of the Father who imbued the Slayer with the power of a Primeval, now having undergone total Transfiguration into a purple, winged monstrosity with an exposed brain.

*'''The Dark Lord, Davoth''': The original Dark Lord created by the Father as a Primeval, one of the first gods. Doomguy's equal. Designed to truly care about his People, he spiralled out of control in the search of eternal life, to save his people from death. Formerly a caring guardian, he tortured everyone who slightly deviated from this goal. After Davoth got imprisoned in his soul sphere by the Father, demons apparently fought one other to claim his title while he still whispered his influence to them. The Dark Lord of the First Age after Davoth made the deal with the Khan Maykr and the most recent one, the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age is implied to have been the Spider Mastermind that possessed Olivia Pierce before getting her head blown off by BFG-9000. Davoth himself apparently prevented anyone from becoming Dark Lord of the Fifth Age as he was released from his soul sphere several months later. Currently only seen in one cutscene after his soul sphere was unlocked and everyone hoped the final fight was the same as an Unreal Tournament/ Quake Deathmatch.
**Turns out the backstory from the previous paragraph was propaganda from the Maykrs. He's actually the original Father, God of all creation. The Maykrs betrayed him, stole his power to create a new Father (the one who would become VEGA), but that turned out to be a ''really'' bad idea. He's been scheming various ways to get revenge for over a decillion years, up to and including engineering the decay and downfall of the Maykrs from within, ascending one lucky individual into becoming the Slayer for revenge-by-proxy (unluckily for him, that person happened to be the incorruptible Doomguy), all the while trying to turn Hell and its capital city of Immora into the immortal paradise he always envisioned. But unfortunately, his plan still involves lots and lots of demons roaming free across the universe, and the Doom Slayer can't have that. Gracefully accepts his death in battle, and is actually so serene in his final words it is kind of implied that he knew that the Slayer would kill both him and the traitors but he had spent so much time in prison it is worth dying to see the bastards get killed first.

===Trivia===
*The Fortress of Doom is the personal fortress-monastery/mancave of the Slayer, once used for the Galaxy spanning Crusade of The Night Sentinels. Features a Teleportarium with an absurd range (teleporting the Slayer from Earth's orbit to the Hell-absorbed Argent D'nur, which is on a completely different dimensional plane to the Sol system), a Hangar bay with a Sentinel "Atlan" Mech, and a prison named the "Ripatorium", filled with Demons the Slayer undoubtedly abducted, to slaughter them for sport.
**On at least one occasion, the Slayer seems to have fought against Noise Marines, as his personal quarters feature a guitar made of flesh.
**The Fortress has a shit-ton of easter eggs and even a few unlockable weapons. Such as a redesigned Unmaykr (unlockable) from Doom 64 and the Soul Cube of Doom 3(just a prop, could be turned into an actual weapon in the next game a few years from now). You'll want the Unmaykr whether you want to slaughter demons with it or are just a completionist. The Slayers own room also displays all the weapons and toys players have collected over the game. There is a bookshelf that references other franchises, a cage for his dead rabbit Daisy and even a painting of said pet and the Slayer.
*It is said that the "Wretch" who gave the Slayer an adamantine armour, forged from the Fires of Hell, was in fact Khorne Himself. Even if he can't corrupt the Slayer, he doesn’t need to. The carnage he brings upon demons is the equivalent of centuries of war.
**Doomguy and Khorne may have flat-out '''teamed up''', as Doomguy wants to kill demons (Khorne technically isn’t a demon), and Khorne wants to take over Hell. The two of them have become fire-forged friends since then, to such a degree that, according to a legend passed down among demons, Khorne has a stasis pod containing the Doomguy stored deep in the heart of his personal fortress. Possibly underneath the skull throne itself.
***Khorne is Doomguys equal. In the ancient Gods DLC, the life essence of the true Ruler of Hell gets resurrected, and he takes on the form of Doomguy. The Dark Lord of Hell is the leader of Hell`s armies. Not a King, but a warrior of the Dark Realm. The fiercest among all, as only the strongest could rule. He is you. Wait a minute [[Samus|that sounds familiar]], Hey if you're going to steal, you may as well do it from the best.
*While the act of cutting down demons with a chainsaw is a game mechanic to get your ammo refill, there is a very 40k explanation of why it even works. Doomguys Chainsaw houses an insanely powerful [[Obliterators|Obliterator Demon]] wo can instantly turn Blood and flesh to Amunition.
*Since the Night Sentinels went to war against the Demons eons before Humanity came to be, they are effectively the first Space Marine Chapter (preceding even the Thunder Warriors), since they are to an extent Psykers, deploy with Argent (warp) using Weapons, have their own Titan Legion, use a Space fleet of Flying Castles, have an Arena for duels to the Death, and only The Strongest among them can become King, they even had a mini civil war. The only thing they are missing is DNA from the God-Emperor...and even then, Doomguy may have it.
**The Sentinel Titans are called "Atlans" and are the Ultimate Example of a [[Invictor Tactical Warsuit|Babycarrier]] done right. Armed with one or two shoulder-mounted Giant [[Plasma Annihilators|Plasma_Annihilator]], the Palms of the Hands featuring the same sort of plasma weapon but weaker. The Melee Weapon being an ECKS BAKS HUEG Energy Spear for impaling equally huge Titans.
*The Makyrs in Doom Eternal bear a surprising resemblance to the [[C'tan]] (even being unable to show their true forms outside of Urdak). They also possess a sort of metal skin on all castes of their race, resembling necrodermis.
*Sometime between the events of Doom 64 and Doom (2016), the Slayer was subjected to the Divinity Machine, given his new abilities from that point forward, it's possible he had a fragment of <s>the Warp</s> hell itself imbued within him, thereby making him a man uplifted with <s>psyker</s> argent powers. This might make him this dimension's equivalent of [[The God-Emperor of Mankind|The Emperor]]... if this is a separate dimension.
*In Doom Eternal, the Slayers new armour is not fully sealed, giving a look Upon His Arms, like a certain [[Kharn the Betrayer|Swell Guy]].
**Said Swell Guy <s>may or may have not been</s> probably is a Descendant of The Slayer's "friend" Valen, the previous holder of the title of "Betrayer". The best guess would be that the Emperor used his Genetic Code for The Basics of Angron, and later the World Eaters Legion.
*The Crucible uses pure Argent energy to create its blade. This means it's soul-powered and therefore, since the Doom Slayer absorbs the power of the demons (giving them a true death), [[Grimdark|uses the life essence of demons to kill more demons]].
**Because the Doom Slayer does give true death to demons, this may mean he can do what every single eldar, necron, and psychically adept human thought was impossible...actually '''kill''' the chaos gods. He would probably choose [[Slaanesh]] first.
*The forces of Hell seem to be a serious threat even judging from the absurd standard of 40k. Samuel Hayden gave the surviving humans insane technology (full functioning AI battlesuits for infantry, and colossal Titan mechs, Dark Age Technology so to speak) and still couldn't get the upper hand. The only viable solution to gain ground seemed to be [[Exterminatus|total nuclear annihilation.]]
**This seemed to be simply because of Hells literally [[Orks|infinite]] [[tyranids|numbers]] since they multiply by both ordinary breeding and turning the aforementioned bodies of the mulched human souls into demons. Even if they took out one thousand demons, one billion would take their place. It seems this was the only reason for their defeat since, once all of the avenues for invasion are cut off, the remainder are mopped up without much fanfare. One wonders if all of the priests were on Sentinel Prime how things would go since there would be no cut off for the entering demons.

==Doom: The Board Game==
Yes, there is a Board Game - made by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] no less - giving the vague '/tg/ related' qualifications this site uses.
It was released around the time Doom 3 was released, though it wasn't that remarkable and is pretty hard to find nowadays.

One guy plays the baddies, the other 1-4 players play a band of unfortunate marines. The heroes start with 2-3 powerup cards, and the baddies get 5 cards from his own deck and during the game, he gets to draw more (the rate of which is equal to how many marines there are) and if his deck is empty, he gets to insta-kill one of the Marines. His guys are more varied in their movement but they can only shoot once.

The marines have three options: move 8 spaces without shooting, move 4 spaces and shoot once, or shoot twice without movement. They need to explore the board, find computers and other events as the board provides. The baddies, meanwhile, can either upgrade his monsters or bring more to the board.
Either way, his goal is to score 6 kills on the Marines.

A new board game got released shortly after May 2016 Doom, which, to my understanding, is basically just the same shit as before with a new coat of paint.
* It's different, but not too different. Similar in concept and design, with the main differences seeming to be in how the Marines play, and victory conditions for certain scenarios. Absolutely beautiful models, however, and incredibly fun. Highly recommended.

==Movie==
Also (roughly) around the same time as Doom 3 was a movie starring Karl Urban and former WWE superstar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It pretty much replaced the whole Hell plot with some genetic experimentation to give people superpowers that only succeeds in creating hyper-aggressive mutants, and a squad of Marines sent to investigate the mayhem. It wasn't that good, with the only really 'good' scene being this one scene where it's all FPS-style like the original games and has monster killing.

Another movie was released in 2019, named ''Doom: Annihilation.'' When asked what they thought about this, id Software simply replied: "We are not involved in the movie." But the last five minutes of CGI demons was fucking phenomenal.

Rumor has it that an Doom: Annihilation sequel is in development.

==Gallery==
[[File:Doomguy and Kharn.png|500px]]

{{blam|If the Setting of Kharn would continue like DOOM, he would`ve already challenged Khorne!}}

==External Links==
*[https://doomwiki.org/ Doom Wiki] for all your Doom-related needs
*[https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/ /idgames/], the home of pretty much every Doom mod worth playing (and pretty much every Doom mod that isn't worth playing) since 1994.

[[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Awesome]] [[Category: Approved Media]]

Doom

2022-11-05T09:46:46Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit) */

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[[File:Doom cover poster.jpeg|thumb|If you don't already have the first level's music in your head, you may be on the wrong site.]]
{{topquote|Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...|[[Discworld|Terry Pratchett]]}}

The father of the first-person shooter, the original ass-kicking demon-slaying 3D slaughter-fest, '''''Doom''''' is a franchise that demands respect even in the hallowed halls of /tg/. It was actually inspired by a [[Dungeons & Dragons]] campaign played by the founders of id Software; John Romero had given a demon lord the key to overrunning the material plane in exchange for a magic [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|katana]] because he's an edgy little bitch like that, and John Carmack (the DM and one of the many forms of Tzeentch) decided it made a good premise for their new 3D game. The katana in question would later be used in Romero's game ''Daikatana'', which was a total failure for reasons that aren't important enough to go over right now.

The plot? In an FPS? Here's your plot: you are a Space Marine (no, not the 40K guy, a jumped-up soldier who is sent to fight on other planets, so closer to the [[Imperial Guard]]...though considering recent events he may be the equivalent of a standard Astartes, just much shorter.) stationed on Phobos. Somehow, demons broke through into our reality and slaughter everyone else. Your job? Fight your way to where, you hope, there's a ride off of this rock, and make bloody mincemeat out of everything standing between you and salvation. Standing in your way are armies of zombified fellow marines and eggheads, fireball-tossing imps, hulking flesh-eating demons, cyborg-demon monstrosities, and various other hell-spawned nasties who want to kill you horribly. Good luck. You'll need it...

Although not the very ''first'' of the FPS genre (even its predecessor, [[Wolfenstein]] 3D, wasn't the first, as the history of the genre goes back all the way into the '70s), Doom was definitive to the genre, so much so that "Doom Clone" was the standard nickname for many years afterwards. People are still playing it and making it even more awesome with [[Homebrew|their own custom modifications]] 24 years later, which isn't something you hear that often outside of /tg/; this is one of the main reasons why the franchise is so well-respected.

Fun fact: that iconic Doom monster, the Cacodemon, was actually inspired by the artwork for an Astral Dreadnought on the cover of the [[Dungeons & Dragons]] 1st edition [[Manual of the Planes]] splatbook. Also relevant to /tg/ is that Sandy Petersen, co-designer of [[Ghostbusters RPG]], creator of [[Call of Cthulhu]], and author of some [[RuneQuest]] stuff, worked on the game. He designed some levels (more in the sequel) and made some contributions to the monster design.

==Classic DOOM (aka The Good Shit)==
{{topquote|Welcome to DOOM, a lightning-fast virtual reality adventure where you're the toughest space trooper ever to suck vacuum. Your mission is to shoot your way through a monster-infested holocaust. Living to tell the tale if possible.|README.TXT, Doom 1.8 shareware}}
The original Doom was fast-paced and bloody compared to what came before but wasn't afraid to vary the pace with more labyrinthine levels or make you shit your pants by dropping you into a crowd of demons when you least expected it. (Fun fact No. 2: The extra levels included in the physical version of Doom (henceforth called ''Ultimate Doom'') were built by the same guy who wrote [[Call of Cthulhu]] in just 10 weeks.) Doom II on the other hand was a circle-strafing explosion-rich gorefest and is what basically everyone thinks of when they think of both Doom and 90s FPS gameplay in general. The plot was bare-minimum: Demons took over Phobos and ate Deimos, kill them all. Or, in Doom 2's case, Demons are trying to infest Earth in revenge, kill them all AGAIN. But this time, ''it's personal''. (No, seriously, they killed your pet bunny Daisy.) The Doom engine is extremely mod-friendly for a 90's game (as both Carmack and Romero had been big into software tinkering in their day) and the modding community is still very present and perhaps even more prolific than it was back in the day. In fact, id Software actually paid some modding groups for the right to sell their works as retail (Final Doom and the Master Levels for Doom 2). Also relevant is SIGIL, John Romero's own 25th-anniversary level-pack and unofficial Episode 5 for Doom 1 that he released to the public for free (unless you wanted the special Buckethead soundtrack for [[Edgy|$6.66 USD]]). There is also an ongoing arms race among modders and hobbyists to find the absolute unlikeliest thing Doom can be run on. So far people have managed to get it to run on the following, among other things: literally any and every OS ever released by any software company ever, an ATM, a potato-powered calculator, an oscilloscope, several types of MP3 player, a computer built inside Minecraft, a pregnancy test, a piano, and [[What|itself]] (via a mod that installs a script tool in the game). If it has even a resemblance of a CPU and some RAM, it can probably run Doom.

Slightly more obscure but still relevant is Doom 64, which replaced the high-speed Explode-o-Rama with a stronger horror theme and more deliberate pace.

id Software then for a time turned toward more multiplayer-oriented games with the ''Quake'' franchise and gave Doom a well-earned rest.

===The Doom Comic===
{{topquote|'''DYNAMITE! I'M COOKING WITH GAS! I'VE GOTTA HANDFUL OF VERTEBRAE AND A HEADFUL OF MAD! YEAH, THAT'S YOUR SPINAL CORD, BABY! DIG IT!'''|You, the moment you read that heading}}
The origin of [[Rip and Tear]]. Possibly the most ridiculously, amazingly, stupidly 90's thing that has ever been put to paper with the possible exception of Image Comics. It has to be read to be believed. [https://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/ So go read it.]

===Monsters===
[[File:Reaperminis.jpg|thumb|right|Limited-edition monster minis from [[Reaper Miniatures]]. Admit it, you want <s>that Cyberdemon</s> all of them for your Daemons of Chaos army.]]
These are the monsters you'll encounter in Doom 1, Doom 2 and their spinoffs.
*'''[[Zombie|Former human]]''': Wet toilet paper. Only dangerous until you get a shotgun.
**'''Former Sergeant''': Still wet toilet paper, but full of broken glass; if one of these assholes gets behind you before you find armour you're probably dead. Likely to be your first source for shotguns.
**'''Former Commando''': Unlike the other formers, this guy is no joke: he's durable enough to not die when breathed on and his hitscan chaingun is almost as powerful as yours. Using hordes of these guys in an open arena with no cover is the pinnacle of dick moves in Doom mapping.
*'''Imp''': The first true demon you encounter with an easy-to-dodge projectile and more health than the formers. The first meaningful enemy you meet, and runner-up for ''the'' most iconic non-boss monster.
*'''Demon''': Otherwise known as '''Pinkies'''. Giant hairless gorilla with a mouth that could give a [[squig]] lessons in eating. [[Derp|They can't walk and bite at the same time]] so you can just step out of their way, but they tend to come in large groups and dance around like spastic toddlers (which makes them harder to shoot) as they run up to you.
**'''Spectre''': Demon with Predator-style optic camo. An absolute bitch to deal with in dark environments, which is naturally where you find them.
*'''Cacodemon''': Mr. [[Astral Dreadnought]] Head. These fuckers can fly (not entirely unlike a [[Beholder]]...) and you can't look up, so have fun fighting them in close quarters where they can float out of your field of view. Dangerous, but get a rapid-fire weapon and they become a joke as you stunlock them until they are all dead. ''The'' most iconic non-boss monster, partially because of its sheer WTFery but mostly because of how easy it is to chibi/make plushies out of.
**'''Pain Elemental''': [[Meme|Meatball demon.]] Like a cacodemon, but instead of shooting fireballs, it shoots Lost Souls. Has the opposite problem to the pinkies in that [[Derp|you can stand in front of its face]] and prevent the lost souls from spawning.
*'''Lost Soul''': Floating flaming skulls that fly at you at approximately SANIC miles per hour. Fairly weak, but very fast and has a habit of nibbling at you while you focus on something more dangerous.
*'''Revenant''': [[Meme|Agitating skeleton aka '''DOOT'''.]] One of the few monsters that can move anywhere near as fast as you do, plus he runs up and tries to punch your head off if you move inside the minimum range of the homing rockets he shoots. It is a fact that any given Doom map is automatically casuals-only unless the mapper adds at least 100 revenants.
*'''Mancubus''': [[Festus the Leechlord|HELLO I'M FUCKING FAT.]] Slow, but very tanky, and he has dual [[Flamer|heavy flamers]] for arms that hurt like hell. Fortunately, this also applies to any nearby demons, so you can make them kill each other for your amusement just by standing between a mancubus and another monster.
*'''Arch-vile''': One of the few monsters that that's faster than the player at a full run. Sets you on fire [[Psyker|with its mind]] and revives any monsters it comes across so you have to kill them all over again. Meeting one of these guys in a slaughtermap will make you [[Khorne|hate everything forever.]]
*'''Hell Knight''': Now we're talking. [[Space Marine]] sized and equipped with a melee punch and moderate projectile attacks (fireballs). Shooting him in the face with a shotgun will kill him pretty quickly.
**'''Baron of Hell''': Super hell knight with double the health. Big and equipped with nasty melee and projectile attacks. Shooting ''him'' in the face with a shotgun just '''pisses him off'''. Super shotguns will work though. Probably the best-known Barons are the "Bruiser Bros", the pair of Barons you fight as the bosses of the first episode.
*'''Cyberdemon''': [[Rip and tear|Is huge, and therefore has huge guts.]] Basically a (Chaos possessed?) Carnifex with a rocket launcher for an arm, and significantly faster than he looks. Without a doubt the fuckingest monster in the classic game, and practically tailor-made for soaking up BFG shots.
*'''Spider Mastermind''': Doom 1’s final boss, [[Derp|despite being inferior in almost every way to the Cyberdemon you fight earlier.]] Go figure. Even more XBOX HUEG than the Cyberdemon, but has a super-chaingun instead of a rocket launcher and refuses to let up until either you or it are dead. Has the critical weakness of BFG shots up the ass due to the way its hugeness interacts with the mechanics of the classic BFG.
**'''Arachnotron''': Baby Masterminds that go fast and shit plasma at you.
*'''The Icon of Sin''': Doom 2's final boss. [[FAIL|A wall with a demon face on it]] and a hole in its forehead that serves as its weak point. Spawns monsters to attack you, but dies pretty quickly from a few well-aimed rockets... though, you need good timing to shoot them through the hole in its head. You probably know this, but the entity that takes damage is John Romero's severed head on a pole.

===Weapons===
{{topquote|I do need a gun. I need a big gun. I need a really big gun...|Doomguy, Doom comic}}
Doomguy himself shows about as much personality as your average [[Adventurer|Murderhobo]], (there is more to him but you don’t see it until later) so the game's real main characters are the weapons.
*'''Fists''': Only good at punching through the above-mentioned wet toilet paper, and complete suicide to use on anything stronger than an Imp. [[Rip and tear|Should you find a Berserk pack, though...]]
**'''[[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw]]''': [[Meme|The great communicator.]] Stronger than your fists and capable of tearing through Cacodemons and below without much problem.
*'''Pistol''': You start the game with this and 50 bullets. Gets overshadowed by every single other weapon.
*'''Shotgun''': Now we're talking. The first gun you get that can actually kill stuff in a decent amount of time.
**'''Super Shotgun''': A double-barrelled version of the original. A complete [[rape]] machine at close range, delivering about as much damage per hit as a rocket, but falls off greatly at longer distances.
*'''Chaingun''': [[Dakka|WAAAAAAAAAAGH!]] Great at stunlocking enemies, especially the aforementioned Cacodemons.
*'''Rocket Launcher''': Capable of [[Khorne|reducing enemies to puddles of blood]] from a safe distance. Also capable of reducing ''you'' to a puddle of blood if used from an unsafe distance.
*'''Plasma Rifle''': Fires a stream of plasma balls that hit hard, move fast, and won't hurt you at close range. Unfortunately, it shares its ammo count with...
*'''BFG 9000''': The most beautiful sight any soldier can behold, at least according to the Doom comic. ''The'' gun. The '''big''' gun. '''The. Big. Fucking. Gun.''' Anything it's fired at is [[Anal circumference|in for a bad time]], especially at close range.

==Doom 3==
In the early 2000s, Doom 3 came along. It blows chunks compared to the classics, but since the classics are so damn good it ends up being pretty good anyway. Since Valve had made "story-driven" shooters and "realistic" scripted encounters the in thing, id decided to rip off Half-Life, grafting on elements of the original Doom that had been scrapped at the concept stage. Unfortunately, the gameplay was too slow and similar to the rest of the genre, the scripting and story interludes just made the gameplay even clunkier and the big technological gimmick (per-pixel lighting) meant you had to choose between seeing what you're supposed to shoot with a crappy little flashlight and actually being able to shoot it. Supposedly the lighting effects were resource-intense during development and this was the "solution" (of course we know better that they wanted to make it a quasi survival horror). Naturally, the first mod for the game was duct tape so you can use the flashlight and a gun at the same time. This mod would eventually become official when the BFG Edition re-release came around about a decade later. (However, being designed from the ground up around realistic lighting and shadows and subsequently open-sourced would later make the Doom 3 engine the ''ideal'' basis for The Dark Mod, a fan-made successor to the classic early Thief games by Looking Glass studios, after the epic and utter failure of the official fourth Thief game).

Other issues include some ''very'' clear differences in enemy abilities between scripted events and actual gameplay, with imps in scripted events and jumpscares leaping around like they're high on crystal meth, only to start slowly shuffling around like a blind 80 year old as soon as they're free to move around on their own and "attack."

Perhaps Doom 3's biggest sin is the simple fact that the guns feel weak (even if they aren't), largely lacking in any kind of oomph and impact, and the shotgun is almost completely worthless.

The plot itself is essentially a reboot - You are a generic marine who just transferred to Mars and after pissing around with all your co-workers whom you will never see in one piece again, an experiment involving a portal to Hell (This time with no reason besides the head researcher, Dr Betruger, being kinda absolutely evil - in a typically subtle move by id software, his name is literally just the German word for 'cheat,' 'fraud' or 'con artist') goes horribly awry and now the facility is completely fucked. Your task then devolves into simply surviving, as you're cut off from any command and have to make your way to various checkpoints. Along the way, you come across an ancient artifact made by the original denizens of Mars, who made it to kill all the demons, and so the demons sealed it away in Hell. After a couple of trips in and out of hell, you manage to understand how the artifact works (by feeding off the souls of slain demons) and use it to kill the Cyberdemon, their greatest champion, and bail home. You'd think this is the end...except the mad scientist responsible for this is revealed to have turned into a full-blown demon.

===Resurrection of Evil===
An expansion to Doom 3, this game takes the original game and puts a few nifty spins to make it feel unique like the gravity gun (because Half-Life 2 did it too). Instead of the classic plot, you are now a nameless space engineer who comes across a different and wholly demonic artifact called the Hell Heart. This makes you more of a target compared to before, as Hell sends out three special hunters to reclaim the heart, each of whom gives it a special ability for you to abuse once you kill them.

==Doom 4 (aka DOOM aka DOOD aka Brutal Doom HD)==
{{topquote|They are rage, brutal, without mercy. But you? You will be '''worse'''. [[Rip and Tear]], until it is '''DONE'''.|A direct order from what is either [[God-Emperor of Mankind|God's]] [[Living Saint|seraphs]] or [[Khorne]] himself. Do you really need more of a mission briefing?}}

Listen to it here[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpllUQ38CKY]

Then the latest Doom came out in May 2016. This rendition can basically be described as "3d Brutal Doom II" only sexier, with features like [[Rip and tear|ripping enemies apart with your bare hands]] and having to stay on the move to avoid being torn to shreds. The plot is also as bare minimum as the original (albeit with a surprising amount of lore hidden away in the Codex...that makes one feel it’s set in the 40k verse), kicking the player straight into the action with waking up on Mars, immediately [[Rip and tear|smashing a zombie’s skull]], and basically being told: “demonic invasion, go kill everything.” Starts with a corporate big wig trying to talk you into being on his side and [[Awesome|your answer is a solid ''"FUCK YOU" fist]]. Also, the player this time around is someone the demons call the “Doom Slayer", who has travelled through “Worlds and Time” (hinting that the Doom Slayer could very well be the original Doomguy from the first two games, having also survived Doom 64 and has been travelling Hell since, later all but confirmed in the sequel), and millennia ago [[Awesome|kicked Hell’s ass so hard that the best the demons could do is seal him away so that he wouldn’t destroy Hell]].
The Slayers testament tells in sparse detail but leaves enough imagination to realise what the Legions of Hell were up against. A near-immortal being of pure hate, blessed by the Seraphims (or Khorne...which would make this a suicide attempt), capable of standing against Legions of Demons completely alone and harnessing their power as he slaughters them. THEN he fought a [[Titan (D&D)|Titan]] of "immeasurable Power and Ferocity" with only his Sword (it was a laser sword though so there's that), killing and absorbing its power to turn them on the Demons. Desperate now, the highest [[Daemon Prince|Archdevils]] realized nothing short of a God will stop the Slayer (fitting since a god summoned it in the first place), so they prepared an elaborate Trap involving what may have been a Blackstone Sarcophagus.
It speaks for itself, of what the Bait, which lured the slayer to the temple of the Blood Keep, must have been made of... or was.
Now at the peak of his might, with sword and shield of "adamantine strength", he stood before [[Chaos|the Horde]], and [[rip and tear|split heads open, punched, maimed, killed, burnt]] until finally the whole temple collapsed on him and he was sealed in the Cursed Sarcophagus.
Millennia passed until the UAC decided to deal with an Energy Crisis by quite literally [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|slamming an Oil Derrick on a Hell Portal to siphon off Hell Energy for power]], and just for giggles starts tomb raiding Hell for artifacts and treasures as well, ultimately running off with the Doomguy's sarcophagus. The demons see that the Doomguy’s prison/tomb is empty, and the subsequent invasion is actually a panicked attempt to stop the Doomguy from being woken up. Obviously, they fail and he butchers every last one of them.

Samuel Hayden is the guy in charge of the UAC, a cyborg the size of a 40k [[Space Marine]]. He and Vega, the Mars UAC AI, basically are quest givers for the most part. His subordinate Olivia Pierce pretty much ran a cult while Hayden was pillaging artifacts from Hell, [[Grimdark|being the only one to make it back from the expeditions]]. When shit hits the fan he decides to wake the Doom Slayer up with the hopes that this wild card could help take control of the facility without causing too much damage. Of course, once awake, he goes on a rampage and busts the UAC's shit, as Hayden's disregard for human life is too far for even Doomguy to take, expressing his outrage without the need for a voice actor.

So now it's up to the Doom Slayer in awesome power armor to [[Rip and Tear|rip and tear]] and dakka every demon he comes across to stop Olivia while wrecking the UAC's energy production. After going to Hell at least once due to Olivia breaking an Argent Accumulator and making it back to Mars, then after Hayden installs a "tether" to him, Hayden sends Doomguy on a quest to find the Helix Stone, picking up the most powerful version of the BFG 9000 yet on the way (more on that below). Once he reaches the Helix Stone it directs Doomguy to acquire the Crucible, a relic in the Titan's Realm. So Doomguy has to kill the Cyberdemon to get back to hell, make a long trek and fight the three Hell Guardians who guard the Crucible and returns to Mars again. To finally stop Olivia, Hayden, being the bastard that he is, even sacrifices his old creation, Vega, though unlike everyone else, at least our player character is nice enough to make a backup without anyone even bothering to ask. The Doom Slayer uses the Crucible to shut down Hell's energy wells and releases the spirits of his old friends, the Night Sentinels.

Once Olivia is found once again, she transforms into the Spider Mastermind. If you've been collecting all the stuff as you should have, she can easily be (along with the other bosses in the game) cheesed by the best weapons even on the highest difficulty, with the [[Cheese|Rich get Richer]] Rune fully upgraded. Once she's dead it's the final cutscene, where Hayden steals the "Crucible" which turns out to be an energy blade that makes a [[Lightsaber]] look like a toothpick, then sends the Doom Slayer off to who knows where with the tether he installed into the Praetor Suit earlier, disposing of a potential threat before it decides to become one. After this, you experience one of the best credit sequences made for a video game in over a decade.

Mick Gordon's soundtrack gives the game the best metal music ever. BFG Division being the standout in the soundtrack. Used for two whole levels and the final boss music is a Glitch remix of it. There is also some inspiration from RPG style FPS a la Metro 2033 and [[Samus|Metroid Prime]]; collecting Argent Energy, weapon mods, elite guard tokens, and Runes allow them to upgrade the Praetor Suit and weapons to their preferred play style. The engine allows the Doom Slayer a wide range of first-person animations, as his destruction of UAC property and actions portrays an "I'm too old for this shit" attitude; having to fight demons for centuries doesn't make for a happy camper.

The damage of the BFG 9000 itself is notable. This thing instantly vaporizes every non-boss enemy on-screen! (and them too if you exploit a glitch. However what a player does that the devs didn't intend is dubious canon.) You read that correctly, you don't have to aim it directly at your targets to kill them. You just have to find the right opening to make it kill every demon you can. As the Plasma Bolt throws out lightning or much more likely, solar flares. That would mean the Plasma the BFG fires is likely firing a fucking miniature star with each shot! The F in BFG may stand for Fermentation, Grimdark! with science!. We can wait while you Google it.

Don't be impressed just yet. A Baron of Hell is 2000 pounds and because the BFG's ordinance turns everything it comes in contact with into gibs, that means it has to have 7 Gigajoules of energy and would have to be heated up to over 100,000 degrees Celsius! [[Anal_Circumference|A temperature range which is only seen in small stars and nebula!]] That's not just [[GrimDark]], that's just fucking cold in the most brutal way possible and speaks to the insanity of the UAC for building this thing. Are we sure somebody didn't screw up the name? Though Brown Dwarf Gun 9000 doesn't sound as cool. (Though why is it green? Because it's blue-green! As blue in space equals very fucking hot! Red Giant/Supergiants/Hyper-giants are (relatively) cold because they are old, a young blue star, giant or not, is insanely hot. Red Dwarfs are insanely long-lived because they are cold and slow-burning) In all possibility, if the Doom Slayer didn't wear his Praetor Suit, firing the weapon would instantly annihilate him too! (since Photons are their own particle and antiparticle the word is valid) No apologies for the science jokes. They are necessary evils in explaining how the BFG 9000 works.

It also says a lot of the bosses as a direct hit will merely stun them (without using the weapon wheel glitch) while shaving off large portions of their health. So you need either a very advanced Powered Armor or a significant amount of mass to survive a direct hit from the plasma bolt and its flares. The only real con to using the BFG 9000 is its limited ammo of four shots. Though a good player can get around that if they set up their Runes correctly.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_gQAITzIk| Science and math mostly explained in this Youtube video ]. So yeah, the BFG 9000 shoots miniature stars.

==DOOM Eternal==
{{topquote|Against all the evil that hell can conjure, all the wickedness that mankind can produce, we will send up to them, only you. Rip and Tear until it is done!|King Novik of the Night Sentinels}}

Doom Eternal was announced at E3 and a gameplay reveal was shown at Quakecon 2018. To say that it's awesome is an understatement.
[[File:Slayer on corpses.png|400px|thumb|right|"The only thing they fear... is YOU!"
If the whole Warp, set for Khorne, actively shits their pants when the Slayer comes, you're in for [[Rip_and_tear|FUN]].]]
We are introduced to the Maykrs of Urdak, an elder race with a techno-angelic motif that serves as the Sentinels' patron. One of them was the so-called Seraphim that empowered the Doomguy even further, turning him into the nigh-godlike and unstoppable avatar of sheer [[Awesome]] that is the Doom Slayer (seriously, the Doom Slayer is compared to a [[Titan]] on the level of the Icon of Sin). They may actually be a group of [[C'tan]], but we are not sure.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. The Sentinels were betrayed from within, the Doom Slayer banished to Hell ''again'' (eventually leading to him being entombed before the events of '''Doom 2016''') and what's worse, it turns out the Maykrs were only using the Sentinels to further their own race's objectives; harvesting the souls of billions to convert into Argent Energy, so that they themselves would avoid undergoing a painful process known as "transfiguration", which is apparently like Alzheimer's except you also mutate into one ugly mofo. What's more, the current invasion of Earth was the result of one of their long-term plans, with humanity as simply one more race that was to receive "penance" in their place (read: the Maykrs are using Hell energy to prolong their lives, and willingly let Demons eat entire worlds to that end). Yet more evidence that these guys are C’tan.

The game picks up a few months after the end of the previous game with Samuel Hayden returning to Earth after the destruction of the Argent Tower on Mars that was the only way of getting free, unlimited energy out of Hell. But, he has the Crucible (confiscated from the Doom Slayer at the ending of 2016) with which he starts developing a synthesized form of Argent energy while the UAC begins to completely fall under the control of their leaders, the Hell Priests who entombed the Slayer so long ago. They start sacrificing humans left and right to start a ritual that will allow the demons to consume Earth, terraforming the land to living flesh and molten lava and killing all that resist. A full-scale demonic incursion is now underway on Earth, with billions of dead, over two-thirds of Earth consumed while half of the UAC has gone full Quisling to the invaders, with the other half putting up a token [[Planetary Defense Force| resistance as the Armoured Response Coalition (ARC)]]. All hope seems lost...

''"...We watched as the horde overwhelmed the very best and most advanced machinery and weapons technology that we could muster against the opposition. It was useless, they moved too quickly, they cared not for themselves, only sought out the blood of humanity. They were willing to sacrifice their own to get to the heart of our world. We slaughtered thousands and millions more followed, but then HE came - he cut through them like a sickle through a field - his fury surpassing their own. He is faster - more relentless - unyielding. I believe him now to be more than just a man - he is...DOOM."'' --Dr. Elena Richardson.

Equipped with his new <s>Praetor</s>Predator suit (3 guesses why it is called that, the first two don't count), he seeks his prey from his orbital fortress-monastery (fittingly called the Fortress of DOOM), with the now-recovered VEGA acting as his mission control from the station. Striking with merciless fury surpassing that of the Death Company, Flesh Tearers, World Eaters (Primarch included) and Skarbrand '''combined''', he will stop at nothing to destroy the demonic hordes. Read: Personally [[Rip_and_tear|kill. Every. Single. Demon. With extreme prejudice.]]

Immediately after defeating the guardian of Hell Priest Deag Nilox off-screen, the Slayer pinpoints his whereabouts on Earth, teleports onto his Hell Barge (a giant church carried on the back of a thrall-titan), kicks all doors in and vice grips the head off of the Priest, immediately reducing the demonic consumption of the Earth by 36.8%. He then gatecrashes the nearby Citadel, interrupting the ritual of the Priests with Nilox's severed head, before scaring them away by pumping his shotgun. He is then confronted by the Khan Maykr, the C'tan by any other name telling him even he goes too far this time.

Since the Hell Priests classify as Alpha Plus Psykers (the first one being able to command his own legion of Titans AND shield himself from even nuclear bombardment), they can only be found with a Celestial Locator, which the Slayer's Fortress is currently missing. To construct a Locator, the Slayer goes to Exultia (an Argenta city) to retrieve the Celestial Casing, only to be scolded by the late King Novik for killing the Priests; despite their transgressions, they were once Argenta themselves and it is against Sentinel Law to kill one of their own. When Novik decrees that Humanity are "no longer your people to save", the Slayer realizes that no ordinary individual will help him and enters [[Warp|Hell]], and it's even more magnificent than Doom 2016, with gigantic walls and corridors made of flesh, abandoned [[Warlord_Battle_Titan| Sentinel Atlas Mechs]] and the remains of the Titan Demons that were killed by them, and near everything you could think of; even the Tower Of Babel is in the background. Here the Slayer finds Valen, known by most as the Betrayer, repenting in his exile. After telling the Slayer that saving humanity will only make his burden worse, the Betrayer nevertheless installs the Celestial Power Core for the Slayer, as well as giving him a nondescript device he may need later.

Now able to locate the other Priests, the Slayer goes to Deag Ranak's UAC Cultist base in the Arctic to retrieve a relic from his past. That relic is none other than the '''Super Shotgun'''. The Diabolical Musket. [[Khorne|Lucifer]]'s Bane. Two ornately carved barrels of buckshot-spewing glory complemented by the Meathook; a pair of demon-gouging blades attached to a chain and possibly the most metal interpretation of a grappling hook to date.

After thoroughly wrecking Ranak's operations, Doomguy takes a cultist monorail to the neighbouring Doom Hunter base situated over an ancient Sentinel city. As yet more proof the Maykrs are [[C'tan]], the priest recovered an extinct race of Earth-native creatures once bred by the demons to destroy the Slayer (take a wild guess why exactly they went extinct) and, with nothing better to do, turned these things into [[Necron Destroyer|Semi-Organic Necron Destroyers]], labelling them “Doom Hunters”, and calling him a heretic...which is [[HERESY|{{BLAM|'''''BLASTPHAMY'''''}}]]. After [[Rip and tear|losing]] them and complaining about it, the Priest, in the face of his impending DOOM, tries to bribe the Slayer, which [[Fail|literally costs him his head]].

Now furious, the Khan Makyr leads the last Priest to safety, while demonic activity on Earth skyrockets. Realizing Earth needs immediate backup at the Super Gore Nest in Europe after a failed attack from the [[Imperial_Guard|ARC Resistance Forces]] (with a casualty rate of over 87%), the Slayer arrives at what can only be described as a border between Slaanesh's and Nurgle's Domains. Every building in the vicinity has grown flesh, teeth and openings that look like both mouths and birth canals, the air is filled with toxicity and tentacles have sprouted everywhere in pulls of nukage and pus. But after a nuclear meltdown of the local reactor which conveniently houses the heart of the Super Gore Nest, the problem is quickly taken care of.

Back to searching and destroying the last Priest, VEGA is sure that Samuel Hayden would be able to locate him immediately. However, a combined Demon attack on his headquarters, the ARC Complex, left him badly wounded. Fighting his way through the demon-infested complex and up its tower, the Slayer reaches the remains of Hayden's mech body, throwing it through the portal back to the Fortress of Doom and pocketing the Demonic Crucible that Hayden took from him for good measure. Just as the Slayer himself is about to leave, the Earth beneath him quakes and a red portal opens up, and from it emerges the Marauder. Imagine a heretic [[Adeptus_Custodes|Custodes]] empowered by Khorne but with battle tactics from Tzeentch, the endurance of Nurgle and the speed of Slaanesh. These guys are absolutely no joke (yes, there are more of them) and if you haven't been playing like your life depended on it, prepare to be absolutely [[Anal_Circumference|curbstomped]].

Meanwhile, its clear that Samuel Hayden knows *way* more about the Slayer, Hell, and the Maykrs than he let on in the last game, strongly hinting that Samuel may in fact be a Maykr himself (which begs the question of what he was up to if he understood just how dangerous Hell was and how Argent Energy was made). He tells us that the last Priest is hiding in Sentinel Prime - the Sentinel Capital of Argent D'Nur - and that the last Slipgate into the city is in the lost city of Hebeth, hidden deep within the core of [[Mars|Mars]]. But instead of calling the [[Adeptus_Mechanicus|Mechanicus]] to help, the Slayer enters the Martian moon of Phobos, where the battleship-sized BFG 10,000 is stationed, takes the gun over, targets Mars and [[Exterminatus|blasts the Core open]]... despite Samuel’s protests. He then steals the BFG 10k's power core (which is none other than the BFG 9,000) and navigates the spaceborne chunks of Martian terrain and UAC facilities to reach the core, at one point hopping into a giant mass driver and blast himself to his next destination, [[Angry_Marines|streaking across the ruined Martian sky like a rage-fueled missile]].

Now on Sentinel Prime, the game goes into who the Doom Slayer really is. It turns out the Doom Slayer really ''is'' the classic [[Doomguy]] from Doom 1, 2, and 64, who after staying behind in <s>the Warp</s> Hell he is eventually spat out, [[Gotrek_%26_Felix#Gotrek_in_the_Age_of_Sigmar|half-delirious and nuts from his experience of fighting off its hordes for an eternity]], unto the world of Argent D'Nur, where he is found by the ''Night Sentinels'', [[Grey Knights|an order of techno-Viking paladins dedicated to fighting demons]]. He is nursed back to sanity, and joins their order, eventually rising through their ranks due to the sheer [[Rip and Tear]] he was capable of.

The final Priest, Deag Grav, is hiding in the Colosseum. Despite being the one who ultimately corrupted the Betrayer, he is confident that the Slayer would never kill him in the arena, as breaking Sentinel Law would forfeit his sovereignty amongst the Argenta. He then sends out his guardian; the Gladiator, a goatlike <s>classic</s> Hell Knight carrying a shield that imprisons the soul of its former master, and one that effectively renders its bearer immortal. However, with the generous application of Doomblade to the shield's eye, the Slayer frees the soul and destroys the shield, and soon also destroys the Gladiator's face for good measure. Sacrificing his sovereignty with the Argenta, the Slayer finally shoots Deag Grav to death. And by "shoot to death", we mean blow his head clean off with the Super Shotgun as he smugly declares how "Earth will be consumed, regardless of what--" {{BLAM|'''''KHSPLAT'''''}}. The Khan Maykr is rather pissed about this, declaring the Slayer a "fool" as he teleports out of the arena, warded off by now-hostile Argenta soldiers.

As soon as he gets back home, the Khan Maykr hacks into the Fortress of Doom, turning off the power and flooding the bridge with Demons. The attack obviously fails like so many other attempts, Hayden mocking her as the Slayer restores power with the Demonic Crucible he retrieved earlier. Now the plans of the Khan Maykr are ruined, as there are no more priests to maintain the Hell gates, giving the remnant Earth Resistance a chance to prevail if they manage kill all the remaining demons. As a desperate last resort, the Khan Maykr declares her intentions to resurrect the Icon of Sin to devour Earth in its entirety. Of course, the prospect of seeing ''another'' Earth brought to ruin has made the Doom Slayer rightly [[Rage|pissed]], and suffice to say, [[Not As Planned|the Maykrs have no idea what they've just unleashed]].

So it's time for the Doomslayer to recover his own Crucible in Taras Nabad, an Argenta city where the Slayer ruled over as a warrior-king (as Sentinel Law dictates that only the mightiest warrior can rule the Argenta) and the site of the first recorded demon attack on that world. It is also here where the Slayer was granted his powers from the Seraphim, who utilised the Divinity Machine - a device typically used to cleanse impurities from Sentinels - to imbue Doomguy with godlike speed and strength on the eave of the first demon invasion.

The Crucible itself was stuck into the heart of a Titan during the last battle, and has remained so since removing the blade would cause the Titan to rise once more. As such, the Doom Slayer simply breaks the blade off from the hilt to permanently prevent the Titan's resurrection, though now a new blade must be reforged for the Crucible. The Slayer travels further into the city, retrieving a Crucible energy medallion from his personal vault, passing through his throne room (complete with a massive demon skull for a throne) and working his way to the forges at the city's Power Core. Having reforged the blade in a scene straight out of He-Man, he jumps down into the chamber below to test the blade on fresh demon meat.

Once again making a lightsaber look like a glorified glow stick, the Crucible is a one-hit kill on all but the strongest (boss-tier) enemies, with each kill consuming one of three Crucible charges that can only be replenished by non-respawning pickups that appear at pre-determined points in each level onwards.

With Crucible reforged, Doomguy sets out to assault the Khan Maykr in her home dimension of Urdak, bringing along VEGA so that he may create an exit portal for him. To make it to Urdak, however, Doomguy must fight his way through Nekravol, the City of the Damned. It's a [[Grimdark|place of biblical torment, fire and brimstone, cages bursting with humans piled up like livestock]], their souls awaiting judgement by the sightless brain-demon Kalibas. Those that are judged unworthy are discarded to the toxic wastes of the Blood Swamps. The rest are sent to the Tower of Babel in the centre of the city, [[Commorragh| a place where human souls are "tenderized" and tortured until all hope is broken and every sense but the pain is gone.]] Only then are their souls extracted to form Hell Energy which is refined further with Sentinel Energy (provided by the Elemental Wraiths seen in ''2016'') to form pure Argent Energy, with their soulless bodies being left to eventually corrupt into new demons. It's a process that every [[Haemonculus]] pays respect to. As it is, things that are worthy of being called "holy" are often more horrendous than the horrors of Hell itself. The Slayer rips and tears through all of that mercilessly, destroying the Argent conduit at the apex of the soul spire within the tower. Its destruction results in uncontrolled Argent energy being cast into the sky, which the Slayer uses to surf up to the portal to Urdak.

The Slayer has now reached his destination. Urdak, "Heaven", a completely unnatural location in true H.R. Giger aesthetic, littered with technological grey stone, constructs of white/gold/crimson metals and blood-red trees. In true Doomguy fashion, he interrupts the ritual that will resurrect the Icon of Sin, using the device given to him by the Betrayer - a dagger - to stab the heart of the Betrayer's son, with which the Maykrs planned to control the titanic demon with. [[Not_as_planned|The Icon wakes up, corrupts the entire realm, and invites all sorts of demons to ravage Urdak]] before leaving for Earth. Making his way through the corrupted realm, he sets out to create an exit portal for Earth with VEGA's help, though the latter question to Hayden if he is "the Father" upon interfacing with Urdak's computers. With the portal ready, Doomguy is interrupted by the Khan Maykr herself. In true Eldar fashion, she accuses Doomguy of all the bad things that SHE did which broke the seal to Urdak, and that the use of countless souls from thousands of other species as Argent Energy for her race is justified in her traditions. Doomguy then slaps the shit out of her, and even in her final moments, she tells us that we have doomed all of creation. It’s likely she’s lying to hide the fact that she’s a C’tan.

Back on Earth, the Slayer navigates through a city where the Icon is rampaging, its mere presence generating [[Eye of Terror|a black hole that threatens to drag Earth and the rest of the universe into Hell]]. After chasing the Icon through skyscrapers, the final fight against the Icon of Sin begins. Now with a full-body, it is no longer a static wall boss fight but a semi-static torso. The fight is split into two stages; the first focusing on destroying the Titan's Maykr armour, and the second on blowing the Icon's body parts into chunks of viscera, tendons and bone, until you finish it with your Crucible, by [[Awesome|slamming it into its forehead]] and breaking the blade off from the hilt.

===DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1===
The first half of a two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

The Icon may be dead, but now that the demons have free reign over Urdak and have yet to let go of whatever fleeting hold they have on Earth, it's up to Doomguy to clean up the mess he left behind. This cleanup begins on the UAC Atlantica, an oceanic climate and environmental research station where the body of the Seraphim is hidden. Samuel informs the Slayer that only the Seraphim can provide a long term solution to the demons (besides killing them all). After acquiring the key to the Seraphim's chamber, the Facility AI self destructs the whole platform to prevent the Slayer from leaving, which only serves to mildly annoy him. Navigating the destroyed platform, the Slayer then travels to the bottom of the Ocean with only his pure rage against the pressure, reaching the underwater portion of the facility and fighting in a Kill Room with TWO Marauders. He then reaches a chamber with a Maykr in it, where Samuel declares that he will transfer his consciousness into it, stating that he is there to help the Slayer, as he has always.

Big surprise; Samuel Hayden - or rather, Samur Maykr - is the Seraphim and VEGA is the Father, the creator of the Universe. However, Samur transferring his consciousness back into his old Maykr body was not all that well thought out, as he is now beginning to undergo transfiguration, a process that all Maykrs eventually succumb to without either a steady supply of Argent Energy or the physical presence of the Father.(Might have been going insane because of said transfiguration, since his personality did a whole 180.)

It is revealed that when the Universe and the Father came to be, he created Urdak and a second greater realm, Jekkad, alongside Davoth - the first of many godlike beings known as Primevals - to rule and guide it as the Father had led Urdak. However, Davoth and the people of Jekkad grew to become loathe Urdak, jealous over not being made privy to the latter's secrets of eternal life. Davoth defeated many lesser gods created by the Father, absorbing them and becoming more powerful than originally intended, forcing the Father to seal Jekkad away from the rest of the realms. Henceforth, Davoth became the ever more power-hungry, hateful and bloodthirsty [[Khorne|Dark Lord]], whose corrupted will eventually transformed Jekkad into the very same Hell that we know today. Aware that the continued existence of both him and the Dark Lord would eventually tear creation apart, the Father confronted his first creation in Hell and tore Davoth's soul out. With Samur's assistance, the Father also withdrew from the physical plane, placing his life sphere in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

To resurrect the Father, the Slayer must travel to Ingmore's Sanctum, located in the heart of the Blood Swamps in Hell. While it sounds incredibly stupid to put the soul the creator of the universe in what can only be described as the worst excesses of Nurgle's private Garden, the Sanctum itself can only be accessed by those who pass the Trial of Maligog, Maligog being an extremely enormous and ancient thrall-Titan. The Slayer carves through the foetid wasteland, dealing with toxic plants and tentacles the size of skyscrapers, and completes the trials with ease.

Maligog grants passage to the sanctum by carrying the Slayer to it, where Samur is already awaiting him to retrieve the Fathers life sphere for the sake of Urdak and Humanity. However, the rapid procession of his transfiguration causes Samur to let out a slip of his tongue; He only seeks the Father's resurrection to save himself. Doomguy has other plans; he denies Samur the Father's life sphere and destroys it right in front of him, leaving the Maykr to scream in agony. While one may consider it heresy of the utmost order to deny God a physical form, there is a method to the Slayer's madness.

When the Father tore out Davoth's soul, he could not bring himself to destroy the life sphere he held, as he still harboured love towards his first creation. Instead, he elected to place it in the Hall of Souls alongside his own. If the Dark Lord were to ever be resurrected, only a primeval like himself could ever hope to defeat him. Defeating Davoth in this manner would also strip Jekkad of its bindings to him, forever scattered the stars and destroying all demons outside of Hell.

Thus was the Doom Slayer's intentions; destroy the Father's life sphere so that he cannot interfere with the Slayer, ''then'' summon the Dark Lord with his life sphere of pure darkness, and face him mano-a-mano. With the assistance of an ARC Intern, the Slayer returns to Urdak and navigates the crimson forests of the Holt, guided by the AI remnant of the Father and facing off against Hell-corrupted Blood Maykrs along the way. He reaches the oldest and most holy place in the realm, the Luminarium, where life spheres may be presented to reconstitute their owners to physical form. It is here where Samur fully embraces his transfiguration, becoming a purple Lovecraftian abomination in a desperate attempt to stop the Slayer, only to be bailed out by the Fathers remaining presence when brought to the brink of death. Presenting the life sphere to the Seraphs of the Luminarium, the Dark Lord is restored to his physical form, with the biggest surprise of all being that the Dark Lord is literally Doomguy's Hellish doppelganger!

Bad News: Mick Gordon isn't coming back this time around (due to some internal issues, he was let go). Good News: Andrew Hulshult and David Levi, another rather well-known composers who helped compose for some other shooters (Dusk, Amid Evil, Rise of the Triad 2013) are coming to take his place. While it's clear Hulshult and Levi might not be able to imitate Gordon, it's obvious they don't disappoint.

===DOOM Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2===
The second half of the two-part campaign DLC for Doom Eternal.

With the Dark Lord fully restored, Doomguy attempts to end things quickly with a single blast from the Super Shotgun. This, unfortunately, doesn't work, with the Dark Lord pointing out that blood can't be spilled in the super-sacred Luminarium. He then makes his exit, challenging the Slayer to face him in the city of Immora. The only known entrance to the city is the Gate of Divum, a portal that sits unpowered on Earth.

To that end, the Slayer returns to Argent D'Nur, seeking passage to the World Spear; an enormous crystal that pierced the planet before the time of the Sentinels, which had brought forth the Elemental Wraiths that gave life to the planet. Passing through an Argenta city, Doomguy is contacted by the Betrayer, who offers his Sentinel Hammer as thanks for freeing his son's soul. After riding a goddamn dragon, the Slayer enters the World Spear and discovers that it is, in reality, [[Tomb World|an enormous spaceship housing millions of Wraiths in stasis]].

Retrieving a Wraith crystal as a power source, the Slayer then travels to the Reclaimed Earth, where nature is healing and returning from the hell-blasted wastes that Earth once was during the demonic invasion. Navigating through the abandoned city and eventually, the UAC facility housing the Gate of Divum, the Slayer activates the portal and heads through it, arriving on the hellscape outskirts of Immora.

The battle of Immora can best be described as laying siege on Khorne's Brass Citadel, breaking in, seeing him get up from his throne, dig up his own oversized suit of power armour <s>that is clearly compensating for something</s> and fight you to the death. On the opposite end, the Slayer was [[awesome|ready to siege the citadel on his own]], getting support from the remaining [[Grey Knights|Night]] [[Legion of the Damned|Sentinels]] bringing their entire army and join him in smashing the Dark Lord's shit (and we finally get to see those fuckhuge mecha in the fortress and Exultia actually walk, AND hitting equally huge Titan demons in the face), having been rallied by Valen offscreen (presumably over the several months between Eternal and Ancient Gods Part 1).

The Dark Lord faces you with his immortal body, [[Contemptor-Galatus_Dreadnought|his own set of Praetor Armor]], and worst of all, he has all of your best abilities (he's got his own, bigger sword; and if he hits you, he regenerates his own health back).

In the middle of the final duel, the Dark Lord reveals the awful truth to the Slayer (which the player can spoil for themselves if they read the codex entries): he was the original Father. Davoth was the first being, Jekkad the first realm, and he had created Urdak, the Father and the Maykrs to unlock the secrets of eternal life. The Maykrs were indeed successful in uncovering this secret, but deemed the knowledge too dangerous to share, ultimately betraying him and sealing away Jekkad. History was rewritten, painting VEGA as the bearer of the title "the Father"... whereupon the true Father [[RAGE|became evil, renamed Himself the Dark Lord, and tried to destroy the universe]] as revenge. Whoops.

In his efforts to destroy the Maykrs, the father sought to undo them from within. Planting a seed of suspicion within the Khan Maykr that a "chosen one" would usurp her, Davoth guided the construction of the Divinity Machine to help rout out this Beast, imbued with a portion of his essence hidden prior to the Dark Lord's fall. During the siege of Taras Nabad, the Dark Lord whispered to the mind of Samur Maykr, convincing him that the Khan Maykr would lead them to ruin. This prompted the Seraphim to free a random individual from the holding cells and give rise to the Slayer; a pawn in the Dark Lord's grand plan to eradicate the Maykrs, which came to pass as foretold.

However, there was one small flaw in this plan: The Dark Lord had such [[Tzeentch|astoundingly poor luck that, out of all of the imprisoned menials that Samur could have shoved into the Divinity Machine and ascend to godhood]], it was the one angry foreigner whose previous experiences with Hell had manifested into an absolute, rage-induced, zero-tolerance stance on anything remotely demonic in origin or association. The Doom Slayer remained predictably unswayed by this revelation, and the battle resumed. Two personifications of unrestrained Rage, potentially fighting for all eternity, able to heal themselves as they inflict unspeakable carnage upon creation until the Dark Lord finally goes down. Even near death he still reaches his sword to fight on, but finally gives in, having created the Slayer in what amounts to an incredibly convoluted but awesome suicide by battle. With his final words, Davoth asks the Slayer if he has anything to say to his Creator before striking him down, to which Doomguy responds with a generous application of Doomblade to the Dark Lord's heart, followed by a simple "No".

After slaying the Dark Lord, you'd think everything would be good right? Well, for a moment it is, as demons all around Earth, Argent D'Nur and Urdak all go up in flames. But then something strange happens. Remember how the Divinity Machine basically upgraded the Doom Slayer with a piece of Davoth's essence? Turns out that with the Dark Lord dead, everything associated with him has gone inert, including the Doom Slayer. As he falls unconscious, we see him interred into a sarcophagus by the Seraphs, sealed away in the Hall of Souls atop Ingmore's Sanctum.

''"So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again."'' - Corrax

===Demons===
Doom 2016 by itself has more demons than the classic games do, even though not all of them return from those games. Doom Eternal ups the count even more, although not all demons from 2016 return. Some demons are upgraded versions of a base model and have been sorted as such. Doom Eternal also introduces a classification system, which sorts each demon into five distinct classes: Fodder, Heavy, Super Heavy, Ambient and Bosses.

====Fodder====
Weak, easily-dispatched demons and your chief targets for Glory Kills, the Chainsaw, Flame Belch, Ice Bomb and all the other ways with which to keep your health, armour and ammo stocked up. While not entirely non-lethal, these demons (typically) have low health, easily exploitable weaknesses and, in Eternal, only consume a single fuel unit when Chainsawed.

*'''The Possessed/Zombies''': In 2016, Possessed were humans that underwent horrific mutations due to the Lazarus Wave released by Olivia Pierce on the Mars Outpost, with the standard ones coming in Worker, Scientist and Unwilling (Hell) sub-variants. In Eternal, Zombies are the emaciated husks of humans stripped of their soul and mutated by demonic corruption, coming in Earth, Hell and UAC Cultist subvariants. In both cases: wet toilet paper. They are some of the weakest enemies in the games and can easily be dispatched.
**'''Possessed Soldiers/Blaster Zombie Soldiers''': Unlike their gormless lesser brethren, Possessed Soldiers move faster and with more tact, are hardier and can use a plasma gun fused to their arm to lay down suppressive fire or launch exploding energy balls. They're still not much of a threat. Eternal's Blaster Zombies are little more than Possessed Soldiers with a Classic Doom Zombieman coat of paint and jet boots for jumping large gaps/heights, so make sure to keep some distance.
**'''Possessed Security/Shield Zombie Soldiers''': Wet toilet paper with shards of glass. Equipped with shields and shotguns, these can really ruin your day if you let them. The most effective strategy against them in 2016 is either to chainsaw them or use the Plasma Rifle's stun bomb to disable their shields. While Eternals Shield Zombies still hit just as hard, their threat level dropped off the abyss thanks to their energy shields ''violently exploding'' in response to absorbing too many Plasma Rifle bolts, creating an especially powerful blast if detonated via Microwave Beam. Also received a similar Classic Doom paint job, resembling the bald Shotgun Sergeants.
**'''Hell Razer''': 2016 exclusive, Hell Razers fight at a distance with arm-mounted laser cannons, which are actually parasites converting a human into a Hell Razer. Fire slowly and have distinct tells to their attacks. Don't pose too much of a threat: dodge their attack, get close and shotgun them.
**'''Mecha Zombies''': New in Eternal, these gore-covered terminator knockoffs are armed with metal claws, a plasma gun and a flamethrower, the latter of which they will flail about to hit you. Still fairly ineffectual.
**'''Screechers''': Introduced in TAG Part 2, these purple-recoloured Hell Zombies have bugger-all health and produce an annoying scream on death, providing short-lived attack damage, speed and damage resistance buffs to all nearby demons. In other words; shoot these guys first if you want a real challenge in TAG Part 2's fights.
**'''Riot Soldiers''': HOLY SHIT, TAG PART 2 BROUGHT BACK THE CHAINGUNNERS and they're pathetic. Basically Shield Zombie Soldiers, but with an invincible shield, immunity to headshots and frontal attacks, a laughably easy-to-dodge minigun and an embarrassingly pathetic weakness to explosives from the sides and behind.
*'''Imps''': The fodder from the original game, now quick as a hiccup. They jump all over the place, pelting you with fireballs and clawing at you if you get too close. Because they're one of the first enemies you face they don't pose much of a threat; your Combat Shotgun makes quick work of them (especially with the Explosive Shot/Sticky Bomb mod), and they gain an explicit weakness to bullet weapons (Heavy Cannon and Chaingun) in Eternal.
**'''Gargoyles''': Added in Eternal. Pretty much Imps with wings and [[Tyranid|scything talons]], they jump around and spit acid at you. They'll occasionally hover in place to fire off an acid volley, causing them to become instantly staggered for a Glory Kill when hit during this attack, so take your opportunity.
**'''Stone Imps''': Introduced in TAG Part 2. These once-dead Imps that have been [[Salamanders_(Chapter)|ritually cast into magma and reborn with grey, rock-like skin]]. Their stony hides offer stupidly high resistance to all but the pounding impacts of the Combat Shotgun's Full Auto mode and the Sentinel Hammer. They also spindash around like grey, fireball-chucking Sonics.
*'''Lost Souls''': Horned, burning skulls that scream, fling themselves at you and explode for an annoying amount of damage. At least in 2016; in Eternal, they also appear when summoned by a Pain Elemental which is when they function more or less the same.
*'''Makyr Drones''': The generic rank-and-file of the Maykrs. Annoyingly resilient for Fodder demons (to the point that it takes ''three'' Chainsaw fuel units to kill them as opposed to one) and armed with rapid-fire laser turrets, headshotting them with (almost) any weapon is a guaranteed insta-kill that provides ammo as well.

====Heavy====
Making up the bulk of Hell's forces, these brutes run the gamut of heavy-hitting bruisers, powerful glass cannons and bullet-soaking tanks. Using a chainsaw on them in Eternal uses up its entire tank of three fuel units, making it an absolute last-resort option.

*'''Hell Knights''': [[World Eaters|Big dudes who revel in wrecking your shit]]. They are fast, closing the distance to pummel you or to perform a leaping ground slam for a short-ranged area of effect attack. Keep your distance and pump them full of lead to take them down quickly if you don't want to be taken out yourself. In Eternal, they gain a crippling weakness to Chaingun fire.
**'''Dread Knights''': Cybernetically enhanced Hell Knights. These super-soldiers are rigged with a chemical delivery system, which constantly pumps the demon full of adrenaline to keep them in a state of perpetual rage, and rewards them with massive dopamine hits for every kill they make. Appearing only in Eternal, their most prominent feature is a pair of energy blades, which considerably extends their melee range and causes their ground slams to leave a lingering, damaging energy pool for a bit. Can fire lasers from their blades at you, and shares a weakness to the Chaingun, as with other Hell Nobles.
*'''Revenants''': [[Meme|DOOT]]. Made from humans in a gruesome process, the Revenants have jetpacks that let them fly around to put themselves in the perfect possession to launch missile barrages at you. They can also claw at you for significant damage, so keep your distance and take them out. In Eternal, you're able to shoot off their shoulder cannons, and doing so both permanently grounds them and restricts their attacks to the easily-evaded claw swipes. Surprisingly classified as airborne demons, making them into potent Ballista chow. Their meme potential is so great that a trumpet-equipped Revenant Battlmode skin was included as a pre-order bonus for Doom Eternal.
*'''Cacodemons''': [[Star Wars|They fly now!]] Their spit attacks slow and disorient you, and their bite attack does a lot of damage. But because they fly now you can easily pick them off with your rocket launcher or gauss cannon. In Eternal, they decided to min-max; their bite takes off a surprisingly large chunk of your health and is often paired with an aggressively distant lunge, while their shock-balls can be fired in a multi-shot volley. But it comes with devastating weakness: a single Combat Shotgun Stickybomb or Equipment Cannon Frag Grenade into their mouths causes them to swallow it, instantly staggering them for an easy glory kill. As airborne demons, they also gain a weakness to Ballista attacks, dying in one Arbalest bolt.
**'''Pain Elementals''': Meatball Daemons Returning in Doom Eternal, they endlessly summon/chuck the homing suicide bomber Lost Souls at you. While they don't swallow any grenades like their Cacodemon compatriots, they ''do'' share the innate weakness of all airborne demons against the Ballista. Despite this, they are still more of a threat than their vestigial-limbed buddies could ever be, especally because they will usually be flanked by one or two of them.
*'''Mancubi''': Big fat bastards equipped with heavy cannons to blast you with fireballs and flamethrowers to keep you at a distance. They're big, slow targets with slow attacks so if you can keep your distance they're not too big a threat. In Eternal, these Heavy demons got faster (and fatter) but you can blast their arm cannons off, stripping them of their flamethrower attack and severely nerfing the damage of their fireballs. After that, sustained Chaingun fire or a few rockets/Super Shotgun blasts will easily take them out.
**'''Cyber-Mancubi''': Heavily armoured versions of the Mancubus. They fire globs of acid that linger on terrain for a bit, limiting your movement options, but lack the flamethrower attack. In 2016 you just pour more damage into them to take them out. In Eternal, their armour is destructible and can be stripped instantly with a single Blood Punch, making it easier for you to deal with them. But because their cannons are armoured you can't blast them off like you can with the regular Mancubi.
*'''Pinkies''': Ol' faithful is now covered in chitinous natural armour (which is harder than you would think), turning them into living battering rams (in more ways than one). They (still) roar and charge in on you, dealing significant damage upon impact. The armour soaks most damage they take from the front, so circle behind them and [[Meme|attack their weak point for massive damage]]. In Eternal, they gain the Heavy demon classification and a crippling weakness to the Blood Punch, being the only attack that can kill them without deliberately striking their weak point.
**'''Spectres''': As the Pinky, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. A bit harder to deal with because of this, but thankfully a lot less common and lack the armour plating...in 2016 that is, in eternal they have there armor back but are slightly easier to spot. blood punch them to kill them quickly.
*'''Summoners''': Only appearing in 2016, Summoners are pared-down versions of the Archvile. They possess lithe bodies that let them easily zip around and set up a summon circle away from your location, allowing them to call in aid. Sustained fire from just about any weapon will take them down.
**'''Harvesters''': Unique to 2016's multiplayer, the only demon to be so. Harvesters move around and instead of summoning other demons will shoot balls of plasma and drain life from other players, allowing them to supercharge their regular attacks.
*'''Arachnotrons''': Back in Doom Eternal, the Arachnotrons are walking gun platforms that can cling to ceilings to get a better vantage point to shoot at you. Their plasma turrets are mounted on an exposed, scorpion-like tail, which can be destroyed to limited their attacks to the more manageable and telegraphed bomb volley. Their resemblance to the Spider Mastermind from 2016 is intentional: the UAC cloned them using the Spider Mastermind's genetic material. [[Looted|and when the demonic invasion began, the automated facility making them was taken over by the possesed]]...[[Just As Planned|Which was planned]]
*'''Carcasses''': Debuting as Heavy demons in Doom Eternal, the Carcass' attacks are not that powerful and they don't have a lot of health. What they do have is the ability to summon energy barriers, blocking your ability to move around freely, home in on them, glory kill other demons and use explosive weapons safely. Your primary target in an encounter because eliminating them makes a fight a lot easier. Thankfully, these barriers share the same explosive vulnerability to plasma fire as the Shield Zombies' Shields.
*'''Prowlers''': Originally added in 2016's multiplayer, they were promoted to regular enemies in Eternal. They function the same as Imps but with more health and they can teleport, often right behind you to claw at you.
**'''Cursed Prowlers''': A thing that can only be the product of Nurgle's diseased mind, introduced in TAG Part 2. The attacks of these mercifully rare green Prowlers curse players with a necrotic, blood-magic poison that deals damage over time and ''prevents dashing''. The only way to break this curse is to kill the offending Cursed Prowler; easier said than done since, while cursed, the Prowler cannot be locked-on (so no easy Meathook for you) and can only be killed by a blood punch.
*'''Whiplashes''': The first all-female demons introduced in Doom Eternal resembling [[lamia]]e, but don't expect any monster girls. They are as nasty as any Heavy demon in Doom, and they use their great speed to slither in and around the battlefield, dodging heavy-hitting weapons before hacking away at your health from a distance with a pair of chained whips. Difficult to hit, but once you start hitting them they'll go down eventually. That, or use a Lock-On Burst from the Rocket Launcher to delete them.
**'''Spectre Whiplashes''': Introduced in TAG Part 1. As the Whiplashes, but invisible, meaning that lock-on attacks won't register them as targets. Now you can't cheese them with Lock-On Rockets (unless you Ice Bomb them first) and they don't even have the courtesy of being weaker like the Pinky Spectres.
*'''Blood Maykrs''': Definitely not [[Blood Angels]]. The normal Maykr Angel population after getting corrupted by Hell. They shield themselves with a golden aura that negates all damage and attack with energy volleys from their spears. Once they notice that such things would never work, they will lower their shield to perform powerful attacks with Argent energy discs and spears, which drastically slow the player on-hit. A headshot instakills them like their Maykr Drone counterparts, while sustained gunfire on their body works too.

====Super Heavy====
The toughest, most lethal demons this side of [[Eye of Terror|Doom's Gate]], these beasts are the deadliest standard troops and are often summoned in as mini-bosses. They also can't be cheated out with an instant kill from the Chainsaw, meaning you'll need to put some actual effort into taking them down.

*'''Barons of Hell''': [[Bloodthirster|Big red bastards]] who are the toughest regular enemies in 2016. They hit like trucks and can blast you with powerful balls of green fire. The best way to deal with them is a heavily upgraded chainsaw or the BFG to not deal with their bullshit. In Eternal, they return as the Fireborne Barons; a Super-Heavy class demon that is immune to the chainsaw and cannot be one-shot by the BFG, so you'll have your work cut out for you. Befitting their name, Fireborne Barons are also [[Salamanders_(Chapter)|coated in flames with obsidian skin]] and have burning blades coming from their lower arms, which fits given how much more dangerous they are. The Fireborne Barons are described as a clan of Barons who have merged with the flaming inferno of Hell itself and their blood is replaced by lava.
**'''Armoured Barons''': Introduced in TAG Part 2, these Fireborne Barons are encased in grey/cobalt armour provided from the city of Immora, granting them outright immunity to all weaponry besides the Plasma Rifle (especially its Microwave Beam). Armoured Barons have had their right hand replaced by a studded morning star, which they will launch at the player at terrifying speeds. However, said mace also flashes green when preparing to launch, allowing a player to snipe it and instantly shatter the Baron's armour. The player only has a short window to damage and kill the Armoured Baron before its shell regenerates, which can be lengthed via the application of either the Ice Bomb or Sentinel Hammer.
*'''Doom Hunters''': First introduced as a boss in Eternal. A species of earth-native demons driven to extinction by the Doom Slayer and brought back by the Hell Priest Deag Ranak, the Doom Hunters resemble [[Necron Destroyer]]s with a cannon and a dual-chainsaw for arms and missiles that can be fired from its hover sled. They have an energy shield that you need to deplete to be able to damage them directly, though it's possible to attack their Blood-Punch-vulnerable hover sled directly first to disconnect the main body from it. Infamous for being a boss that is lazily reused during the course of the game, as early as [[Rage|THE VERY NEXT COMBAT ARENA AFTER FIGHTING THE FIRST ONE]]. However, the mook versions don't have immunity to Ice Grenades.
*'''Marauders''': [[Chaos_Space_Marine|Former Night Sentinels corrupted by Hell]], the Marauders are fast, deadly and a pain to kill. They possess energy shields that block all incoming damage, including the BFG, Crucible, and Unmakyr (though not splash damage from explosives), can pelt energy beams from long-range, blast you with their own ''Super Shotgun'' at close range, and can summon spirit wolves to hunt you down if you shoot their shield too often. If baited into sprinting at you and brought into mid-range, their eyes will flash green as they swing their axe at you: use this as an opening to blast them with your Super Shotgun or Ballista, then quickly switch between the two until their stagger expires. Repeat this, rip and tear, done. Becomes kind of a joke in TAG Part 2, since the Sentinel Hammer can lengthen the period that they remain stunned enough to kill them without resistance. this is balanced out by the fact that the will double, and even Triple team you.
*'''Archviles''': '''OH FUCK NO, NOT THESE ASSHOLES AGAIN''' receiving a buff from its previous appearance (yes you read that right) an Archvile can put up barriers of fire to keep you away while they Summon more demons. If you don't interrupt them you'll be facing a more difficult fight, especially if they summon a MOTHERFUCKING MARAUDER. Even when not summoning they are tough and can dish out a lot of damage, setting the ground beneath you aflame or throwing massive fireballs or sweeping fire waves in your direction, while any friends they successfully summon receives a buff that lasts until the Archvile's death. In short, after taking out all Carcasses in an area, they are your next target if you want to win a fight, and no the daemons they summon '''do not''' go away after the Archvile dies, rip and tear it before it rips and tears you a new asshole. the buff is there ridiculous amount of health (for what they are) hit them with your BFG or crucible to save yourself the trouble.
*'''Tyrants''': Pretty much downgraded Cyberdemons (Looking more like the classic Cyber rather than 2016's beefy Balgaar monstrosity) and one of the most powerful common enemies in the game. Packing a powerful hybrid rocket launcher/laser cannon, a laser blade and the ability to fire missile barrages, paired with a MASSIVE pool of health, these Super-Heavies should be eliminated as fast as you can so that you can deal with the rest of the demons. The fastest way to do so is with the Crucible, which will hack a Tyrant up in no time. [[FAIL|Just make sure that you actually hit the Tyrant itself and not the fodder running around it]]. Otherwise, just exploit its slow turning speed to dedicate as much ammunition you have on hand to shoot at it until it dies.

====Ambient====
These demons aren't active participants in a fight, acting more like obstacles that can disrupt and, rarely, help the Slayer in his crusade.

*'''Possessed Engineers/Cueballs''': Little more than walking bombs in 2016. Either shoot them to detonate them or melee them to launch them and have them detonate on impact. Returning as Cueballs in Eternal, these demons replace the "walking" part with "standing gormlessly in one spot, ignorant of any fighting going on around them". This allows the Slayer to use them as flying, explosive barrels if shot at the right angle.
*'''Tentacles''': Introduced in Eternal, these annoying bastards pop out of fleshy glory holes from Slaanesh's wet dreams to take cheap swipes when the Slayer comes near. Takes advantage of purple goo and other shallow puddles of liquid to conceal themselves.
**'''Giant Tentacles''': No. This skyscraper-tall pile of Slaaneshi-fueled bullet sponge can fuck off back to the Blood Swamps where they're introduced.
*'''Buff Totems''': Unholy crosses with eyes in their centre, introduced in Eternal. Will spawn in pre-determined spots in a given arena, buffing nearby demons with enhanced speed and attack damage while also constantly summoning in additional demons until the totem itself is destroyed. Its effects can also be temporarily nullified by the ice bomb, not that this would be pertinent information to know.
*'''Turrets''': Introduced in TAG Part 1, these fell-steel columns house a demonic eye that will occasionally pop out of the top to take cheap potshots at you, not unlike a long-range tentacle. They'll duck back into their containers if the player's reticle lingers on them for too long, encouraging flick-shots from the Heavy Cannon's Precision Bolt and/or the Ballista to eliminate quickly.
*'''Spirits''': The ghostly Remains of 2016's Summoners, introduced TAG Part 1. The Spirit will spawn in possessing another demon, taking away their fear and ability to feel pain. In effect, Possessed demons are immune to the Chainsaw, Ice Bombs and faltering, while also gaining a massive buff to movement/projectile speed, damage resilience and aggression. If a Possessed Demon has any destructible weakpoints, like the Mancubus or Revenant, said weakpoints are also rendered permanently invincible. Even so, Possessed Demons will still give in with enough Dakka, causing the Spirit to escape its fallen host and begin to possess the next toughest demon in the field after a short while. There exist only two methods to destroy a Spirit; Ghostbusting it with the Plasma Rifle's Microwave Beam, OR by killing every other demon remaining on the field and watching the Spirit, unable to manifest itself in Realspace anymore, fade out of existence.
*'''Demonic troopers''': The Imperial Guard of the city of Immora, and the greatest of Hell's warrior-caste in TAG PArt 2. On paper, if the Night Sentinels were an Astartes chapter, these troopers would be their Chaos Astartes equivalent. In gameplay, these red-clad chumps aren't even worthy of being called pushovers. Being immune to the Chainsaw and Glory Kills sounds scary... until you discover that they die in one hit from almost ''any'' source of damage, even including the marginally non-lethal Meathook and Flame Belch. A recent Update gave them more health and resistance against weapons but they still get pretty much slaugthered. This could also show just HOW deadly the Slayer has become, as only beings that are nearly completly fueled up with Hell energy are able to stand only seconds longer against him.

====Bosses====
The bigwigs of Hell, ranging in power and influence from greater daemons to Chaos Gods/C'tan-tier entities in their own right. These enormous creatures are characterised by having their own dedicated health bars on the UI, fights that often go into multiple phases, dedicated arenas and resistance or outright immunity to the Slayer's superweapons.

*'''The Cyberdemon''': A Baalgar-class Shadow Lord, reclaimed from the UAC's expeditions to Hell and the crown jewel of their Demon weaponisation program. Also hinted to be the original Cyberdemon slain by Doomguy atop the Tower of Babel all the way back in Doom 1, having brought himself back to life out of sheer psychotic hatred at Doom Guy. He does it again in the middle of the boss fight after the Slayer teleports to hell, though the kill after this sticks as the Slayer impales its head with its own horn.
*'''The Hell Guards''': Three armoured suits powered by wormlike creatures, tasked with defending the Demonic Crucible from those who seek to claim it from its resting place in the Necropolis. The Slayer destroys the suits and tears the worms.
*'''The Spider Mastermind''': The Aranea Imperatrix, resurrected via the unholy union of the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and a female "keyholder", Olivia Pierce. Gets her head blown apart by being forced to deepthroat the BFG-9000, killing the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age and putting Pierce out of her misery.
*'''The Gladiator''': The Last Living Hell Knight of DOOM II and, unlike the Doom Hunter, has survived the extinction event that is the Slayer. In fear of the rampage suffered by the old Hell Knights, the Gladiator killed his master and imprisoned his soul in his shield, making it almost invincible without an exorcism. Its fight is split into two distinct phases.
** Phase 1: The Gladiator is armed with a flail attached to a retractable chain for close and distant attacks, and bears a gargantuan soul-vessel shield. The shield itself blocks all incoming damage, can fire a ghostly afterimage of itself when forcibly coaxed, and can be slammed on the ground as either a close range AOE attack or to summon demons to the arena. Like the Marauder, if the Gladiator's eyes blink green you have an opening to shoot him with any weapon, though the Ballista or Super Shotgun is still preferable. A headshot will stagger him for a glory kill, but the Slayer will simply beat the shit out of him. One thing to note is that his shield will also blink way before the Gladiator actually performs an attack; once for a quick attack, and twice for a heavy attack. Phase 1 ends with the Slayer knocking the Gladiator down for long enough to stab its shield in its eye, destroy it outright and freeing the dead masters soul stuck in it.
** Phase 2: Now vulnerable, the Gladiator goes ballistic with TWO flails, spinning one as an attack-deflecting shield before chaining all-out flail whips and leaping slams. The best approach now is to shoot at it when it isn't spinning its flail, especially when its trying to force you into a game of energy jump-rope by boxing you in with both its flails. After weathering down the beast to its bones, the Slayer finishes off the last Classic Hell Knight by crushing its skull beneath its own flail.
*'''The Khan Maykr''': The supreme ruler of Urdak following the Father's disappearance, whose speech, mannerisms and goals make her come across as a haughty, insufferable fusion of an Eldar and a C'Tan. Once her energy barrier is down due to sustained firepower, Slayer needs to get close to her to Blood Punch her in her Energy Sphere five times. During the encounter she has a tendency to deny Slayer the ground (quite literally) by temporary making it damage him with power surges, that get bigger after every punch. Also, the only ammo source during that encounter (not counting few ammo boxes) are Makyr Drones.
*'''The Icon of Sin''': A legendary titan, resurrected into the body of the Son of the Betrayer, [[Chaos_Spawn|deformed and warped beyond recognition]], his very existence in Realspace causing destruction and madness. Its described that, if left unchecked, it will drag the entire dimension to Hell through a supermassive black hole - so basically if one of the Chaos Gods themselves manifested in Realspace. The Khan Maykr thought It could be controlled using the Soul of the Betrayer's Son, putting it into [[Power_Armour|Power Armour]] for insurance. But then, the Doom Slayer stabbed the heart containing the son's soul with a dagger provided by the Betrayer ([[Matt_Ward|though without carving the Name of the Betrayer into it]]), setting the soul free and, with it, the beast from Maykr control over. The battle itself is, on paper, pretty easy: eight pieces of the Icon's armour must be destroyed (head, both upper arms, both forearms, both pectorals and abdomen) using your whole arsenal. While doing so, lesser demons will try to harass you and distract you from the Icon. Just don't forget, you're fighting a ''Titan'', and fists that big tend to ''hurt''. With the armour's destruction, the whole process starts again in the second phase, but this time, you chip away at the flesh and bone of those same regions until the Icon collapses, giving you time to ram your Crucible into Its Brain.

*'''The Trial of Maligog''': An endurance test involving giant eyeballs housed in giant cubes, and the final challenge before one may be allowed passage to the Hall of Souls.
*'''Samur Maykr''': The Seraphim, the right-hand man of the Father who imbued the Slayer with the power of a Primeval, now having undergone total Transfiguration into a purple, winged monstrosity with an exposed brain.

*'''The Dark Lord, Davoth''': The original Dark Lord created by the Father as a Primeval, one of the first gods. Doomguy's equal. Designed to truly care about his People, he spiralled out of control in the search of eternal life, to save his people from death. Formerly a caring guardian, he tortured everyone who slightly deviated from this goal. After Davoth got imprisoned in his soul sphere by the Father, demons apparently fought one other to claim his title while he still whispered his influence to them. The Dark Lord of the First Age after Davoth made the deal with the Khan Maykr and the most recent one, the Dark Lord of the Fourth Age is implied to have been the Spider Mastermind that possessed Olivia Pierce before getting her head blown off by BFG-9000. Davoth himself apparently prevented anyone from becoming Dark Lord of the Fifth Age as he was released from his soul sphere several months later. Currently only seen in one cutscene after his soul sphere was unlocked and everyone hoped the final fight was the same as an Unreal Tournament/ Quake Deathmatch.
**Turns out the backstory from the previous paragraph was propaganda from the Maykrs. He's actually the original Father, God of all creation. The Maykrs betrayed him, stole his power to create a new Father (the one who would become VEGA), but that turned out to be a ''really'' bad idea. He's been scheming various ways to get revenge for over a decillion years, up to and including engineering the decay and downfall of the Maykrs from within, ascending one lucky individual into becoming the Slayer for revenge-by-proxy (unluckily for him, that person happened to be the incorruptible Doomguy), all the while trying to turn Hell and its capital city of Immora into the immortal paradise he always envisioned. But unfortunately, his plan still involves lots and lots of demons roaming free across the universe, and the Doom Slayer can't have that. Gracefully accepts his death in battle, and is actually so serene in his final words it is kind of implied that he knew that the Slayer would kill both him and the traitors but he had spent so much time in prison it is worth dying to see the bastards get killed first.

===Trivia===
*The Fortress of Doom is the personal fortress-monastery/mancave of the Slayer, once used for the Galaxy spanning Crusade of The Night Sentinels. Features a Teleportarium with an absurd range (teleporting the Slayer from Earth's orbit to the Hell-absorbed Argent D'nur, which is on a completely different dimensional plane to the Sol system), a Hangar bay with a Sentinel "Atlan" Mech, and a prison named the "Ripatorium", filled with Demons the Slayer undoubtedly abducted, to slaughter them for sport.
**On at least one occasion, the Slayer seems to have fought against Noise Marines, as his personal quarters feature a guitar made of flesh.
**The Fortress has a shit-ton of easter eggs and even a few unlockable weapons. Such as a redesigned Unmaykr (unlockable) from Doom 64 and the Soul Cube of Doom 3(just a prop, could be turned into an actual weapon in the next game a few years from now). You'll want the Unmaykr whether you want to slaughter demons with it or are just a completionist. The Slayers own room also displays all the weapons and toys players have collected over the game. There is a bookshelf that references other franchises, a cage for his dead rabbit Daisy and even a painting of said pet and the Slayer.
*It is said that the "Wretch" who gave the Slayer an adamantine armour, forged from the Fires of Hell, was in fact Khorne Himself. Even if he can't corrupt the Slayer, he doesn’t need to. The carnage he brings upon demons is the equivalent of centuries of war.
**Doomguy and Khorne may have flat-out '''teamed up''', as Doomguy wants to kill demons (Khorne technically isn’t a demon), and Khorne wants to take over Hell. The two of them have become fire-forged friends since then, to such a degree that, according to a legend passed down among demons, Khorne has a stasis pod containing the Doomguy stored deep in the heart of his personal fortress. Possibly underneath the skull throne itself.
***Khorne is Doomguys equal. In the ancient Gods DLC, the life essence of the true Ruler of Hell gets resurrected, and he takes on the form of Doomguy. The Dark Lord of Hell is the leader of Hell`s armies. Not a King, but a warrior of the Dark Realm. The fiercest among all, as only the strongest could rule. He is you. Wait a minute [[Samus|that sounds familiar]], Hey if you're going to steal, you may as well do it from the best.
*While the act of cutting down demons with a chainsaw is a game mechanic to get your ammo refill, there is a very 40k explanation of why it even works. Doomguys Chainsaw houses an insanely powerful [[Obliterators|Obliterator Demon]] wo can instantly turn Blood and flesh to Amunition.
*Since the Night Sentinels went to war against the Demons eons before Humanity came to be, they are effectively the first Space Marine Chapter (preceding even the Thunder Warriors), since they are to an extent Psykers, deploy with Argent (warp) using Weapons, have their own Titan Legion, use a Space fleet of Flying Castles, have an Arena for duels to the Death, and only The Strongest among them can become King, they even had a mini civil war. The only thing they are missing is DNA from the God-Emperor...and even then, Doomguy may have it.
**The Sentinel Titans are called "Atlans" and are the Ultimate Example of a [[Invictor Tactical Warsuit|Babycarrier]] done right. Armed with one or two shoulder-mounted Giant [[Plasma Annihilators|Plasma_Annihilator]], the Palms of the Hands featuring the same sort of plasma weapon but weaker. The Melee Weapon being an ECKS BAKS HUEG Energy Spear for impaling equally huge Titans.
*The Makyrs in Doom Eternal bear a surprising resemblance to the [[C'tan]] (even being unable to show their true forms outside of Urdak). They also possess a sort of metal skin on all castes of their race, resembling necrodermis.
*Sometime between the events of Doom 64 and Doom (2016), the Slayer was subjected to the Divinity Machine, given his new abilities from that point forward, it's possible he had a fragment of <s>the Warp</s> hell itself imbued within him, thereby making him a man uplifted with <s>psyker</s> argent powers. This might make him this dimension's equivalent of [[The God-Emperor of Mankind|The Emperor]]... if this is a separate dimension.
*In Doom Eternal, the Slayers new armour is not fully sealed, giving a look Upon His Arms, like a certain [[Kharn the Betrayer|Swell Guy]].
**Said Swell Guy <s>may or may have not been</s> probably is a Descendant of The Slayer's "friend" Valen, the previous holder of the title of "Betrayer". The best guess would be that the Emperor used his Genetic Code for The Basics of Angron, and later the World Eaters Legion.
*The Crucible uses pure Argent energy to create its blade. This means it's soul-powered and therefore, since the Doom Slayer absorbs the power of the demons (giving them a true death), [[Grimdark|uses the life essence of demons to kill more demons]].
**Because the Doom Slayer does give true death to demons, this may mean he can do what every single eldar, necron, and psychically adept human thought was impossible...actually '''kill''' the chaos gods. He would probably choose [[Slaanesh]] first.
*The forces of Hell seem to be a serious threat even judging from the absurd standard of 40k. Samuel Hayden gave the surviving humans insane technology (full functioning AI battlesuits for infantry, and colossal Titan mechs, Dark Age Technology so to speak) and still couldn't get the upper hand. The only viable solution to gain ground seemed to be [[Exterminatus|total nuclear annihilation.]]
**This seemed to be simply because of Hells literally [[Orks|infinite]] [[tyranids|numbers]] since they multiply by both ordinary breeding and turning the aforementioned bodies of the mulched human souls into demons. Even if they took out one thousand demons, one billion would take their place. It seems this was the only reason for their defeat since, once all of the avenues for invasion are cut off, the remainder are mopped up without much fanfare. One wonders if all of the priests were on Sentinel Prime how things would go since there would be no cut off for the entering demons.

==Doom: The Board Game==
Yes, there is a Board Game - made by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] no less - giving the vague '/tg/ related' qualifications this site uses.
It was released around the time Doom 3 was released, though it wasn't that remarkable and is pretty hard to find nowadays.

One guy plays the baddies, the other 1-4 players play a band of unfortunate marines. The heroes start with 2-3 powerup cards, and the baddies get 5 cards from his own deck and during the game, he gets to draw more (the rate of which is equal to how many marines there are) and if his deck is empty, he gets to insta-kill one of the Marines. His guys are more varied in their movement but they can only shoot once.

The marines have three options: move 8 spaces without shooting, move 4 spaces and shoot once, or shoot twice without movement. They need to explore the board, find computers and other events as the board provides. The baddies, meanwhile, can either upgrade his monsters or bring more to the board.
Either way, his goal is to score 6 kills on the Marines.

A new board game got released shortly after May 2016 Doom, which, to my understanding, is basically just the same shit as before with a new coat of paint.
* It's different, but not too different. Similar in concept and design, with the main differences seeming to be in how the Marines play, and victory conditions for certain scenarios. Absolutely beautiful models, however, and incredibly fun. Highly recommended.

==Movie==
Also (roughly) around the same time as Doom 3 was a movie starring Karl Urban and former WWE superstar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. It pretty much replaced the whole Hell plot with some genetic experimentation to give people superpowers that only succeeds in creating hyper-aggressive mutants, and a squad of Marines sent to investigate the mayhem. It wasn't that good, with the only really 'good' scene being this one scene where it's all FPS-style like the original games and has monster killing.

Another movie was released in 2019, named ''Doom: Annihilation.'' When asked what they thought about this, id Software simply replied: "We are not involved in the movie." But the last five minutes of CGI demons was fucking phenomenal.

Rumor has it that an Doom: Annihilation sequel is in development.

==Gallery==
[[File:Doomguy and Kharn.png|500px]]

{{blam|If the Setting of Kharn would continue like DOOM, he would`ve already challenged Khorne!}}

==External Links==
*[https://doomwiki.org/ Doom Wiki] for all your Doom-related needs
*[https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/ /idgames/], the home of pretty much every Doom mod worth playing (and pretty much every Doom mod that isn't worth playing) since 1994.

[[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Awesome]] [[Category: Approved Media]]

Star Wars

2022-11-05T09:27:26Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Disney Canon */

[[File:Star-Wars-Logo (1).jpg|center|500px|]]

{{Topquote|A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....|Star Wars opening text}}
'''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk/ Star Wars]''' is one of, if not ''the'', most influential media franchises of modern times, let alone its effect on science-fiction and fantasy. Indeed, among [[/tg/|nerddom]], it is challenged by only a few others, like [[Star Trek]] and [[The Lord of the Rings]].

The incredibly ardent fandom is spread worldwide and has a strong presence in popular culture. Many of the characters, like Darth Vader and Yoda, are iconic even to the general public. John Williams' score for the original trilogy is one of the best-known film scores of all time, right up there with greats like Jaws, Jurassic Park (also composed by John Williams), Indiana Jones (John Williams again!), Shrek, Harry Potter (there's a reason Hollywood often relies on John Williams for their soundtracks) and the Avengers. The universe has spawned numerous video games, hundreds of novels, multiple TV shows, one of the largest merchandising franchises ever, and, relevant to /tg/, a whole bunch of board, card, and roleplaying games. It is also the current leading world source of [[Skub]].

==The Basic Concept==
Star Wars was originally a series of epic science-fantasy "space operas" that roughly followed the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. They're set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," [Note: this makes the entire series a fairy tale] where a mysterious life force called (reasonably enough) [[the Force]] permeates everything. This, in turn, can be wielded by certain people, giving them pseudo-magical abilities; thank the Emperor ([[Emperor|no, the other one]]) there were no Commissars in that galaxy. Those who use it for good become mystical, selfless warrior monks called Jedi, whereas those who use it for evil are ruthless, self-serving bastards called Sith. However, the Force must always be in balance, so any time the Sith arise to cause imbalance, the Jedi have to pull together and take them out to restore the natural order (so we are told in the prequels).

A financial, critical, popular and cultural success, these movies are basically the filter through which Generation X perceives the world... for better or worse.

The so-called Original Trilogy (made up of films IV through VI, released from 1977 to 1983) follows a young man named Luke Skywalker as he learns the ways of the Jedi. Meanwhile, the Rebel Alliance is fighting to end the oppressive Galactic Empire which Darth Vader, a Lord of the Sith, serves. The first movie (initially known as just ''Star Wars'' upon release in 1978 - if you can track down an increasingly rare copy of the original cinematic release, you can see there was no subtitle in the opening crawl - but retroactively tagged ''Episode IV: A New Hope'' in later re-releases and remasterings as sequels were made and the series expanded) posits that the military imperium holds the Emperor as figurehead leader of a Senate, soon to be abolished; as the movies continue, we learn that the emprah is secretly Vader's master. Luke's Rebel companions in ''Episode VI: Return of the Jedi'' defeat the evil Emperor, but along the way Luke discovers who's his daddy - ME! Darth Vader! I'm yo daddy because I did this to yo mama. The third movie's novelization, at last, names the emperor: "Palpatine".

In between we got an "<strike>Extended</strike>Expanded Universe", which LucasArts commissioned, and some leaks of variants of the movies' scripts. We learned from the early drafts that "Starkiller" was the first floated name for Luke, that a "padawan" is an apprentice, and so on. We learned from a ''RotJ'' leak that the Empire's base is <strike>Trantor</strike> Coruscant, a city built over an entire planet. The canonical 1996 All-But-The-Movie multimedia ''Shadows of the Empire'' - which was naff despite being canon, you totally don't have to deal with it yourself, excepting Joel McNeely's soundtrack which was awesome - has scenes on Coruscant. The Expanded Universe goes far, far beyond just this; beyond what the movies demand as canon - as it should be, because by Aristotle we shouldn't need to assume facts not in evidence. As for all the masses and masses of extra lore here, see below.

The so-called Prequel Trilogy (made up of films I through III, released from 1999 to 2005) explained how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and how the Galactic Empire was established. This involves a lot of convoluted politicking in the Republic, which is then torn apart in the Clone Wars, where the Republic (with an army of clones led by the Jedi) fights against the Confederacy (with an army of robots led by [[Necrons|General Grievous]]) with both sides secretly being controlled by the Sith. It was not as well received as the first trilogy, for reasons we'll talk about below.

There's also a so-called Sequel Trilogy (made up of films VII, VIII, and IX), which started in 2015 and picked up the story some three decades after the Emperor's defeat with a new generation of heroes taking on the remains of the evil Empire, which is a group of extremist former Imperials calling themselves the First Order. However, Episode VII aka ''The Force Awakens'', was directed by J.J. Abrams, who's mostly known for the [[skub|skubtastic]] [[Star Trek]] reboot and was widely criticized for ripping off Episode IV (the whole trilogy apes the original trilogy a lot but none as much as VII) and a [[Mary Sue]] protagonist. Meanwhile Episode VIII was written and directed by Rian Johnson who was a young director known for plot twists and genre experimentation on a handful of movies and television episodes that openly said he wanted to "subvert expectations" and make half of viewers dislike his work, then got pissed when half of them disliked his work. The result managed to fracture the Star Wars fan-base over issues of dull rehashing for VII and a whole laundry list of reasons for VIII (ranging from small ones such as it being too different, to major issues like half the movie being filler and the plot not even making basic sense), as well as those who still enjoyed them and very little common ground between the three groups. Abrams returned for Episode IX which got a mixed reception from both those who liked VIII and those who didn't.

The general issue with the sequels is that, unlike prior films, with long lead-times between releases so every film felt special and the creative forces had lots of time to think and drink in reception, Disney wanted to crank out a ''Star Wars'' film every year and a mainline installment every two years, but didn't want to do the legwork. As a result, because there was no plan on what to do in each part of the trilogy and they came up with everything as they went along, but unlike Lucas didn't have time to work things out between it really shows. It really feels like the whole trilogy lacks direction, as it was directed by two guys with conflicting visions, yet almost complete freedom to do what they wanted, including [[derp|undoing stuff done in the other guy's movie]].

Finally, there are the so-called Anthology movies, standalone one-shots involving characters and plot lines that aren't a part of the main "Saga" films, except they kind of are. The first, Rogue One (2016), is an immediate prequel to Episode IV that follows those Rebel spies who stole the Death Star plans. The second film follows a young Han Solo and pals Chewie and Lando. <s>A third rumored one follows Boba Fett</s> Became a series.

There are also four separate TV series. The first one, ''Clone Wars'', was based on traditional animation, whereas the later one, '''''The''' Clone Wars'', was a weird 3D animation. They're both pretty good. There was also a terrible theatrical release that was basically just an advertisement for ''The Clone Wars'', but, since it's quite bad (hint: babysitting Jabba the Hutt's kid), nobody talks about it much. The third series is Disney's ''"Rebels"'' which is set between Episodes III-IV and it takes itself far less seriously than either ''Clone Wars'' did, and is more of a homage to the original trilogy since not every character in the series is the owner of a lightsaber nor are they constantly talking about grown-up politics, senators and trade embargoes, which played a large role in the prequel trilogy and found their way to ''The Clone Wars'' as well. Finally there is ''Resistance'', which only lasted two seasons (for comparison, Clone Wars lasted 7 and Rebels lasted 4) and wasn't particularly well received by the fans, largely due to general lack of interest in the [[fluff]] of the sequel trilogy.

And so, after voicing a Mandalorian character one time in an episode of Clone Wars, Jon Favreau’s ego boner couldn’t contain itself any longer and gave birth to the first live action Star Wars TV series, ''The Mandalorian'' - building on the Disney version of Mandalorians as a sort of [[Eldar Corsairs|weedy, neo space Viking]], which seems feeble when compared to the old EU version of Mandalorians, who were more like space [[Orks|Maoris]]. Still, it ended up being pretty good; good enough for Disney to go ahead with another <s>two</s> four live action series (because if there is anyone who loves to rub skub into their pores, they are Star Wars fans). The first is a prequel to the ''Rogue One'' film, y’know, to build on the backstories of people you never needed to know about in the first place. The second series will focus on Obi Wan Kenobi’s time in exile after saddling Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru with a kid, though which fans have been begging for for a while. There’s also gonna be a one season series on Ahsoka (from 3D Clone Wars) and one on Boba Fett.

Anyway, that's the basic concept. As to how it's been handled in the interim, and especially since Lucas dropped the reins . . .

==Why is it so popular?==

{{topquote|Ted, the only people in the universe who have never seen Star Wars are the characters in Star Wars and that's cause they lived them Ted. That's cause they '''lived''' the Star Wars.|Marshall from ''How I Met Your Mother''}}

Star Wars is as accessible as science fiction gets. It doesn't require extensive knowledge of a fictional world (a la ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' or ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'') or cultural background (as ''[[Star Trek]]'' sometimes does) to make sense. Those elements are present for those who want them, but they largely stay in the (very rich and vibrant) background. It has well-shot action and good ''enough'' dialogue to make it interesting for both kids and adults (as well as allowing parents who grew up with it to watch it with their children, thereby hooking the next generation of viewers). It has simple, good-vs.-evil themes that resonate with almost anyone, anywhere, at any time. The science fiction elements are generally handled well if you don't obsess over making science fiction realistic and hard (or at least they WERE handled well until Episode VII). It's a prime gateway drug for sci-fi which still holds up to the experienced eye, [[Isaac Asimov]] saw and rather enjoyed the films. All in all there’s fourteen hours of cinema, plus optional sides for those who want it.

There's a ton of merchandise that is, of course, really cool. Also, given it's crossed over into the mainstream, many people feel comfortable being part of the community without feeling judged as "nerds" (as they might with ''Lord of the Rings'', ''D&D'', ''Star Trek'', ''Warhammer'', etc.).

Again, they roughly follow the mythic cycle that's been around since Homer. If you think about it, 6 of the 9 films can be summarized as: hero begins his journey under the tutelage of a wise (more or less) man, they encounter a threat which has captured/enslaved a princess/girl, who was in one way or another connected to an important secret (usually a superweapon but could be the identity of a political figure or the location of someone); the heroes save the princess/girl but someone dies tragically in a battle against the villain while someone else is blowing up a space station or a spaceship afterwards they are happy, they celebrate and mourn the loss of the poor bloke who died.

Additionally, the first film can be summarized as a samurai and a gunslinger team up to save a princess from Nazis in space. That is multiple cinematic genres at once, following the style of the epic myth.

==Setting==
Due to article bloat [[Star Wars Setting]] is now its own page.

==Movies==
Also due to article bloat the [[Star Wars Movies]] are also their own page.

==Expanded Universe==

It can be said what makes a franchise into a long term lasting thing is when a wealth of extra story and background is created that expands on the original story far beyond what there was. It could be argued Star Wars leads the race in this, as the sheer amount of extra novels, graphic novels and games based on Star Wars can and does overwhelm the ordinary fan.

===The original EU/Star Wars "Legends"===

[[Image: Choices_of_One_PB_art.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The waifu was so strong with Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker himself decided to wife her up]]
The background has expanded into the distant past before the founding of the current Jedi and Sith orders and into the (not-quite-so) far future looking at the descendants of Luke Skywalker and other popular characters. Uniquely, especially considering [[Warhammer 40K|other]] [[Star Trek|franchises']] track records, the Star Wars Expanded Universe is <strike>remarkably</strike> <strike>sorta</strike> sometimes internally consistent, both with other sources within the universe and with the films themselves, at least in comparison to other comparable settings. Of course, it's got plenty of its own [[C. S. Goto|problem children]] that slipped through, and the [[skub]] mine of it all isn't much shallower than that of 40K. Good portions of it do hold up well, largely due to the efforts of Lucas' company's continuity department leaning on everyone to hold it together. One thing that greatly helps is continuity books and articles aren't afraid to make small retcons to make even the most obscure and shitty sources (like that terrible PS1 fighting game) seem like part of an organized plot.

Particularly well-loved parts include characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn (a rare alien officer in the Empire and popular enough that Disney brought him back to the canon from the EU) and Mara Jade (pictured right, a Force-using former agent of Emperor Palpatine who later turned good, became a Jedi Master, married Luke and had a son with him) - interestingly both were created by the same author [[Timothy Zahn]].

Upon their acquisition, Disney said "fuck it" and threw out everything but the films and the Clone Wars cartoons... But since so many of the guys they kept around are the same guys who made the old stuff, they just keep bringing back the Legends stuff they liked. Some popular old stuff got mentions or appearances (and Thrawn got to be a major character), but the overall quality is even lower than the old EU(at least, the cool parts we care to remember). What was set up as a major book contains phrases like "The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air" and random virtue signalling. As though to top the previous, Disney literally published a book with an entire chapter about mass wedding farts (Yes. Really.). The only good stuff is from established EU authors writing stuff far away from era of the Sequel Trilogy.

The [[rage]] over the EU's scrapping was major among many fans of it, but for all Disney's shortcomings, they were in a tight spot. Towards the end all that continuity and consistency got thrown out the airlock for increasingly dumb and disjointed narratives and garbled plot threads to the point that the Star Wars logo was just about as much a sign of quality as the Nintendo approval stamp on shitty SNES games.

Another problem was that Disney is mostly family-friendly, and some of the Star Wars EU could get really dark. As in Warhammer 40k levels of grimdark. Examples of this are the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong - forcenull space-Druchii (no no, not Comorrites though they have the pain and body modification fetishes for it, space-'''Druchii''', riding enslaved tyranid bioships) from another galaxy, Mnggal-Mnggal - mindraping gelatin lost on its way to Star Trek, and Abeloth - an ancient (she predates the Jedi and the Sith) yandere Force entity more like something from the Cthulhu Mythos and is so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith '''joined forces''' to fight her. It's difficult to envision how Disney could have kept the EU when even before all that it was struggling to find a market beyond the most [[neckbeards|dedicated fans]].

===The Books===

'''The Good EU'''
[[Image: Heir-to-the-empire-cover.jpg|right|200px|thumb|Heir to the Empire (1991): The book that started it all]]
* '''The Thrawn Trilogy''': The origination point for the EU despite not being the first Star Wars books published, and focuses on the conflict with the Imperial remnants left over after RotJ. Named for one of its two main villains, Grand Admiral Thrawn, who went on to become one of Star Wars most well-loved characters. Basically the story "The Force Awakens" wishes it was (also introduced the character Mara Jade, a sexy redhead that's everything Disney wishes Rey was and more). Revealed Lucas' ideas and concepts from abandoned drafts like the Republic capital planet Coruscant, later put into the Prequels.
* '''The Han Solo Adventures''': Star's End was the second spinoff book written and the first good one. Hit store shelves before Empire Strikes Back was even in theaters. Han and Chewie are trying to get some work done on the Falcon and get volun-told to bust out some political prisoners to pay for it. The Z-95 Headhunter fighter comes from this one. Would have made for a better film than ''Solo'' did.
*'''The Darth Bane Trilogy''': The origin of the Rule of Two for the Sith, along with a compelling protagonist and his apprentice.
* '''Cloak of Deception''': Luceno's prequel to the prequels, a political thriller, much more focused than ''The Phantom Menace''. Foreshadows ''Clones'' characters.
* '''Shatterpoint''': The Mace Windu spinoff, ''Heart of Darkness'' style with Samuel Jackson playing the Charles Marlow role. Windu cracks off lines like "we're going to beat him like a rented gong".
* '''Revenge of the Sith''': The novelization is actually considered a serious improvement over the movie itself (which is already widely considered to be the best of the prequels themselves). Provides brilliant views into Anakin's psyche and motivations over the course of the film, culminating in the single best description of what it is like to be Vader ever.
* '''Darth Plagueis''': Shows how Palpatine becomes a Sith Lord under his mentor. Less Star Wars than Star Politics, which is a good thing for this particular story. Very much a "by the fans for the fans" type book, in that it is '''''filled''''' with easter eggs, lore dumps, and other things that, if you're a hard-core lore buff, you'll love, and if you're not, you'll probably confused as fuck. So a great novel for the die-hards, but a lot denser/harder to get into for the casuals.
* '''Jedi Apprentice''': That Qui-Gon / Obi-Wan series for kids, started by Dave Wolverton and continued by Jude Watson over a near-flawless run of eight books, until Xanatos (Qui-Gon's apprentice before Obi-Wan gone bad) bites it and there's no focused villain anymore. What a waste we barely got to see this relationship in the movie.

'''The Bad EU'''
* '''Jedi Academy Trilogy''': Luke sets up his academy on Yavin IV and tries to teach [[Rage|Kyp Durron]]. Imperial remnant superweapons hit [[Mary Sue|ludicrous territory]] with the Sun Crusher. This was the beginning of Kevin J Anderson (already infamous for fucking up [[Dune]]'s EU) hammering out a couple dozen Star Wars books over about four years. As for Kyp himself, he would go on to become a [[Skub|polarizing figure in-universe and out]].
* '''Young Jedi Knights Series''': Set between Jedi Academy and New Jedi Order, mostly follows Han & Leia's kids. Unfortunately, for some odd reason, [[Fail|Jaina Solo was frequently saddled with a damsel in distress role despite being the daughter of one of fiction's most famous feminist icons]].
* '''I, Jedi''': A retelling of the Jedi Academy Trilogy (see above) with more of Corran Horn from the first set of X-Wing books. Less derp in general but significantly more [[Mary Sue]]age of Horn.
* '''Legacy of the Force''': The survivors of the Yuuzhan Vong War are trying to rebuild the galaxy, but Jacen Solo turns Sith and becomes the main villain. The book series is infamous for nearly killing the Star Wars brand and issues between various writers years before Disney went down the same road (Jacen Solo was also a major influence for Kylo Ren). The biggest complaints were Jacen killing off Mara, villains having plot armor, heroes acting out of character, poor dialogue, long-winded writing and the story being overstuffed with allusions to post 9/11 US culture and politics. Given that Star Wars (especially under Lucas), has always been informed by political events of past and present, that last one ''could'' have been interesting, but a better writer was needed. Overall, the only things this series usually gets any credit for is Jaina Solo finally getting out of her damsel in distress role and becoming a badass worthy of her parents, and her brother turning into a solid Sith villain in Darth Caedus.
* '''Revan Novel''': More "disappointing" than terrible, but for a novel centering on one of the most beloved EU Star Wars characters of all time, it was generally seen as a huge letdown. Problems include a dearth of action (including for Revan himself), the Jedi Exile getting killed off in a way that felt tailor-made to piss off as many KotoR II fans as possible, and with almost none of Revan's companions from the first game getting more than a simple mention. [[Wat|Revan even decides not to bring Jolee and HK-47 on his mission because the former is a Jedi who would be obligated to report him to the Council, and the latter is too "unstable"]], [[Derp|even though HK is totally loyal to Revan and so wouldn't do anything Revan told him not to do, while Jolee is established as being a maverick who doesn't agree with the Council and so wouldn't just tattle on Revan]]. That the novel was written by the lead writer of the first Knights of the Old Republic game just makes the disappointment sting even more.

'''The [[Skub]] EU'''
* '''Shadows of the Empire''': This multimedia earns pride-of-place as the most-canon of all the EU content, and as being ''an unfocused mess''. ''Shadows'' fills in the details of where the Rebels got the Death Star II's plans and found where Han was taken; it also had Luke building his own saber, ''etc'', as if it mattered. Since there was a game involved, and since Lucas' team didn't think things through very well, we got introduced to some bounty hunter by the name of Dash Rendar who is just another Han Solo except one we don't care about (he's no Katarn, that's for sure). It was all a Major Multimedia Event at the time (being thought of by the folks behind it as "a movie without a movie"), including a soundtrack and an uneven video game which we'll get to. The game was why Rendar even exists: he's your avatar. The Special Edition rerelease of ''A New Hope'' added the Outrider to the background of one scene. Oh right: and there's a book. Steve Perry wrote it. It's notable for Xizor the ultra sexy crime boss; he comes close to porking Leia, but she evades his wiles. We guess that's why LucasArts didn't pick Crispin to write it. Told an interesting story, and helped expand the criminal underworld aspect of Star Wars. It just needed more cohesion and consistency between the different mediums.
[[Image: Yuuzhan-vong-eu2_bg.jpg|right|200px|thumb|The Yuuzhan Vong, [[Skub|either badass and interesting or grimderp canon-defiling villains]]]]
* '''New Jedi Order''': The longest-running Star Wars book series (19 books long) and about an extragalactic invasion and the Jedi's role in fighting it. Luke and his wife Mara are training new Jedi, including Han and Leia's kids, while Han and Leia build bridges between the New Republic and Imperial Remnants. Cue the invaders, the Yuuzhan Vong - [[Culexus|Force-null]] [[Imperium of Man|religious fanatics]] with [[Tyranids|organic technology]] and a fixation on [[Dark Eldar|pain and body modification]]. The resulting war sees a body count rivalling anything in Warhammer 40k including Chewie's death (they dropped a fucking moon on him), Han and Leia's youngest son going nuclear and Admiral Ackbar. Mara gives birth to Ben Skywalker and overcomes a terminal illness. The Vong take over and [[Tyranids|terraform]] part of the galaxy, including Coruscant, and lots is learned about the Force. A real love-it-or-hate-it series, some parts are good, some are bad and some are weird.
* '''Dark Empire''': Palpatine's back to save a dying franchise decades before Disney tried it. He even uses clone bodies to do so (but unlike Disney, Dark Horse didn't flip-flop on the lore), wrecks a fleet of enemy ships using the Force and at some point has his power reflected back at him. Starts off good, falls apart fast. Known for its love-it-or-hate-it artstyle and dialogue. Original version of Episode 9.
* '''Courtship of Princess Leia''': Deals with another Imperial remnant, where a Queen who could be potential ally against the Imperials offers a deal which hinges on Leia marrying her prince son. In response, Han sorta-kinda (totally) kidnaps Leia. Luke teams up with the prince in question (who's a bit of a Jedi fanboy but basically a competent officer) to find them. This one introduced the planet Dathomir and the force witches the Nightsisters, which were ultimately adapted to be Maul's homeworld.
* '''X-Wing''': A long running series that passed between several authors that followed Wedge and his squad post RotJ. Initially focused on the liberation of Coruscant and was solid if formulaic, but eventually spiraled off into skub territory. Generally speaking, the action sequences and space battles are quite good but the characterisation falls flat, ranging from 'three-words stereotypes' to 'utter cringe'. Also tends to over-abuse Deus Ex Machina shenanigans to allow the good guys escaping the villain's ''Perfect Plan One-Billionth To Ensure Their Bloody Demise''™. Did have some clever ideas like fitting a station with hundreds of torpedo targeting sensors to bluff a star destroyer into surrendering.
* '''Fate of the Jedi''': Want some Cthulhu with your Star Wars? Luke, his son Ben, Leia and the remaining Jedi work to counter anti-Jedi backlash following the events of LotF while Han takes a bigger role in politics. Things go from bad to worse when several Jedi suffer mysterious shared bouts of psychosis and an ancient Sith tribe emerges from hiding. Things then go from worse to cosmic horror when both sides encounter Abeloth, a yandere, Lovecraftian Force entity so dangerous the Jedi and the Sith have to ''team up'' to fight her (yes really!). But Abeloth escapes her prison, and both sides have to stop her before she plunges the Force and the galaxy into chaos. During these events, Ben Skywalker finds himself in a Batman/Catwoman situation with the Sith apprentice Vestara Khai. While being an OoM better than the preceding book series, FotJ has a very divided opinion among SW fans.
* '''The Paradise Snare''': AC Crispin's first book (1997) in a new Han trilogy, an ANH prequel this time. Han escapes his Oliver Twist youth ("F8GAN", LOL). He ends up in a "spice" (LOL) operation because it was the late 1990s and we were all reciting "D.A.R.E., Drugs Are Bad Mmkay" in school before heading off to raves at night. Young Harrison Ford shuts down this particular hacienda; with the help of Crispin's self-insert, who then gets to bounce on his lap. Those readers who could ignore the cringe, and we admit there was a ''lot'' of cringe from several directions, were generally entertained. It was all a bit episodic for a film but, again, that didn't stop the Rat House from scrapping it and filming what they filmed instead... which was ''also'' episodic and full of cringe.

'''The Not EU'''
* '''Splinter of the Mind's Eye''': By Alan Dean Foster, apparently short on cash at the time, it’s the now-aborted sequel to ''Star Wars'' before anyone, even Georgie himself, knew what was coming in ''Empire Strikes Back''. Therein lies a tale. A long time ago, in the far far away production of the first movie, no one knew that Star Wars would be a hit, with many seeing it as a bloated costly flop, and even Mr Lucas expecting a mid-level success at best. So the flannel-wearer mooted multiple sequel plans: [proto-]''Empire'' was one, if he'd been allowed the budget; while ''Splinter'' was much smaller in scale, with a single planet with only a few locations, a much simpler plot, etc. Since novelization usually starts during or before production (the ''New Hope'' novelization includes deleted scenes!), this book represents a C-tier movie that never was. So: what did we get? [[Incest Smith|chemistry]] between Luke and Leia, and Darth Vader being defeated [[Fail|by being tripped into a pit]]. So this was one of the first EU stories, although with ''Empire'' and especially ''Return of the Jedi'' it's been retconned off-canon entirely. It tends to be read by ''SW'' autists who wonder What Could Have Been.
* '''Dark Forces''': The novelisation of the games, starring Kyle Katarn. Pretty good writing except for the action scenes, which are rote accounts of the missions in-game. At the time Katarn wasn't considered a canon character and the first game, proposing yet another heist of the Death Star Plans, was explicitly ''disavowed'' as canon. As time went on LucasArts warmed up at least to Katarn who, unlike Dash Rendar, acquired a personality.
* '''Heart of the Jedi''': One of the earliest post-ROTJ books to be commissioned by Lucasfilm after the success of '''Heir to the Empire''', it was cancelled due to publisher issues sometime in 1993. Rereleased in 2021 to tremendous sales success for what is essentially fanfiction. Takes place immediately after the events of ROTJ (so, replaced by '''Truce at Bakura''' both in the timeline and the publishing schedule) and features early takes on many later EU novel staples.

== Disney Canon ==
{{skubby}}
[[Image:Star_Wars_Disney_Princesses.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Love it or hate it, they are now official ''Disney Princesses''.]]
It's still [[skub|debatable]] whether or not the new Canon holds up to the old EU, or learns to fix the problems that plagued it. We probably won't see what comes of it for decades to come. Disney Canon, as of 2020, seems to largely be built around the nine main movies though there have been growing rumors of a shakeup that may render the Disney trilogy non-canon due to severe backlash and financial losses. There's also shows like Rebels and Clone Wars alongside anthology movies fleshing out stories that had been told in comics and books back before the Disney buy-up, but can now be seen on film.

Another curious thing is that elements of the old EU are being annexed into the Disney Canon. Plotlines like the Emperor returning, the Death Star plans heist and Han's path to become the smuggler we know him as all have bits and pieces from EU canon in them. In some cases, whole characters are ported in; the best example is Admiral Thrawn, who appears in Rebels. Other times, popular characters has their traits or stories ported into new ones (Finn and Cassian are both expies of Kyle Katarn, for example). This gives some credence to the argument that Lucasfilms and Disney wanted to wipe the slate with all the stories that had been told in the EU, so they could create their own, fully realized canon Star Wars setting that one could make movies - ''many'' movies - from. Considering the amount of shitty fan-fiction-esque stories the EU had, this may be for the best, but of course, good storylines that people have loved for ages are also thrown out with the bathwater.

Detractors of Disney-era Star Wars often talk loads about how many cool characters are either cannibalized for story elements (like Kyle Katarn) or completely removed from canon (like Mara Jade). These are semi-valid arguments of course, but they ignore some of the biggest issues with the EU originally - it wasn't written by George Lucas and Lucasfilms. They were sponsored fan-fiction in a sense, semi-canon from the outset and not really something that could be considered a part of the Star Wars setting, though George Lucas did work with the writers to a point, such as with the New Jedi Order book series (he gave them permission to kill off Chewbacca in the story). In fact, George never really considered them part of the universe; more like a parallel universe of his own Star Wars works. He accepted it because they bring in the big bucks when people would beg to have the official Star Wars logo on anything they produced, and occasionally lifted neat ideas like Coruscant from them.

The biggest universal complaints have been around story telling. Operation Cinder and the Battle of Jakku have been a nightmare of lore and sooo many retcons exist because of the lack of creative focus and control on the part of post-Endor lore. This has been fixed partially by the Mandalorian but it has been a shit load of retcons. One example being the multiple changes between books, with some stating Palps could not come back, but also he can, but he is also a clone..... and you can see why people think this has been a disaster.

Toxic fan groups have also been a problem with the Sequel Trilogy Fans and Sequel Trilogy Haters picking fights. Other toxic fan groups exist such as a really annoying and pretentious group of fans who do not believe in redemption (a key concept in Star Wars), and no interest in stories around morally grey groups (Bounty Hunters and Criminals). Then you have that one group of really hostile fans who think anyone who likes Imperials like Pealleon and Thrawn are "Simperials", "Holocaust Deniers" and Nazis. On the flip side, you also have those faction extremist groups which believe in either pledging themselves to [[Pol|the Empire]] or [[SJW|the Rebels]] despite them being fake factions from a fictional universe. Some people do these things ironically but then you have people actually believing the kool-aid they drink, resulting in flame wars, pointless vitriol, and the occasional bit of IRL harassment when the hardcore nutters go at each other. Both sides have normals, but crazy and stupid fans cause a lot of problems and some dumb discord, reddit, and general fan groups are really fucking annoying. Generally speaking it is not a major problem but it is simply more trash popped on top of a waste pile.

One case for the sequel trilogy is that, as underwhelming as it may be, was George's idea in broad strokes. The series was always going to have a sequel trilogy, and George Lucas was in fact putting the production for it together, having secured Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to reprise their roles when Disney made the offer. The outcome isn't exactly what he (or we) wanted, but some of it is. Luke being an exile on a far-away planet, who has to be roused to fight by a new, female Jedi? George's idea, not Disney's. A son of Han and Leia struggling with the Dark Side? Also George's idea (though Disney lifted a lot form the original version - Jacen Solo - for Kylo Ren). The weakness of this defense is that most things, including almost all of the skub, is different. The central conflict is scrappy rebels vs empire again instead of taking back the republic infrastructure from organized crime and warlords led by a galactic kingping (originally intended to be Maul). Luke doesn't train the new female Jedi, just gives her a quick fact-check, keels over in 8, and not only does not rebuild the Jedi Order but essentially has to admit to ghost of Yoda he was never much of a Jedi to begin with, his character so completely different it made Mark Hamill spontaneously christen the character Jake Skywalker, a name some parts of the fandom embrace today. Leia abandons the Republic in disgust instead of becoming the Supreme Chancelor, and the Republic stops active resistance to the Empire only to get the Alderaan treatment.

The claim wasn't helped by J.J. Abrams' and Rian Johnsson's repeated assertions that they were given free reing over 7 and 8, and was completely sunk by Bob Iger's autobiography admitting that the story treatments of Lucas were abandoned, and that Lucas felt betrayed by it. Multiple writers and directors not working together led to the suicidal Rise of Skywalker where even the actors were just lost. It also emerged that John Boyega got side-winded along with Oscar Isaac - especially in the versions edited for China ([https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5d012f8e250000ae13dceab1.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale&format=webp compare and contrast]) - which is ironic/hypocritical from a company claiming to promote diversity. There are a lot of problems none the less. (Although according to Boyega, it was Disney racial treatments shafting him and Kelly Marie Tran's characters developments and social media attacking his race character.)

It should be noted that the TV shows below are either now part of the Disney canon (such as the 2008 Clone Wars series), or made by Disney. There is also a major Star Wars project called Star Wars: The High Republic. It's an upcoming multimedia project spanning books and comics worked on by various writers including Claudia Gray and Cavan Scott ([[Warhammer Adventures|yes, ''that'' Cavan Scott]]). The stated goal is to tell one cohesive story set in the High Republic Era, two centuries prior to Phantom Menace. It was slated for a 2020 release but was pushed back to 2021, purportedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic (purportedly because they could still work on the story from home in this day and age but have chosen to extend the deadline) and the first comics were released to tepid reception. However so far less interest has existed around the High Republic because of a combination of lack of trust with fans and the fact its not a time frame anyone cares for (which granted, is due to it being a newly established time frame). More people are interested in Post-Endor, Clone Wars Era, Imperial Era, and the Old Republic Era. Still, some are glad that they are finally doing something new. Overall, High Republic has been mostly under the radar, not really generating strong feelings either way (definitely not compared to things like The Mandalorian or The Sequel Trilogy). The release of a video game set in the timeframe called "Star Wars: Eclipse" might help to give this era more exposure and popularity, assuming the game's any good.

So for better or worse, the Disney Canon is the first time the wider setting of Star Wars beyond the series and movies have become irrevocably canon, rather than "kinda-sorta-canon". Much, but importantly not all, of what we've gotten that is new is based roughly on George's own work as well. Remember this when discussing EU vs Disney in Star Wars - Either setting is cool for their own reasons, but the Mouse got little to do with it - and if you don't like it, bring it up with big man Lucas.

Whatever the case, CEO Big Iger briefly resigned in 2019... before being brought back in 2020 following severe financial and PR losses for Disney due to comparatively poor reception of the Disney canon, controversial statements from Disney staff against fans and shutdowns related to the global coronavirus pandemic. Disney preceded to rebuild that goodwill and hope with The Mandalorian, only for two later events to undermine it.

The first big problem was Disney's controversial handling of a situation involving leading actress from "The Mandalorian", Gina Carano, culminating in Gina being fired for political reasons regarding a social media post (not her first controversial post, [[Skub|though other actors - including ones from Disney projects - have posted similar or worse things from the opposite side of the political aisle '''without''' being fired for it...]]), which even comparatively neutral news outlets like Newsweek and Forbes called Disney out on. The second was several poor quality media projects such as a comic series where one of the characters is an alien who's [[Derp|essentially a rock named "Geode" that crews a spaceship named "Vessel".]] There have been massive rumblings of change and even a civil war in Disney-owned Lucasfilm between factions of staff supporting producers/directors Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau and staff supporting Lucasfilm president/film producer Kathleen Kennedy. Recent hints and events have suggested that Kathleen Kennedy's influence has been restricted, with Filoni and Faverau spearheading projects.

Things have also been not helped by evidence of fan art being stolen by Marvel Comics writers who then used them lazily in comics, posters, and other media. The fan relations are still very low with the exception of people like Timothy Zahn, Dave Filoni, and Jon Favreau. Common speculation on the major develops include rumors of a retcon of sequel trilogy but little evidence exists except for the planned project combining Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, The Bad Batch, and possibly Andor and Obi-Wan.

So far most fans are excited for the following:
*The Bad Batch
*Ahsoka
*Thrawn
*Mandalorians
*Anything not involving the First Order. (Seriously this group is just not liked by the fans at all, not even Sequel trilogy fans in a "Love to Hate" kind of way)

Speculation has emerged around why these TV Shows and series are doing well and a few theories exist. Some point to the presence of a Old Guard from the days of George Lucas and his apprentice/Protégé Dave Filoni, though some fans dispute this believing Filoni was a hack. Others point to a presence of care for the lore and the characters. Stormtroopers in the Mandalorian are not stupidly incompetent (They actually hit Mando even though he has literal plot armor) but decent troopers who are only beat by lucky and sheer offensive capabilities, characters like Boba Fett, Ahsoka Tano, and Darth Maul are given more development and respect as characters, and the stories feel like Star Wars. This leads to the generally accepted theory, which is Star Wars stories from these series are based on classic film styles. The Mandalorian is a Western with some episodes taking a more Japanese and Asian Fight film with Samurai style fight scenes and themes. The Bad Batch bases itself on Old War films and with elements of Westerns present. Overall a pattern emerges where the star wars presentation of classic and traditional story themes, motifs and concepts allows it to keep itself Star Wars and good quality overall.

Notably, the mini-wars over what in Disney Star Wars is good and what isn't is not as clean-cut as one might assume. While it is true that the thoughts on the Sequel Trilogy (mostly) fell along fan/critic divides, this isn't true of other things. Book of Boba Fett for instance, got flak from both corners, as did Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Episode 9, which got the worst critic reviews of ''any'' Skywalker Saga movie, is also plenty hated by a lot of the fans. This makes complaints by both groups about the franchise pandering to the other side somewhat ironic, as many fans and critics actually like and hate some of the same stuff.

December 2020 announced several new films and TV series, as well as further information about already announced things. The stuff already out includes:

* '''[[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]]''': Live-action series that started in 2019. Unsurprisingly, Season 3 is on it's way and will release in 2022.
* '''The Bad Batch''': Animated series and a spin-off of The Clone Wars. Focuses on the titular clone commando unit that was introduced in the last season of The Clone Wars, set during Republic's transition into the Empire. They are forced to look after “Omega,” which has the potential to bring back the cloning project at the cost of her life. For full details, see its page.
* '''Visions''': 2021 [[Anime]] anthology-series made by different anime studios across Japan. 10 episodes, two by studios Trigger and Science SARU and the other episodes one for each studio. Released to a strongly positive reception from critics and fans, showing that the non-divisive nature of The Mandalorian was not necessarily a fluke. Getting a second season, one that will not be strictly Anime like the first but instead have animation styles from all over.
* '''The Book of Boba Fett''': 2021 live-action series, revealed post-credits in the last episode of The Mandalorian Season 2, which had Boba Fett returning to Jabba's palace, kill everyone inside and then sit on his old boss's throne. Out of the the things that have come out after the sequel trilogy, it proved to be the most [[skub|skubtastic]] thing thus far.
* '''Obi-Wan Kenobi''': Live-action series featuring the return of Ewan McGregor as the titular character set 10 years after Revenge of the Sith. Proved to be somewhat [[skub|skubtastic]] (not in small part due to the original pitch being for a 2-hour movie, which would have been more than sufficient), though not to the degree of The Book of Boba Fett.

The upcoming stuff includes:
* '''Ahsoka''': Live-action series by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni (the chads responsible for The Mandalorian, the latter also responsible for [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]], [[Star Wars:Rebels|Rebels]] and the character of Ahsoka (and [[Star Wars:Resistance|Resistance]] but [[heresy|let's not talk about that]])) featuring the titular fan favorite character who made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian Season 2, starring Rosario Dawson and is a spin-off of The Mandalorian and will have cross-overs with it. Though not officially confirmed, is highly likely to feature the live-action debut of [[tactical genius|Thrawn]], who was name-dropped by Ahsoka in The Mandalorian as her quarry. Release date unknown but is confirmed to run only for one season. Her Lekku will actually be the correct length after [[/tg/ gets shit done|fan complaint]] from the Mandalorian.
* '''Rangers of the New Republic''': <s>Live-action series and another spin-off of The Mandalorian, again by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni and is said to have cross-overs with The Mandalorian and Ahsoka. Not much is known at the moment but the name tells us at that it would focus on the titular galactic government, something we still don't know much about due to the world-building fuck-up of the sequel trilogy. Release date unknown. </s> Cancelled / put on hold, likely due to ties being cut with Gina Carano (who was expected to have a major role) after controversies regarding her tweets.
* '''Andor''': Live-action series and a spy-thriller focusing on the titular character who was introduced in Rogue One. Seems to have a more grounded take on Star Wars, focusing on rise of the Empire from the perspective of regular citizens instead of Jedi or soldiers. Release in 2022.
* '''The Acolyte''': Live-action series set during the High Republic-era, a thus-far unexplored era 100-300 years before the original movie during which the Republic was at it's peak. Release date unknown.
* '''A Droid Story''': Animated series featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO and a new character, possibly a droid as well. That is all we know for now but will likely be targeted towards kids, just like the animated series Droids from the 80s that it seems to be inspired by. Release date unknown.
* '''Lando''': Live-action series focusing on the titular character. Not much known aside from that at the moment, not even will it feature Billy-Dee Williams or Donald Glover. Release date unknown.
* '''Rogue Squadron''': <s> Live-action film, the first one after the sequels. Will feature the titular elite starfighter squadron and is directed by Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman (but also [[RAGE|writer and director of Wonder Woman 1984]]). Will it focus on the Rogue Squadron from EU led by Wedge Antilles or will it be completely different remains to seen. Release in 2023. </s> Cancelled (at least for now), so it looks like we'll never know (but if it was anything like WW84, maybe for the best).
* '''Film by Taika Waititi''': Nothing about it is known at the moment except that it is happening, it is live-action and will be directed by Taika Waititi of Thor: Ragnarök-fame who also played IG-11 in The Mandalorian and directed the last episode of the first season. Makes fans nervous because his latest project, Thor: Love and Thunder, was trash. Release likely in either 2024 or 2025.
* '''The Skeleton Crew''': Just announced at the 2022 Star Wars Celebration, it will feature Jude Law and be about a bunch of kids who are stranded somewhere in the Galaxy and trying to find their way back home. Nothing else is known yet, [[Star_Trek#Prodigy|but we're sure we haven't seen this idea before.]]
* The Rian Johnsson trilogy: Anounced during the hype-up to The Last Jedi, we have been repeatedly assured it is coming.

===The Fan / Critic War: Overhyped?===

Ever since The Last Jedi came out to rave reviews from most critics and the complete opposite from most of the fanbase, a popular narrative has been that fans and critics [[Horus Heresy|are completely and utterly at odds and can't agree on anything.]] But while this is definitely true in the case of Episode VII and VIII, how true it is outside of that is kind of questionable when you think about it. Pretty much everyone hates Episode IX for instance, and The Mandalorian has been a hit with critics and fans alike (as was Star Wars: Visions). Meanwhile, Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi got mediocre responses overall from most critics and were not generally loved by many fans either, with only some positive responses from both camps. Rogue One is usually seen by most critics and fans as either "good but not great midquel" or "fantastic and edgy masterpiece", with folks who outright hate it being in the minority for both, while Solo: A Star Wars Story got a tepid response from most critics and isn't most fan's favorite Star Wars movie. Finally, the more recent Andor has done well with critics and with fans overall.

This seems to extend to video games as well: critics called out EA for its bullshit when Battlefront II launched with microtransactions, and gave Jedi: Fallen Order overall good reviews, which lines up with how most fans felt.

In all, it doesn't seem like there's actually ''that'' much of a gap between the two groups outside of the Sequel Trilogy itself. In theory, this ''should'' mean it's possible to make more stuff everyone likes, but the feud is likely to keep going anyway.

==Wookieepedia==
One of the largest fan wikis ever created, this bad boy is extensively cited, has enormous variety, and has page upon page of talk. It was if Lexicanum, the 40k fan wiki, and our own glorious site were fused into a terrible beast. Is well cited, but is most notable among fan circles for having a picture of Aayla Secura top naked under the article "Breast". Any attempt to remove the page for relevance reasons is met with [[BLAM|appropriate responses]].

In all seriousness, the website is great. It is full of ads, but adblocks are easy to get and you can spend hours reading about characters, planets, and weapons from all over the star wars universe. Has an entire non-canon section, much like Wikitroid.

==Impact on 1d4chan and associated games etc==

Star Wars has had subtle and clear impacts on a number of other franchises and genres and it can be ''incredibly'' hard to gauge the extent of it all. Certainly it didn't create the concepts of sci-fi, space battles, sweeping storylines, and a blending of mystical and scientific ideas, but it certainly popularized them during the years of the original trilogy and influenced many people that would go on to have interests in sci-fi, fantasy and epic adventure today.

Hell, look me in the eye and tell me that the lightsaber didn't give us the [[power weapon]]. But then again, magic weapons.
==Sabacc and Pazaak==
[[Image:Idiots_Array.jpg|left|400px|thumb|When a damn fool bets the ship, nothing beats the smugness in laying down an Idiot's Array]]
A rather unusual entry here but it's well in line, Sabacc is an actual tabletop card game from the Star Wars universe which is basically a hybrid of Poker and Blackjack. A Sabacc Deck has 80 cards, most of which in four suits of 16 cards numbered one to 16 (two suits positive, two suits negative), plus 16 wildcards that could be positive/negative or (in the case of the Idiot) Zero. The goal of the game is to have a set of three cards who's total as close as possible to, but not over, 23 or -23. If you got 23/-23 (Pure Sabacc) which could only be beaten by an Idiot's Array (the Idiot, a Two and a Three, thus 23). The stakes are raised every cycle until the cards go down or one player is left standing who gets the pot. Like most card games there are variations, such as a single suit hand beating a mixed hand of equal value, light beating dark, dark beating light, instant tiebreaker with new hands in the case of a tie; one variation even uses dice (presumably to set a handicap the hand has to overcome).

The notable thing about Sabacc that sets it apart from real world card games is that the Cards can change value every turn. A Pure Sabacc can easily become an instant lose 25 and an absolutely lousy hand can become an Idiot's Array. They can be stabilized to fix their value, but everyone knows when you do so. This feature has so far prevented Sabacc from being released in tabletop form as of yet. ''(Of course, there are ways to deal with this, such as simply re-dealing unfixed cards, but never let it be said that nerds will choose practicality over purity.)''

It should also be noted that you CAN buy a version of Sabaac from Disney (this writer got his set at Disney World) but it plays differently in that cards do not change value and the goal is to be as close to 0 as possible. It has cool cards too.

In universe, Han Solo won the Millenium Falcon off Lando in a game of Sabacc.

Pazaak is an older game from an in-universe perspective, similar to Blackjack but its player versus player rather than player versus dealer and also has some aspects of a collectible card game. Goal of the game is to raise cards from the main deck until their total value is 20 or they can also choose to stand if they get close but don't want to risk it. Best out of five wins.

CCG-aspect of Pazaak comes from the sidedeck: both players collect ten cards for their side deck and then randomly take four cards from their side deck to their hand in the beginning of the game. Hand cards are used to either lower or raise the total value: so if the player raises cards from the main deck to the total value of 25, they can prevent dropping out if they have a -5 card or higher in their hand.
Cards which only either raise or lower the value are the most common of the side cards.
More rarer are cards which can be used to both raise and lower the value.
Then there are flip cards, which change certain main deck cards on the table to negative ones. So if the player plays a 2&4 flip card, all 2:s and 4:s on the table become -2:s and -4:s. Flip cards exist in 2&4:s and 3&6:s.
Then there is the double card, which doubles the value of the last played card. So if the player raises a 5 from the main deck, playing the double card would turn it into a 10.
Finally, the rarest side deck card is the tiebreaker, which grants the player a win if the game would otherwise end in a tie.

==Tabletop games for Star Wars==

=== Role-playing Games ===

[[West End Games]] made a Star Wars [[role-playing game]] called [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] AKA '''Star Wars D6'''. Like many West End products, it's a good game with the great misfortune of being published by West End Games.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] picked up the license later and made two distinct RPGs based on their [[d20 System]], called [[Star Wars D20]] (imaginatively). Could be fun, but generally broken as hell, much like [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition|its parent game]]. It was then utterly revised that into what they called the '''Saga Edition''', which is relatively balanced and pretty good.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is presently selling [[Star Wars Roleplaying Game|a whole line of Star Wars-themed RPGs]], each one focusing on a specific style of play. You want to play a bunch of scruffy space outlaws (Edge of the Empire), members of the nascent Rebellion (Age of Rebellion), or exiled Jedi Knights (Force and Destiny), then they got you covered. Unlike their [[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay]] games, which are all ''juuuuust'' different enough from one another to completely buttfuck any attempts at blending, all three gamelines use identical mechanics and are fully cross-compatible. Uses symbol-counting [[dice pool]]s with ludicrously overpriced custom dice.
Like the other RPGs they decided with the retardedly similar name, and thus this one is sometimes called '''Star Wars FFG''' to avoid confusion.

FFG have kept milking the franchise and in summer 2017, decided to [[Necromancer|reanimate]] the [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game]] with a "30th Year Anniversary Edition" print of the original game. It '''''finally''''' shipped in July 2018 after spending a year in limbo.

Unofficially, a fan overhaul of the [[Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition]] system exists, called [https://sw5e.com/ Star Wars 5e]. To put it short, it is a considerable rework with a good lot more features and more customization when compared to 5E but is ultimately constrained by some of the system's inherent limitations.

=== Card Games ===

The big [[card game]] set in the Star Wars universe is the [[Star Wars Customizable Card Game]]. It's no longer produced by Decipher, but there is still a sufficiently large player community to organize annual tournaments, rule on cards, and so on. SWCCG was radically different from the norm of card games, being divided into light and dark side cards with different backings, with light and dark always playing against each other. For tournament play a player would need both a light and dark deck. The gameplay was also radically different from most CCGs; in Magic terms the closest analog would be that every SWCCG deck was fundamentally a mill deck, with some hard to assemble insta-win combos themed to the plots of the movies.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] made the [[Star Wars Trading Card Game]]. It is now dead.

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] made [[Star Wars: Destiny CCG]]. It is also now dead.

Obviously, nobody is capable of creating a Star Wars card game with an interesting name.

Aside from the real, physical, games there was also ''Star Wars Galaxies Trading Card Game''. It was a real, functioning, card game within the MMO that used all virtual cards. Unfortunately no server emulators have implemented it yet.

=== Miniature Games ===

The first Star Wars miniatures game was ''Star Wars Miniature Battles'' released by West End Games in 1989. It and the minis were readily available through the early half of the 1990's, although the line was never particularly diverse. Even accounting for vehicles the whole line was only a couple dozen figures and you could get all the rebel heroes in a single box if you just wanted them for the RPG, plus a another box for Vader and a mix of imperials.

Concurrent to this, Galoob managed to get their hands on Star Wars for their Micro Machines toy line, and released an '''enormous''' line of minis which conformed to no consistent scale but were at least cheap, durable, and prepainted. Homebrew adaptations of other systems to use them were a thing in the 90's but vanished as they became scarce.

[[Wizards of the Coast]] did a tabletop battles game imaginatively called Star Wars: Miniatures, based on an extremely dumbed down version of the D&D ruleset. The figures were meant to tie in with the Saga edition RPG, it wasn't terrible on its own, just impossible to collect for competitive play since figures came in random booster packs so you never know what you were getting for what faction. Who could possibly stand for that?

[[Fantasy Flight Games]] is producing the [[X-Wing]] miniatures game based on individual starfighter combat (because, let's be honest, that's what ''Star'' Wars is all about). They have also released [[Star Wars: Armada]] which is a larger scale "fleet" combat simulator, using capital ships and squadrons of starfighters.

'''Star Wars: Imperial Assault'''

The latest [[Fantasy Flight Games]] addition to its Star Wars related games is a mix between a miniature board game and a skirmish wargame. It has two play modes:

One for campaign play where 1-4 players control a team of Rebel heroes and another player has the role of the DM, who controls the Imperial forces. The campaign, as the name suggests, focuses on character personalization, xp gain and the like, which you can find in any light RPG-esque (board)game. The main goal is to get a few friends together and casually play through the missions. Think of it as a Star Wars version of the original [[Hero Quest]].

The other play mode is skirmish play, where two players each get to assemble a team of miniatures plus a command deck (cards that have specific effects when played) and play against each other in an open-play scenario. The play area is still very limited to a few game tiles (as in a campaign mission) but players are free to bring whatever they want (with a few limitations of course). The skirmish part of Imperial assault is as close as you can get to an actual Star Wars skirmish wargame, but it is a missed opportunity from Fantasy Flight to create a true skirmish wargame (ala [[Infinity (wargame)|Infinity]]), not based on tiles and so confined spaces. Who knows what they have plans for though...

'''Star Wars Legion'''

And Fantasy Flight have now given us a fully fledged wargame, complete with AT-ST in the first wave. (They're 32mm scale, which means [[Games Workshop|no reusing your Imperial Assault miniatures]].) Legion has an integrated turn system, and the usual FF custom dice and forest worth of dead trees in cards and tokens that will be familiar to X-Wing and Armada players. The miniatures are PVC, reasonably detailed, easy to assemble pieces. A standard battle is 800 points, which could be anywhere from half a dozen to 16 units on the field, with an average army fielding 8-12 units comprising 30-ish models.

=== Board Games ===

The most famous and arguably best one is [[Star Wars: Rebellion]], an asymmetric two-player game that plays through the Original Trilogy in a wargame/worker placement-esque game. The Empire player must expand their already huge military base over the galaxy to build more ships and huge superweapons while searching for the Rebel Base, while the Rebels do their best to bite them in their heel, obscuring their movements and annoying the Empire until they have enough support to overthrow the Empire. As a [[Fantasy Flight Games|FFG]] boardgame, it's filled with a ludicrous amount of bits and pieces (including sweet models of Star Destroyers, Death Stars and Calamari Cruisers), as well as the trademark filled-with-small-exceptions ruleset. It's pretty sweet and still considered one of the best board games of its kind.

=== Card Miniature Games ===

In the late 00's, WizKids produced a short lived construct-able miniatures Star Wars game based on their styrene card system for Pirates of the Spanish Main. Although the game sold well, when NECA bought WizKids from Topps the rights did not transfer and it went out of print.

==Assorted list of Awesome From Star Wars==
* X-Wing starfighters = spaceborne sex
* Fucking ''[[Lightsaber|Lightsabers!]]''
* The fucking [[Approved music|OST]]
* What is likely the greatest duel in cinematic history, that takes place on a [[Death World|lava planet.]]
* Deathly Stormtroopers, heroic Clonetroopers or sinister First Order troopers; whatever they're called, stormtroopers are awesome! Contrary to popular belief, [https://youtu.be/P2TA9coGLzM shot counts have proven they have ridiculously good aim].
* Darth Vader whenever he gets a speaking line or to murder rebel scum - that is to say, all the time.
* Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, TCW and Rebels.
* Lightsaber Rifles
* The entirety of the Umbara campaign, where <s>Imperial Guardsmen</s> Clone Troopers die in the dozens attempting to win some godforsaken planet, earning them balls of titanium that make the guard look ba- {{BLAM| '''*BLAM*''' Heresy!}}, all while serving under a <s>Commissar</s> different Jedi, one who sees the Clone Troopers as cannon fodder.
** It's basically Space Vietnam, on a world which is permanently nighttime. Seriously, fucking watch it.
* 97% of the Creatures.
* 98% of the Starfighter designs.
** Hell even the bad ones are just a laugh riot. Except the (worse than) World War 2 bombers in 8, that was bad.
* Costumes that mix about every possible inspiration, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Ancient Greece and Rome, Elizabethan, Moebius or Pulp Sci-Fi from the 60's, giving the whole series a distinctive style and gives Padme Amidala an excuse to show off with all her dresses.
* Boba (before his stand-alone live-action series) and Jango Fett, and the rest of the Mandalorians (unless they're written by [[Karen Traviss]], in which case they're Skub).
* KOTOR (both games) plot making you think this shit is actually logical and has so much philosophical background. One of the creepiest depictions of the Universe. Everything is brutal, with big vibrating knives, blood, those machines for Sith snuff movies, more blood, bastards, badass bastards and so on. Everything while somebody is talking with you about existence.
* Our saviour Lord Revan. He's like if [[Horus|fucking Horus]] just became [[Big Bad Evil Guy|fucking bad enough]] (but not that [[Erebus|bad]]) to fucking destroy the [[Chaos Gods|Dark Gods]] so he can solve his daddy issues.
* Double-bladed Lightsabers.
* Lando Calrissian.
* [https://youtu.be/YJEUAe-dcGo Obi-Wan Kenobi.]
* The High Ground.
* TIE fighters. They have the most distinctive scream of any fighter in cinematic history that just yells "I'm evil!". Tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait.
** The fact that they managed to do that using what is essentially a shitty visual pun.
* Most of Episode 3.
* The entirety of Anakin's story, especially when you add the Clone Wars and prequels due to them expanding heavily on it. While you're at it, watch CinemaWins' perspective on it the series.
* Admiral Ackbar the Memeable!
* Palpatine getting into some Tzeentchian-level scheming and backstabbing in order to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic.
* Battle of Yavin.
* Battle of Hoth.
* Battle of Endor.
* Battle of Scariff.
* Grand Admiral Thrawn: So awesome that he rose to a high rank in the anthropocentric Empire despite being an alien and was one of the first things to be imported straight from Legends to Disney.
*Imperial Warlords: Groups of isane fuckers or tactical geniuses who formed Chinese style Warlord states. Famous ones include Ardius Kaine, Zsinj, and Trueten and Kosh Teradoc.
* [https://youtu.be/PN_CP4SuoTU Imperial Pilots] get a mention, seeing as they fly literal garbage fighters against superior rebel fighters. Yes, we are talking about the the same TIE Fighters we mentioned before. By garbage, we mean despite how cool looking and sounding TIE Fighters are, they are actually a ridiculously impractical design and the standard TIE Fighters are mass produced extremely cheaply even if they don't look like it (except Darth Vader's, which is custom made and modified by Vader himself). Even 40k's Imperium has better fighter designs. At least the Imperium's fighters conserve the life of the fucking pilot. Also, clearly super skilled since they have roughly an equal kill-death ratio with the Rebels in the movie battles.
* [https://youtu.be/T9j7kLG7VK8 Obi-Wan Kenobi. Again.]
* The Millennium Falcon has a 3D chess board, secret compartments for smuggling space cocaine and a walk in closet specifically for capes.
* Princess, later Senator Leia Organa; the original badass-yet-hot boss lady in space. Ends up leading two separate, successful underground freedom movements against impossible odds. Did we mention she's a Jedi in both canons?
** The women in the franchise in general. It would be easier to list the women in Star Wars who ''aren't'' badass, empowered warriors and/or leaders than it would be to list the ones who are.
* The trench run in ANH. Not cheering when Han flies in to save the day is heresy. Heresy is punishable by having the Death Star's main laser fired at you.
* Han Solo, who is so badass that hot Leia falls in love. He has the smuggler's best friend, a Wookie, who is also the worst opponent you can face in a [[Chess|Dejarik match]].
* Just... Star Destroyers. When you see a huge, imposing warship from an evil Empire, this is the granddaddy they all look up to.
* The moon sized space stations that zap other planets to bits? They’re pretty neat.
* Werner Herzog, asking if he can look at your baby and assuring you that he will be quiet.
* Tyber Zann, the Galaxy's greatest crime boss.
* Star Wars: Visions. Even if you aren't big on Anime, nearly all of the Visions shorts are good to great, and were exactly the sort of "think outside the box" stuff that the franchise needed after the Sequels and Solo came under fire for being too nostalgic.
* Star Wars: Eclipse's trailer. Those drums...
* Oh, did we mention the lightsabers?

== See Also: ==

* ''[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/ Darths & Droids]'': A webcomic, made using photo-stills of the ''Star Wars'' movies to tell a story about gamers blundering through each of the six movies in sequence... though not quite exactly how you might expect. Think ''DM of the Rings'' in overall visual style, though unlike ''DM of the Rings'', ''Darths & Droids'' features several heavy twists on the actual events of the films, subplots about the players and their lives outside the game alongside the campaign, and a better overall quality of gamer. Whereas ''DM of the Rings'' features a railroading DM and players who are therefore somewhat antagonistic to him, ''Darths & Droids'' has a GM who adjusts his game to his players' actions and players who generally get along with both him and each other. The plot of ''DMotR'' is very similar to that of the movies (but avoids a few plot elements), but the plot (and, indeed, the universe) of ''Darths & Droids'' is only very loosely based on the ''Star Wars'' films. (For a somewhat spoilery example: "Darth" is a courtesy title for retired Jedi, such as Chancellor Palpatine.)

* "[https://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html Endor Holocaust]": An excellent example of the [[skub]] Star Wars can create. Rebuttal: " [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/fanart/endortruth20040810.pdf Endor Rebuttal]"

* [[Timothy Zahn]]

{{Star Wars}}

[[Category: Television]]

[[Category: Star Wars]]

The Elder Scrolls

2022-11-04T02:34:27Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Other */

{{/vg/}}
[[File:Crabomancy.jpg|300px|thumb|right|During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran revived a whole city, Ald'ruhn, which was made out of shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. They lost, but it's still badass.]]
'''The Elder Scrolls''' is a [[video game|vidya]] series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game.

/tg/ also has a [[Scrollhammer|40k/WHFB hack named Scrollhammer]], [[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition|Infinity hack 2nd edition]], and a number of pen and paper games (notably [[Morrowind PNP]] and the [[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG|UESRPG]]) set in [[The Elder Scrolls]] universe. Recently, Modiphius created "The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms", which features a solid PVE game mode and reflects much of Skyrim on the tabletop (down to the Dragonborn deciding to loot everything in sight whilst their companions are slaughtered by Draugr). Currently only features models from Skyrim, but much like [[Fallout Wasteland Warfare| Wasteland Warfare]], they'll likely expand it to the other games in due time.

Its canon is notoriously unstable and intentionally 'postmodern'. Long story short: imagine every canon clusterfuck 40K has ever experienced, only there are no editions to draw a neat line between lore changes. And on at least one occasion, time has been known to break in order to allow simultaneous mutually exclusive outcomes. You know how in 40K everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true? Here, nothing is canon and everything is true, especially when it contradicts itself, so histories are intentionally interpretive and unreliable.

==Setting==
[[File:Elder_Scrolls_Cosmology.jpg|400px|thumb|right|An approximation of the cosmology of the Elder Scrolls. Not shown: mindfucks.]]
The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine separate lands. After being [[Anal Circumference|buttfucked]] by the [[Eldar|Ayleid]] for several centuries, humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. Then, a few thousand years later, a man named [[God-Emperor|Tiber]] [[Alpharius|Septim]] steps up and leads his armies to [[Great Crusade|conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire of Cyrodiil]]. But instead of exterminating all the elves and beast races, they were allowed to co-exist with the other races and a time of prosperity began, ending with the death of Emperor [[Star Trek|Jean-Luc Picard the 7th]], and [[Khorne|Mehrunes Dagon]] then began to fuck his way from [[Warp|Oblivion]] into Tamriel, starting a chain of events that resulted in him being kicked back into hell by the Emperor's lost son, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Sean Bean]].

Being Sean Bean meant he died in the process, and without an Emperor the Empire began to crumble. The Aldmeri Dominion (think Ayleid 2.0) sensed their weakness and began a war to subjugate the lesser races. The Empire only barely managed to stop them, and a tense cease-fire is currently in effect. The fluff of this series, unfortunately, suffers greatly from dissonance between written background and shown foreground due to all the shit mentioned in the intro.

There's also a bunch of other weird cosomology crap involved, but it's all kind of trippy and kind of in a grey area when it comes to canon. Don't think too much about it, unless you're into that. The setting works if you don't care for it, and it works if you do. The games themselves don't acknowledge the "deeper" lore outside some in-game books and a few references thrown in some main-story dialogue.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
If you ''do'' want to read on some of the (possibly) weirdest, at times incomprehensible, yet at times original without being ~~subversive because we can~~ lore ever written, click to open.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Creation of the world'''

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk Listen to this.] This is the main theme of Morrowind, the third game in the series. It also contains the history of the cosmology of The Elder Scrolls. Listen to it, because it's a damn fine tune. But as you listen to it, you might realise there are no spoken words in this music. So how can it tell the history of a setting? Well, sit that five-dollar ass of yours down before I make [[Tzeentch|change]].

Long ago there was an entity who had fallen deeply in love, but his brother loved the same person, so he out of jealousy killed his loved one. That brought such distress to him that he fell into a coma of sorts, he "hid in a sun" and started dreaming. Thus he became The Godhead. From his dreams sprung Anu and Padomay, Stasis and Change. These "brothers" (the term used in the loosest sense here, solely on being related but different forces) accidentally created Nir, Grey maybe, personification of creation itself. But Padomay grew jealous of the relationship between Anu and Nir and out of spite decided to break her. Nir was killed and Creation was shattered, maimed for ever. Anu then fought Padomay and they were cast out of time forever, even though they still exist and will always exist as long as there is Order and Chaos. You might have thought to yourself, "Didn't that happen twice?", yes it did. Everything in the Dream mimics original Godhead and his mind, everything comes from it. In this case Anu was avatar of the Dreamer while Padomay represented Godheads brother and Nir their shared love. Same scenario of two mirror brothers, one being force of Stasis, The King and one being force of Change, The Rebel always repeats. The souls or core concepts of Anu and Padomay on which all of creation runs are called, Anui-El (IS) and Sithis (IS NOT).

Eventually from endless energies and "blood" of Anu and Padomay came the Et'ada (Et'ada means original spirit, while Ada means just generally any spirit), each representing different idea and concepts. Et'ada tended to categorize themselves with Anu or Padomay. Auri-El, Kyne and other Et'ada who lean more towards Order are Anuic while more chaotic ones like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal are more Padomaic. Later after creation of realms those who were Anuic became Aedra, which means "our ancestor" in Ehlnofex, because Aedra took part in creation of the world we usually visit in TES games, while those Padomaic spirits who did not take part in creation and created their own solo realms became Daedra, which translates to "not our ancestor" (though that was not always the case, Jyggalag for example is a Daedra, but he is clearly Anuicly aligned.)

In the Dawn Era, time, in the shape of Akatosh (Ara, Auriel, Auri-El Tosh'Raka, AKHAT; take your pick), was non-linear. It flowed freely wherever it wanted, without direction, form of shape. In this temporal soup floated the souls of the proto-Mer. Think pea soup, except with millions of Ada of all sorts instead of peas. Time, in this form, was a single point. It was called the Ur-Tower, Ada-Mantia. Except it was not really a point or a tower, but more of a sound.

''Bom. (0:00 to 0:01 of the song)''

The Et'Ada saw it, and it was good. Except for one. A being born from Padomay who wanted no name, but eventually came to be first known as Lorkhan (LKHAN, Shor, Sep, Shezarr, maybe even Shepard). Having little interest with the rest of the Et'Ada's activities, or more likely inactivity, he spent his time wandering the Aurbis (all of existence), eventually coming to the very edge. He saw the universe, shaped like a wheel with eight spokes. Then he looked at the wheel from another perspective, and it looked like a Tower, a perfect line. An I.

"I."

This was his first word, and he would never, ever forget it. He understood everything right then and there, all of creation and its true nature was revealed to him.

Wanting to share this revelation with the other Ada but knowing that none of them would be able to comprehend it as they were, he came up with a plan for a creation and showed it to Magnus, The Grand Architect. Magnus went along with the plan and recruited the help of the Et'ada that we know as Aedra today: Akatosh, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, Zenithar and many other lesser spirits that you probably never heard of to serve as the basis of their creation. Except that they did not know this last part, Lorkhan had fooled them. Their divinity was drained into the creation, or re-creation of long shattered Nir, Nirn was born. When they discovered they were tricked the Et'Ada were [[RAGE|not amused]]. Magnus buggered off into infinity along with his servants, tearing through the edge of Mundus and creating The Sun and The Stars in the process...yeah, everything you see in sky is a giant non euclidean portal to realm of infinite energy, the original crib of Et'ada, The Aetherius. Others gave Lorkhan his due: [[RIP AND TEAR|Trinimac tore his heart out and Auriel(Elven aspect of Akatosh) shot it out over the sea]], where it landed in a spot and created a crater that would gain the moniker "Red Mountain". The halves of Lorkhan's body became the moons Masser and Secunda, [[Emperor|the last visible remnants of a corpse god.]] But this was [[just as planned]], throughout the whole thing the Heart of Lorkhan was laughing at them like a maniac, because Red Mountain was Red Tower, the second Tower, and the beat of his heart would be added to the sound of Akatosh. His Heart would become the prison for The Dragon God of Time.

''Bom bom. (0:01 to 0:07 of the song)''

This completely, utterly and irrevocably buttfucked spacetime. Because there now was a second point in existence, time could no longer flow anywhere it wanted and had to flow from Akatosh to Lorkhan. With time becoming linear, Nirn could start to grow. Aedra were drained and "dying", so they had to reproduce, create worshipers or someone that could sustain them. Slowly Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", Ada of all forms and shapes, some descendants of crazy reproduction, started popping up. Some created simple truths and laws for Nirn, for example gravity, others reproduced more, creating less energized spirits that slowly stabilized in different ways, slowly becoming mortal. They are ancestors of Humans (Men) and Elves (Mer). These Ehlnofey fortified their borders from the chaos outside, hid their pocket of calm, and attempted to live on as before. Other Ehlnofey arrived on Nirn scattered amid the confused jumble of the shattered worlds, wandering and finding each other over the years. Eventually, the wandering Ehlnofey found the hidden land of Old Ehlnofey, and were amazed and happy to find their kin and a comfy place, built by them. The wandering Ehlnofey expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm, but the Old Ehlnofey being arrogant douchebags, refused to accept their kin. Anywho, war broke out between them and raged across the whole of Nirn and sunk large part of planet in ocean. Old Ehlofney (the asshole ones), who primarly lived in Tamriel, became Elves (gee, you didn't expect that, did you?), while their kin on other continents became Humans (Yokudans, Atmorans and Akaviri/Tsaesci).

''Bom bom. (0:07 to 0:39 of the song)''

The Mer, one of the first to mortalize were [[RAGE|not pleased]] by this. They blamed Lorkhan for their predicament, naming him the Doom Drum, bringer of mortality, death and the herald of all misfortune. But they made the best out of the situation, and the races of Mer prospered. New Towers came into existence, one by one: Walk-Brass Tower, White-Gold Tower, Snow-Throat Tower, Crystal-Like-Law, Orchalc, Khajit and Tree-Sap.

''Bom bom. (0:39 to 1:19 of the song)''

But, as time went on (something new back then), more and more happened. New peoples stood up. Empires were founded and fell. The races of Men were discovered, the beast races prospered, and the Empires of Men were founded.

''Bom bom. (1:19 to 1:42 of the song)''

Yet nothing is eternal. The Thalmor, the ruling faction of the High Elves, desires nothing less than the destruction of the Doom Drum and all of creation so time once again becomes non-linear, mortality would get destroyed and they could return their eternal soup-floating. Removing Lorkhan would stop the music of existence, and everything once again becomes singular.

''Bom bom. Bom. (1:42 to 1:55 of the song)''

And then... silence.

'''On the importance of Towers'''

For every Tower there is a Stone, an artifact that can be used to activate or deactivate a Tower. For Ada-Mantia Tower this is the Moment of Creation itself (making it rather difficult to obtain), for Red Tower this is the Heart of Lorkhan and for White-Gold Tower this is the Amulet of Kings. The Towers serve many purpose besides keeping [[Homestuck|spacetime]] from becoming a massive alinear clusterfuck. What is this? Well, it's easier for you to do it yourself that for me to explain. Make yourself a print of the map of Tamriel further down on this page. Then get yourself a pin board and a black, a red, two brown, three white, and two green tacks. Put the map against the pinboard and do the following:

*Put the white tacks through the map in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil, the Throat of the World slightly south-east of Whiterun in Skyrim, and Crystal Tower in the Summerset Isles (northern part, west of King's Watch). (White-Gold, Snow-Throat and Crystal-Like-Law)
*Put the green tacks in Yokuda (exact location unknown) and in Valenwood (somewhere in the middle). (Orichalc and Tree-Sap)
*Put the brown tacks in Daggerfall (southernmost tip of High Rock) and in Elsweyr (again in the middle). (Walk-Brass and Khajiit)
*Put the red tack in the middle of Vvardenfell in Morrowind. (Red)
*Put the black tack on the little island deep in the Iliac Bay near High Rock. (Ata-Mantia)

That's the locations of the Towers that keep time flowing. All's fine and dandy with those holding the world together, right? Wrong! Some have been destroyed or deactivated over the course of time; three times, this was done by the player. [[Fail|Whoops]]. Remove the following:

*Red Tower (deactivated in Morrowind by you)
*White-Gold Tower (deactivated in Oblivion by you)
*Crystal Tower (destroyed in Oblivion by the Daedra)
*Khajiit Tower (Their leader, the Mane was killed, likely assassinated by Thalmor. S/He was also known as the Mane Moon which appeared when Secunda and Masser overlap)
*Tree-Sap Tower (both located in Thalmor territory, likely deactivated)
*Orichalc Tower (destroyed along with Yokuda)

Snow-Throat Tower is very much active (but damaged), but its Stone is an unknown cave. Ata-Mantia Tower remains active, and its stone, the "zero stone" is the physical manifestation of a meeting the Aedra had to discuss how to punish Lorkhan for his role in the creation. Walk-Brass Tower is very much active, but somehow it is "besieging reality well into the Fifth Era", meaning that it's in the future yet somehow active. Which is not a bad thing, since [[Titans_40k|Walk-Brass tower is a fuckhueg robot]] that fucks Time so hard it breaks every time someone just ''turns the thing on'' . So yeah, the only things standing between Tamriel and the primordial time-grog are a mountain, a meeting, and one of the [[Void Dragon]]'s action figures. Unless, of course, Akavir and\or Pyandonea would be revealed to host their own Towers, which is likely since certain prominent rulers of both lands somehow managed to achieve godhood, something that Towers are very helpful at.

Removing the Tower-Tacks has another side effect: the veil between Nirn and [[Warp|Oblivion]] becomes thinner. At the time of Oblivion it had even grown so thin that the Daedra could slip into this realm on their own accord. So your actions in Morrowind partially caused the Oblivion Crisis. [[Fail|Way to go, champ.]]

Now the Thalmor, who a lot of fans believe want to shut down all Towers, [https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/gwy1yx/ don't really need that]. Their main goal is the biggest and newest anchor of existence, Talos (essentially Lorkhan 2.0), hence why they try to unmake him by outlawing his worship. The Thalmor want him and all of mankind gone, believing their extermination necessary to unmake the Mundus.

'''How to Break your Dragon (Or Jump Your Shark)'''

You might have heard the phrase "Dragon Break" (both words capitalized) a few times. Simply put, this means cock-slapping Time so hard it breaks and becomes non-linear for a while. But not just any cock-slap, oh no. This is the hard part: Imagine a dick if you will. A really big dick (no, this does not make you [[gay]] <s>unless you imagine balls touching</s>). So big in fact, that even Long Dick Johnson would say "That's a big fucking dick". Right, you see it? The biggest fucking dick your feeble mind could comprehend? Good.

Now, imagine if you will, Time. How you do this is up to you: [[Doctor Who|causality, a linear progression of cause and effect]], floaty magic thingies, [[Tallarn|sand]], a clock, perhaps even a more anthropomorphic presentation in the shape of a [[loli]] or a cute [[monstergirl]]. Right. Now take the dick and slap Time in the face. Cockslap it so hard that time itself just outright breaks and loses its linearity. This is a Dragon Break. The name itself is derived from the notion that the Linearity of Time is Akatosh, who is a dragon. Hence if you break time, you "Break the Dragon". While inside a Dragon Break time is perceived to pass normally, but when one exits it might appear that a lot more or less time than you observed has passed in the rest of the world.

The first known Dragon Break occurred near the end of the Dragon War, where a trio of [[Vikings|Nords]] confronted Alduin the World-Eater, First-Born and Aspect of Akatosh that personifies the End of Time (meaning that somehow he was [[Wat|his own father]]), the leader of the [[dragon]]s. The Nords created a localized Dragon Break to fling Alduin into the future so that he wasn't their problem anymore. Mind you, they had no idea where the stuff they shunted was actually going; they just knew it disappeared things, and decided that making Alduin someone else's problem was as good as killing him, essentially causing (or at least amplifying) all the problems in the 4th Era out of laziness. [[Eldrad|What a bunch of dicks.]]

The second known Dragon Break happened during the Battle of Red Mountain, where the First Council of the [[Elf|Chimer]] went to war with the [[Dwarves|Dwemer]]. The Dwemer were working on a giant golem they called Numidium. However, it had one minor design flaw: every time someone pushed the "ON" switch it fucked the dragon right up the butt, no lube. This allowed for the multiple truths on the events that transpired on Red Mountain: Ayem, Seht and Vehk stood by their friend Nerevar as he succumbed to his wounds. Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec murdered their Hortator (war-leader) Nerevar. Ayem Seht Vehk = Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec = ALMSIVI. Everything is true, nothing is correct.

The third suspected Dragon Break occurred during the time of the Alessian Empire, when Saint Alessia freed Man from the slavery of their Mer rulers (think of her as a booby [[Sigmar]]). A cult of the Alessian Order known as Marukhati, lead by monkey man Marukh. wanted to exorcise the aspects of Auriel from Akatosh, basically substracting the Elf from the Dragon. This is said to have resulted in a thousand-and-eight year Dragon Break and might have resulted in creating more Dragon aspects than just Auri-El and Akatosh. But some claim that this was little more than [[Administratum|a fuckup of the scholars and historians of the time]].

The fourth known Dragon Break took place when [[Emperor|Tiber Septim]] unleashed Numidium on the Khajiit of Elsweyr. This included the subjugation of Elsweyr, Valenwood and eventually the Summerset Isles. Tiber Septim threatened to activate it again and have it wreck the Aldmeri Dominion, but they liked their assholes to only be violated by one another, so they too stood down. It has been recorded that Numidium was then used to destroy hostile royal families to replace them with the Emperor's puppets, likely by having it step on them.

The fifth and currently final known Dragon Break occurred during the events of Daggerfall, where it was turned on in the Iliac Bay. But because of the nature of Numidium fucking space-time a new lovehole when it activates (hence, "turned on"), a number of the states in the region obtained the "FUCK EVERYTHING" button of Numidium and pressed it at the same time. Two days of hilarity later, everyone conquered one another until the Empire ended as top dog and everyone swore fealty to the Empire. Because of the events surrounding the activation of the Dragon Break, Numidium disappeared and fell into the future, where it still stands as Walk-Brass Tower.

When the Dragon Breaks happen, Akatosh deploys the Jill to fix time so that everything does not fall apart. These minute-menders (akin to angels) tend to take the form of great wyrms who fly around and fix the little bits of time with the power of their Voice (i.e.: they shout at holes in space-time until they bitch down). If this sounds familiar to you... it is! Jills are female Dragons, while Drakes are the male ones; Dragons can't really reproduce and are born of Time/Akatosh, but it's more of a conceptual thing, with Jills having the concept of healing while Drakes have the concept of Domination. So yeah, Dragons you kill, fight, kill and soul-rob to increase your own unholy power are actually servants and minor aspects of Akatosh. So in other words, [[Adeptus Evangelion|you have been killing the heralds of a new era]].

...Or at least ''you would be if they were actually doing what they were supposed to do'' - as it turns out, some time before that first Dragon Break Alduin, who is also aspect of Akatosh himself decided that he would rather rule over the broken bits of time himself, and the dragons are bound to obey him without question. It's not certain if he did it because he knew that he wouldn't get to eat the world this time around or if he just felt like ruling the world instead of resetting it. So all of reality is increasingly fucked and the only beings who can fix it stopped giving a shit a long time ago. Gods plotting against themselves is fairly common in TES since most of the Gods are broken and crazy with tons of split personalities.

There is also the whole issue of Aka-Tusk, or simply Aka. Apparently all the Dragon Aspects of time at one point or another were Great Dragon God of Time known as Aka-Tusk, but got broken and shed millions of times, maybe even before the Marukhati Dragonbreak. We may never know because Dragonbreaks are usually at least partially retroactive.

And then there is the whole issue of Akatosh and Lorkhan being one being and Akatosh being trapped in Heart of Lorkhan literally. This timey wimey bullshit is really getting out of hand.

'''CHIM: Or "You took HOW MUCH LSD!?'''

[[File:Chim explained.png|300px|thumb|right|CHIM. It's sort of like this.]]
That muffled explosion you just heard was caused by a number of people exploding out of sheer [[rage]]. Sit tight, because this shit is meta wrapped in an enigma inside a mindfuck.

In Morrowind you can find a series of books titled the 36 Sermons of Vivec. If you pick them up and read them at face value they might appear as parts of a religious text, filled with metaphors, truths twisted throughout the ages, and copious amounts of [[Anal Circumference|buttfucking]] (''literal'' buttfucking, in one case). In these books you will find several references to CHIM, The Tower, and The Ruling King. Now, early on in the books Vivec is shown as the teacher of Lord Indoril Nerevar (more on him below), yet Nerevar does not understand the lessons. Because he was not the intended student. Instead, these lessons were meant for you. Not only for your player character, but for ''you'', the player. For if one attains CHIM, one's physical form becomes a mere avatar of the self.

But now you may wonder, what the Charles fucking Dickens *is* CHIM?

Imagine if you will, a great wheel with eight spokes. The wheel is everything that exists: Aurbis. The hub is Nirn, the world that the series takes place on. The spokes are the Aedra, the <s>Nine</s> Eight Divines. The space between the spokes is Oblivion, where the Daedra reside. Mundus encompasses both Nirn, its moons and the realms of the Aedra. Now, if you were to turn the wheel 90 degrees, you'd be looking at the rim of the wheel so it resembles I (as in, the thin side of a disk). This is the Tower, the Secret of Aurbis, holder of the secret. CHIM. The wheel is the entire universe. Outside there exist only two forces: Anu and Padhome, stasis and change. Think a great void filled with only two bubbles: there where these bubbles touch exists the wheel. Now, the Tower is not something physical, but an ideal. Something that can be attained, conquered, stolen. For one to reside within the tower, is to know the truth of all that is. This was the revelation of Lorkhan's that made him want to create Nirn.

This truth is that everything is a dream. The supreme power in TES is the Godhead, the unknown creator of all. Everything, Aurbis, Anu, and Padomay - all created in the dreams of the Godhead. Attaining CHIM is to know this, the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it. Everything you know, are and do is but a dream. Now, if you discover this one of two things can happen. The most common one is to realize you do and don't exist at the same time: you lose your individuality (you zero-sum) and become one with the dreamer, the Godhead, and you disappear in the proverbial puff of logic. The second option is the rare one: to realize that you are part of the Godhead, you *are* the Godhead. If everything is an extension of the same thing, and that the thing can reshape reality with a thought, being a dreamer within the dream.

If you thought that shit was meta, just you wait. The principles behind CHIM can be taken further to mean that the Godhead and its dreams are a metaphor for the computer running the game and the game itself. In-universe the metaphor of the godhead and being awake within the dream is needed to prevent characters who realize this from zero-summing out of existence at the resulting paradox. It can be inferred that a character who achieves CHIM essentially gains access to the console and the Construction Set. Talos used the Construction Set to retcon Cyrodiil from a jungle land into a generic European fantasy land (Talos has a terrible imagination). Vivec gave himself levitation abilities by using the console to erase the texture file for his chair (no seriously). Whether or not the player achieves CHIM varies. Generally when a player becomes fully immersed in the game, they do not have CHIM. However, a player who gets fed up of getting bugged by cliff racers every five seconds and installs a mod that removes them from the game is using CHIM. They are remembering that the world they are in is a game and altering it as they see fit. Exploits, mods, console commands, etc can all be explained in-universe as the player character achieving CHIM and using it to reshape reality or bend its rules... or all of that could be stupid speculation.

Meta as FUCK.

You can go deeper than that and find Amaranth though, but that is whole another level of [[mindfuck]].

'''It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine'''

We've mentioned a few times that the world of Nirn is slowing being destroyed by a few reasons. In a normal fantasy setting, this would be a terrible thing, and the hero must try and stop it; however, the Elder Scrolls isn't a normal fantasy setting. One of the dragons, Paarthurnax, mentions that when the world ends, Alduin, the first born of Akatosh, will/might simply recreate it, thus returning it to the point of creation. Granted he also states liking the current one is a good enough reason to fight Alduin (''that and the fact that Alduin is an absolute prick who would rather rule over the broken remains of the old one instead of actually doing his job'').

This is due to the Kalpic nature of Nirn; Kalpa is the time span from Convention to the end of the world, one turn of a wheel. Eventually, Alduin The World Eater grows in size and literally eats the world, turns the Kalpa like a wheel and everything resets back to the Convention, the moment when Heart of Lorkhan was torn out, time became linear. From that point on things can go differently in different Kalpas; for example, according to Seven Flights of Aldudagga, one Kalpa had Molag Bal as its ruler and Dreughs as the supreme race. That being said, it is possible to end the Kalpic cycle and destroy shit for good, hence what the Thalmor are trying to do. They also believe that this will make them Ada (Spirit/God) again.

In essence, the world might be ending, few care and fewer understand, and Elder Scrolls lore is more complicated than trying to keep track of the number of penises [[Slaanesh]] has at the moment.

'''Seriously?'''

Remember way at the beginning of this page, we said that how crazy the Elder Scrolls series is depends on if you take an ex-writer's blogposts as gospel? Well, if you don't, and only trust what you see in-game, it looks a bit like this.

The Godhead almost certainly doesn't exist. Neither does CHIM. Only two in-game sources claim it does; one is a colossal liar and the other is shown to be wrong about absolutely everything that comes out of his mouth. They're both bugfuck nuts and they both end up dead at your hands. The big historical event allegedly caused by CHIM could easily not have been. At least two alternate theories have been suggested: either the event never actually took place and was the result of a [[skub|transcription error]], which is boring, or the White-Gold Tower did it on its own after humans booted the elves from the Imperial City and moved in, which is not. Speaking of, the Tower thing is definitely true, because the plot of Oblivion is, broadly, that the bad guy shut one down and tore reality a new asshole. The Dragonbreak is an empirical event that happens within living memory; in Oblivion you can read the Imperial report on what the fuck happened in the last one, and you can see one happen in Skyrim. The kalpa thing is definitely happening, and you hear as much directly from the mouth of a time-spirit who knew Alduin personally. You meet Pelinal Whitestrake's ghost in a DLC questline, and he doesn't ''seem'' to be a robot, or even remotely crazy.

Mantling deserves special mention, even though it hasn't been mentioned anywhere else on the page. Basically, by adopting the mannerisms and vestments of something else, you become that something else, since oyu have become so like that thing that the universe itself has ceased to distinguish between the two of you. In a word: [[awesome|apotheosis]]. You mantle a daedric prince at the end of Shivering Isles, and use your new divine powers to kick the ass of another daedric prince. Have we mentioned that these games are really, really good and you should play them? SI also added the caveat that whatever you're mantling has to be either dead or gone in a big way for you to pull it off, and you're basically filling in its place in the universe.
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==Gods, Deities and other important people==
Most of the Gods in The Elder Scrolls are Et'Ada, the "original spirits" that came from the interplay of Anu and Padomay. These spirits later depending on their alignment with creation got categorized into Aedra and Daedra, if you took part in creation of Nirn you are Aedra, if you were egotistic dick and went to Oblivion to make your small shitty realm, you are Daedra.

===Supreme Gods===
*'''The Godhead''': Everything in the setting is all just the the godhead's dream, if you believe all of the weird lore. Fully comprehending this fact will either cause you to lose your sense of individuality and disappear, or give you the ability to change the world around you like a lucid dreamer, or cause you to exit the universe and create your own. Anu and Padomay are the godhead's first creations.
*'''Anu''': The personification of light, life, stasis, and order. Rarely is worshiped due to his lack of personality, but most religions acknowledge his existence. Hardly does anything because he removed himself and Padomay from reality to stop Padomay from causing more destruction.
*'''Padomay:''' The personification of darkness, death, change, and chaos. In the beginning of the universe he attacked Anu and the spilled blood of the two became new gods. While also rarely worshipped, he—or rather, one of his self-projections, known as Sithis—is considered the patron of the Dark Brotherhood assassins. Some vampires and even regular Argonians are known to worship him under various names as well.

===Aedra===
The Aedra (Our ancestors in Aldmeris) are Et'Ada of Anuic origin. Many of them took part in the creation of Nirn, during which they "died", their essences fused together into Mundus. As such they do not have "physical" forms like the Daedra have. Yet their spirits live on in Nirn: as the Gods of the world they live in every part of it. While not as "focused" as their Daedric counterparts they are more widespread, worshiped and give their blessings and artifacts more freely than the Daedra, plus they have control over one realm that everyone wants to have - Nirn.

Eight of the Aedra are worshipped in Tamriel as the Eight Divines (along with the human god-hero Tiber Septim, aka. Talos, to make the more assonant Nine Divines), a fusion of the old Nordic pantheon and the Aedra worshipped by the Ayleids:
*'''Akatosh''': Also known as Auri-El to the Altmer, Alkosh to the Khajiit, and the father of the dragons, the chief deity of the Eight and the top god of the Cyrodiilic Empire as he represents duty, legitimacy, endurance and obedience (but his different identities also have additional roles. Akatosh proper is the god of time, but Auri-El is the god of the sun, which it is worth noting can be used as a timekeeping device. All the other gods also work like this, as Divinity in this setting is ''weird''). His artifacts are Auriel's Bow, and Auriel's Shield, which have completely different powers depending which game you are playing. In the Skyrim Dawnguard DLC, the bow infuses arrows fired from it with the power of the sun to do more damage to the undead, and the Shield can absorb energy from attacks it blocks and release it as wave similar to the Unrelenting Force shout. (If your first question was how one guy can wield both a shield ''and'' a bow, then take your Ritalin, because you obviously haven't been paying attention.)
*'''Arkay''': Lord of the Wheel of Life, master of life and death, burials and funeral rites. Has two origin stories, the boring one is that he was one of the first Ehlnofey, or Earth Bones, and the not boring one, where he was a mortal shopkeeper obsessed with knowledge, who got his hands on a book that explained life and death and on his dearthbed prayed to Mara, who raised him up as a god to keep the balance of life and death in the universe. Arkay's priests are some of the fiercest necromancer hunters around, as those foul practices are an affront to their god.
*'''Dibella''': Goddess of beauty, affection and the carnal and sexual aspects of love, as well as art and music. Effectively Nirn's equivalent of Aphrodite. She teaches that, "No matter the seed, if the shoot is nurtured with love, will not the flower be beautiful?" Oh boy. Her artifact is the Brush of Truepaint, which can turn a canvas into a portal to a world made of paint that the artist creates with their imagination.
*'''Julianos''': God of wisdom and logic; literature, lore, history and contradiction are the domains of Julianos. Though Magnus is the god of magic, many wizards worship Julianos. The scholarly Bretons also hold a particular reverence for him. Monastic orders dedicated to Julianos are the keepers of the Elder Scrolls.
*'''Kynareth''': Goddess of heavens, winds and the elements. Known as Kyne among the Nords and the widow of Shor. It is said that Kyne gifted men with the Thu'um so they could harness the power of dragons and save themselves from Akatosh's errant children. Her artifact is the Lord's Mail, a cuirass that grants its wearer healing, magicka absorption, and the ability to cure their self of poison.
*'''Mara''': Goddess of agriculture, compassion, fertility, and the more romantic aspects of love. She is the one deity that is recognised by every culture on Tamriel. Among the Nords, Mara is Kyne's handmaiden and Shor's bit on the side. Among the Altmer, Bosmer and Bretons, Mara is the wife of Akatosh/Auri-El. Among the Redguards, Morwha was a fertility goddess with four arms to grab more husbands with. Among the now extinct Kothringi of Black Marsh, Mara was just one of three aspects to an older Mother goddess with Kynareth and Dibella as the other two aspects. As said above, Divinity in this setting is ''weird''. Whatever the case, weddings in Tamriel are overseen by priests of Mara.
*'''Stendarr''': God of mercy, charity and justice. Apologist of men and patron deity of the Imperial Legion and many Breton knightly orders. Stendarr welcomes heretics, the afflicted, hopeless and forgotten just as readily as his devout followers. However his mercy ends at the enemies of mortals, the abhorrent and unnatural. Stendarr's priests are often hunters of lesser Daedra, lycanthropes, vampires and undead. Real bro-tier god overall. His artifact is Stendarr's Hammer, a hammer that increases the user's stamina and does incredible damage, but is also very fragile and far too heavy for a mortal to use.
*'''Zenithar''': God of honest work and commerce. The "almighty dollar" taken to the end conclusion. Very strong ties to the people of Cyrodiil, and many in High Rock and Hammerfell too.
*'''Talos''': NOT actually an Aedra, but worth mentioning as he is often placed among the other Eight. Talos, known in life as Tiber Septim and Ysmir to the Nords, is the greatest god-hero of mankind. He conquered all of Tamriel and ushered in the Third Empire of Cyrodiil at the end of the Second Era. When he died, his spirit supposedly ascended to godhood (and a quest in Oblivion lends support to this). As of the Fourth Era, Talos worship is banned in the Empire as per the terms of the White-Gold Concordat made with the Dominion, because the idea of a man becoming a god pisses the stupid sparkly prisses off to no end. That, and it is also likely that Talos is helping to hold the world together, and the Thalmor know this and want to starve him of worship, effectively destroying all Nirn to regain the divinity Lorkhan is said to have stolen from them. Fucking elves. Although worshipped mainly by the Nords during the 4th Era, his race is unknown, but he was most likely a Breton.

The Altmer also worship, or at least acknowledge, other Aedra that don't belong to the Eight Divines above, but are worshipped in most elven lands, these being:
*'''Jephre''': The god of songs and forests and the spirit of Now, also called Y'ffre. He was one of the first spirits to become Ehlnofey, and set in place the rules of nature and life on Nirn. The Bosmer consider him their main god and he's the reason they're carnivores and cannibals.
*'''Lorkhan''': The Creator-Trickster-Tester god present in every race's mythology. Known alternatively as Lorkhaj, Shor, Sheor, Sep, or Shezarr, every single version goes the same way: creation happens, other spirits and gods get pissed at him, he's bound, he's killed/torn to pieces/separated from his divine center and forced to wander the earth. His heart landed in Red Mountain, and was destroyed in Morrowind, and some say that his corpse became the two moons of Nirn.
*'''Magnus''': The god of magic and the supposed architect of creation. When he realized what he made, he ran the fuck away, ripping a hole through creation to Aetherius, with this hole becoming the sun. Some part of him got caught in creation though, becoming the force of magic. He also had a host of assistants called the Magna-Ge, who ripped similiar holes in creation when running away, these becoming the stars. Very little lore exists about the Magna-Ge, and believe us [https://www.imperial-library.info/content/magne-ge-pantheon it reads like a mushroom trip.] His associated artifact is the Staff of Magnus, which has the power to drain magicka, and possibly the Eye of Magnus, a mysterious floating orb of incredible power whose purpose is unclear, though may have been one of the tools Magnus used to create the world.
*'''Phynaster''': An Ancestor-God of the Altmer, though some Bretons also worship him, who taught them how to live another 100 years by using a shorter walking stride.
*'''Syrabane''': Another Ancestor-God of the Altmer, who aided men in destroying the Sload kingdom of Thras. Often called the Apprentice's God, as the younger members of the Mage's Guild worship him.
*'''Trinimac''': The warrior god of the ancient Aldmer, who lead armies against the men. He eventually got eaten by Boethiah and became Malacath (more below).
*'''Xarxes''': The scribe to Auri-El, and the god of ancestry and secret knowledge. He made his wife Oghma ([[Oghma|no, not that one]]) from his [[Wat|favorite moments in history]]. Hermaemus Mora claims that Xarxes used to be his servant and created the Oghma Infinium, a massive book containing all knowledge that one desires.

===Daedra===
"Not Our Ancestors" in Aldmeris and "Our stronger, better ancestors" in Dunmeris, the Daedra (singular: Daedroth, not to be confused with the crocodile-like Daedra called Daedroth) are the Et'Ada who did not partake in the creation of the world. Because they didn't quasi-suicide themselves to pour their essence into the world, their power is both more focused, but their power on Nirn is more limited compared to their Aedric counterparts. As such their powers are limited to the likes of curses and artifacts, and can only walk the realm in forms that severely limit their powers (or so they say).

Daedric Princes instead have their own singular realms, the Realms of Oblivion. A Daedric Prince is Omnipotent within their realm, because it is part of them and their mind. Their own realms are made out of them, similar to how Nirn is made out of Aedra; the Daedra are still fully alive and have much greater control over their own realm, but the tradeoff is that each realm is pretty small. Despite serving as the setting's "devils" (in that the word Daedra pretty much means Devil), they are not all completely evil. They range from "hates undead" and "wants to hunt dangerous game" to "prince of destruction" and "king of [[rape]]". Even if they are benevolent at times, the Daedra are not to be trifled with and are very dangerous.

* '''Azura:''' The Daedra associated with periods of change, twilight in particular, and magic and prophecy. Allegedly Nocturnal's sister, and one of the few Daedra not to be considered evil, though she is intensely prideful and easily aggravated, treating the Dunmer with a character not unlike how Old Testament Yahweh treated the 12 tribes of Israel. Azura is worshipped by the Dunmer and Khajiit, though she had a mutual hatred for the Dwemer. Her realm of Oblivion is Moonshadow, a beautiful place of silver cities, gardens, and perpetual twilight. Her artifact is Azura's Star, an item which can hold the souls of living creatures. If this sounds like the soul gem items found across the series, it is, but Azura's Star is a max capacity soul gem that doesn't get consumed upon use, and is thus reusable.
* '''Boethiah:''' The Daedra associated with deceit, ambition, treachery, competition and sedition. Goes hand in hand with Mephala and is basically her louder sibling. Despite sounding like some kind of fucked up noble, Boethiah often takes the appearance of a patrician warrior (can be female, but usually male), and enjoys inflicting mayhem and bloodshed on mortals. Regarded by the Dunmer, either through worship or hatred. Some versions of their origin tale have all sorts of scholarly pursuits emerging from their teachings. Their realm is Attribution's Share (also known as Snake Mount), a place of [[Tzeentch|labyrinthine policies and betrayals]]. Their artifacts are Goldbrand, a high-end katana, and the Ebony Mail, high-end armor that cloaks the wearer in shadow and causes poison damage to those around them.
*'''Clavicus Vile:''' The Daedra associated with wishes and pacts. He's the asshole genie who ensures that all the wishes and pacts are twisted so he comes out on top, usually while gaining the soul of the one foolish enough to deal with him. He appears as a jovial fellow with horns sprouting from his forehead, and is usually accompanied by '''Barbas''', a dog who holds half of Clavicus' power and functions as his conscience. His realm is the Fields of Regret, which, despite its name, is a tranquil countryside, dotted with cities of glass and ornate buildings. His artifacts are the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which makes its wearer more popular and likeable, and the Bittercup, a cup that enhances the owners strengths, while also exacerbating their weakness's.
*'''Hermaeus Mora:''' The Daedra associated with fate and forbidden knowledge. Supposedly the sibling of Mephala, he seeks to gather and obtain as much knowledge as possible. He often appears as a collection of eyes, tentacles, and pincers. [[Call of Cthulhu|Proper Lovecraftian motherfucker]]. His realm is Apocrypha, an endless library filled with and made from books of forbidden knowledge, with seas of ink, alien geometries, and tentacles everywhere. His artifacts are the Black Books, which transport their reader to Apocrypha and can grant access to forbidden knowledge, and the Oghma Infinium, a tome that can allow one to achieve near-demigod level abilities.
*'''Hircine:''' The Daedra associated with hunting and therianthropes. He created the many werebeasts that exist in Tamriel, and claims their souls upon death. He appears either as an animal or a man with the horns of a deer, unless he appears as a deer. His realm is the Hunting Grounds, a place of dense woodlands and vast grasslands, inhabited by daedra, beasts, and therianthropes, where werebears and Nords hunt by day, and Hircine along with a pack of werewolves hunts by night. His artifacts are the Saviour's Hide, a hide cuirass that makes the wearer more resistant to magic, and the Ring of Hircine, a ring that allows one to transform into a werewolf, if not already a lycanthrope, and lycanthropes to control their transformations. Unless they stole it, in which case the ring fucks them over by forcing them to transform at random.
*'''Malacath:''' The Daedra associated with orcs, [[goblin]]s, [[ogre]]s, curses, and outcasts. ''Definitely'' a good daedra if you happen to be an Orc, but to other races he's benign at the best of times (although he's never outright malevolent to the degree of Molag or Mehrunes). He technically is not a daedric prince (and the other daedric princes don't count him as one of them, which is fitting for a patron of outcasts) because his origin makes him an aedra, but he often is counted as a daedric prince because he rules over a realm of Oblivion. Originally he was '''Trinimac''', one of the ancestor spirits of the Altmer, who was eaten by Boethiah and then shat out as Malacath, though he says the story is too literal minded, and there are those who say that Trinimac and Malacath are two separate deities. He appears as a muscular orc wielding a heavy weapon. His realm is Ashpit, a realm of dust and ash, dotted with palaces of smoke and gardens, where levitation and magical breathing are necessary to survive. His artifacts are the Scourge, a mace that banishes all daedra that make contact with it, and Volendrung, a Dwemer made warhammer.
*'''Mehrunes Dagon:''' The Daedra associated with destruction, revolution, change, ambition, and energy. One of the more evil daedra, of whom little is known, and the antagonist of ''Battlespire'' and ''[[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion|Oblivion]]''. He appears as a red-skinned giant with four arms, carrying a two-headed axe. His realm is the Deadlands (no, not [[Deadlands|that one]]), a hellscape of scorched, volcanic islands and ruined structures amidst a sea of lava, with hostile life living on the islands. He once was a good guy before a curse was put on him by Alduin for interfering with his devouring of the world. His artifact is Mehrunes' Razor, a dagger that has a [[Vorpal Sword| small chance of instantly killing whatever it cuts]].
*'''Mephala:''' The Daedra associated with spiders, webs, [[Tzeentch|lies, secrets, plots]] and murder. Sibling to Hermaeus Mora, the Dunmer worship her as one of the "Good Daedra", with her having taught them the arts of stealth and assassination. The Morag Tong, the assassin's guild in Morrowind, worships her through murder. She often appears as a female of some form, but sometimes appears as a male. Her realm is the Spiral Skein, a wheel-shaped realm, with her palace in the middle, and the space between the "spokes" dedicated to one of eight sins. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti, a ring that makes its wearer faster and harder to detect, and the Ebony Blade, a life-leeching katana.
*'''Meridia:''' The Daedra asssociated with light and the energies of living things, and one of the few non-evil Daedric Princes. She was originally believed to have been one of the Magna-Ge, the spirits that followed Magnus to Aetherius, but was cast out for consorting with daedra, eventually creating her realm by bending and shaping the light of the sun. She hates all undead with a passion, and usually rewards those who destroy them. She either appears as an orb of light, or a blonde-haired woman in a gown. Despite all this, she generally does not command popular worship due to her haughty, bitter and aloof manner, stemming from her exile from the magna-ge. The last time she threw her support behind a mortal race She made the mistake of being the patron of the Heartland High Elves of Cyrodil, who were into human slavery and were generally tyrants. They ended up being near exterminated. There are hints in the lore that Molag Bal is obsessed with her and caused her fall from heaven. Her realm is the Colored Rooms, a cross between a coral reef and a field of floating stones, strewn with colorful trails of dust/clouds. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti and the Dawnbringer, a sword that burns the undead and upon killing them makes them explode.
*'''Molag Bal:''' The Daedra associated with domination, enslavement, rape, and vampires. Quite inarguably the most evil of the Daedric Princes, as he simply desires to harvest souls of mortals by inciting strife and discord among them. He also created the first vampire by raping a Nedic woman. He appears as a monstrous being of varying appearance, but usually has horns and hooves. His realm is Coldharbour, which is an apocalyptic and desolate reflection of Nirn where the air is freezing, every wall is smeared with blood and shit, and there are charnel houses and slave pens as far as the eye can see. His artifact is the Mace of Molag Bal, a mace that drains the energies of those it hits and traps their souls upon death. Main antagonist of both the original game and Elder Scrolls Online, with Mehrunes Dagon basically stealing his invasion plans. Seriously Mehrunes invades Nirn in the same ways in the same order.
*'''Namira:''' The Daedra associated with ancient darkness, revulsion, and cannibals. Not much is known of her, other than she's associated with anything revolting, and her followers prefer to live in dark and squalid conditions. Her realm is the Scuttling Void, of which nothing is really known about. Her artifact is the Ring of Namira, a ring that boosts one health after cannibalizing a corpse, or reflects damage back onto the wearer's attacker.
*'''Nocturnal:''' The Daedra associated with darkness, night, luck and thieves. Most thieves in Tamriel revere her to some degree, for obvious reasons, and the Thieves Guild reveres her as their patron. She appears often as a dark-haired woman in a hooded gown, accompanied by ravens. Her realm is Evergloam, a realm in perpetual twilight, consisting of a primary plane and constantly shifting pocket planes. Her artifacts are the Skeleton Key, a key/lockpick that can open anything from locks to portals to one's hidden potential, the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, a cowl that hides the wearer's true identity and makes him a better thief, and the Bow of Shadows, a bow that can turn its wielder invisible.
*'''Peryite:''' [[Nurgle]]'s less-jovial cousin, this is the Daedra associated with tasks, pestilence, and natural order. Peryite is considered one of the weakest Daedric Princes (not that ''any'' daedric prince can be called "weak" by mortal standards), and is charged with keeping the lower realms of Oblivion and the lesser daedra in line. He often appears as a green, four-legged dragon, but sometimes appears as ghostly apparitions of vermin. His realm is The Pits, which resembles Molag Bal's Deadlands in its landscape. His artifact is the Spellbreaker, a Dwemer shield that can reflect magic.
*'''Sanguine:''' Basically just a less-rapey or /d/isgusting [[Slaanesh]]. The Daedra associated with hedonism, debauchery, indulgence, and revelry. He's often depicted on seals and signs of brothels and whorehouses. He appears as a portly dremora, with a bottle in one hand and a whore in another. His realms are the Myriad Realms of Revelry, countless pocket realms that are fashioned to meet the needs and demands of their visitors. His artifact is the Sanguine Rose, a rose-shaped staff/staff-sized rose that summons a dremora to fight for its owner.
*'''Sheogorath:''' Everyone's favorite, this is the lolrandom [[Chaotic Stupid]] Daedra associated with madness and creativity. There are many stories and legends about him, like how he invented music from [[Rip and tear|the body parts of a woman he killed]] and how he trolled every one of the other Daedric Princes at various points. He appears as an elderly, well-dressed gentleman with a nice beard and a cane. His realm is the Shivering Isles, a landmass surrounded by islands that's divided in two, to represent both shades of madness. His artifact is the Wabbajack, a staff that does something completely random when used. He is distinguishable from other daedra by the fact that Old Sheogorath was basically a result of Jyggalag getting his ass kicked by the other daedric princes and New Sheogorath was mortal at one point. The Hero of Kvatch is named the new Sheogorath by a grateful Jyggalag once his curse is lifted, and going by Sheogorath's dialogue in ''Skyrim'' as well as him fondly remembering his other adventures back then, this event is canon.
**'''Jyggalag:''' The [[Lawful Stupid]] Daedra associated with logic, order, and deduction. Originally, he was the most powerful of the Daedric Princes, but the others cursed him to become Sheogorath, who represented everything he hated. The curse did allow him to return at the end of every era, leading the event known as the "Greymarch" and obliterating the Shivering Isles only to revert back to Sheogorath and start the process all over again. This seemingly neverending cycle of torment finally ended when Sheogorath managed to lure the Hero of Kvatch to the Shivering Isles and successfully train them to halt the Greymarch and take up the mantle of Madgod. By the end of the Shivering Isles expansion, Jyggalag is defeated by the protagonist, thus finally lifting the curse. He then heads off to parts unknown, but not before naming the Hero of Kvatch as the new Sheogorath. He has yet to make a reappearance in the games despite his DLC being canon. He appears as a giant, gray knight wielding an XBOXHUEG fuckoff sword.
*'''Vaermina:''' The Daedra associated with dreams and nightmares. One of the more evil daedra, with some saying that torture also belongs to her sphere of influence. She appears as an old woman in a robe, wielding a staff. Her realm is Quagmire, a nightmarish realm where Vaermina draws the minds of mortals, collecting their memories and leavings nightmares in return. Her artifact is the Skull of Corruption, a staff that creates a clone of the target, who then attacks its original.

===Other Divinities===
Et'Ada and other gods that don't belong to either group also exist. Some of the more important ones being:

*'''Alduin:''' The firstborn of Akatosh and his destroyer aspect, who most believed was just the Nordic version of Akatosh. His job is to bring about the end of the current kalpa so that the next one may begin, but by the time of Skyrim, he's decided to just rule over the world. You defeat him at the end of Skyrim, but unlike any other dragon, his soul is ''not'' absorbed by the dragonborn, leaving many believing he'll return one day to do his job properly.
*'''All-Maker:''' Another name for Anu. The god of the Skaal and the source of all life, the Skaal believe that when you die you go to him, and he reincarnates you as new being. Oneness, or harmony, with nature is important, as the Skaal draw their magical powers from it and it pleases the All-Maker. Opposing him is '''The Adversary''', a many aspected god who torments and tests the Skaal.
*'''Dagoth Ur:''' The main antagonist of Morrowind, he was once the trusted advisor of Nerevar until he experimented with the Heart of Lorkhan and managed to draw power from it. By the events of the game he is properly batshit loopy with divinity, and also without question the most dangerous thing on Nirn because he exists within a terrifying middle-ground between CHIM, Zero Sum and Amaranth - he has godlike power because of his awarness of Anu's dream but cannot maintain his individuality or fade into the Dream, so his broken, traumatised mind is being slowly imprinted on the dream of Anu. Nevertheless, he seemingly dies by the hand of Nerevar's reincarnation after you sever his connection to the heart. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPAuvfqocFY Affable and almost as infinitely quotable as Sheogorath.]
*'''Fa-Nuit-Hen:''' Demiprince (read: Daedric demigod) of swordsmanship and son of Boethiah. Taught then unborn Vivec how to fight by combining with seven other daedra called ''Barons Who Move Like This'' and [[Wat|turning into a pillar of fighting styles]]. You meet him in ESO where you help restore his failing memory.
*'''The Ideal Masters:''' Once mortal spellcasters during the Merethic era, they forsook their mortality and physical forms to become beings of pure soul energy. In the process however, they found they had become filled with a terrible hunger for souls. The Ideal Masters are the source of all soul gems, and of the arts of soul-trapping, and therefore enchantment. Their private realm within Oblivion, the Soul Cairn, is where ''every'' soul that is ever trapped in a Soul Gem goes. They rarely bother manifesting at all, though a few gigantic crystals in the Cairn channel their influence and their hunger. Their name comes from their belief that, by removing mortal souls from the cycle of rebirth and trapping them in eternal undeath, they are ultimately granting all beings eternal peace... and there is a small amount of evidence to support this. Despite all this, they aren't really ambitious, and they even helped the hero of ''Battlespire'' because they were tired of Mehrunes Dagon driving across their lawn on the way to the mortal world.
*'''Mannimarco:''' An old and powerful Altmer [[necromancer]] and [[lich]], supposedly [[Vecna|became the god of necromancy after the events of Daggerfall and returns as the main antagonist]] for the Mages Guild questline in Oblivion.
*'''Morihaus:''' Demigod son of Kynareth who appeared as a winged man-bull. Help Alessia overthrow the Ayleids and establish the Alessian Empire. Also the supposed progenitor of [[minotaur]]s, having been born from the union of him and Alessia.
*'''The Tribunal:''' Also known as the Almsivi, they were originally three Chimer, the predecessors of Dunmer, Almalexia, Sotha Sil, and Vivec, and counselors to Nerevar, who also stole their powers from the Heart of Lorkhan, and promptly ruled over the Dunmer from early/mid First Era to the end of the Third Era. Almalexia eventually went insane and killed Sotha Sil, the Nerevarine killed her, and Vivec got dragged to Oblivion during the events of Oblivion. Without the influence of the Tribunal, the Red Mountain erupted and Morrowind promptly went to shit.
*'''Tsun:''' The Nordic god of trials against adversity and Shor's shield-thane, he died fighting against foreign (read: elven) gods and was then assigned to be the guardian of the whalebone bridge leading to the Hall of Valor in Sovngarde. You get fight him for your right to enter the hall in Skyrim.
*'''Sithis''': Another name for Padomay. The primordial manifestation of Chaos and Entropy. Exists somewhere outside of the bounds of the cosmos and is practically feared by nearly everyone, given that it represents death and the eventual end of all things. Inhabits a pocket-dimension called the Void. The Dark Brotherhood have a peerless connection to Sithis (the only entities who come close are actually trees known as Hist), and all things slain through their assassinations ends up in its realm. Basically the God of Many Faces from [[A Song of Ice and Fire|ASOIAF]] mixed with [[Mythology#Deities of Destruction|Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction]]. To contact Sithis, one must perform the Black Sacrament (an offering of human flesh, bones, and heart). If Sithis accepts, it passes on the information about the Sacrament and who it was intended for, to the Night Mother, a now-mummified corpse that is intimately connected to Sithis, who then in turn will pass it on to the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, called the Listener (named that way because only listeners can actually hear what the Night Mother says) and then passes the contract on to the field operatives of the Dark Brotherhood.

==Races==
[[File:Tamriel.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Tamriel, shown alongside the now sunken islands of Yokuda, the original home of the Redguards, and Pyandonea, a land inhabited by the Maormer, sea elves.]]
The first two Elder Scrolls games had eight playable races; the three after that added Imperials and Orcs as playable races. There's also a ton of unplayable races as well, but UESP can explain them better than us.

The races of Tamriel are generally divided into three categories; the races of Men are the various ethnicities of [[human]], the Mer races are the different species of [[elf]], and the [[Beastmen]] are the races native to Tamriel.

===Men===
*'''Akaviri/Tsaesci:''' Fantasy Japanese. Not directly presented in game, but their spirits may be seen in certain missions. Left a significant mark in imperial history, as Akaviri invaders were on a mission of search of Dragonborn, which turned out to be founder of the second Empire, Reman. They swore allegiance to him and served as elite guard of his descendants. These names are interchangeably used, but some sources imply that Akaviri and Tsaesci are actually different group of people, with Tsaesci being snake like, even naga, perhaps. As for how is it possible to have snek humans, well, dwarves and orks and most bizarrely, some imply that Khajiit are simply a subspecies of elves here, so just roll with this. One source suggests the human Akaviri were "devoured" by the Tsaesci but whether that means they were literally all [[Vore|eaten]] or simply enslaved or culturally assimiliated is anyone's guess.
*'''Bretons:''' Best described as [[Half-Elf|half-elves]] from [[Bretonnia]], right down to the similar name to the latter. Probably the least badass of the humans here (which is all relative - many great heroes throughout Tamriel's history were Bretons including several of Cyrodiil's Emperors and the unnamed knight from the ESO cinematics) but they are still the most gifted with magic because of their elf blood. They even get a magic resistance out of the deal. True to the French stereotype, they're great cooks but also a bit snobby. Their home province of High Rock isn't even a united kingdom, but rather a [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|patchwork quilt of petty kingdoms, embroiled in political conflict]] and usually only tangentially aligned with the Empire at the best of times.
**'''Reachmen:''' Tribal people of Breton descent native to The Reach. The Celts to Bretonnians above. Used to rule a bunch of petty kingdoms in the area before being subjugated by the Alessian Empire first, and later by Tiber Septim. By the Fourth Era they tried to take the Reach again but Ulfric Stormcloak put a stop to that in the now infamous "Markarth Incident" that gave rise to the Stormcloak Rebellion. Now split between those trying to just live their lives in peace, and the Forsworn, raiders who went back to the old ways of using fur and hide armor, weapons of stone, bone, and wood, and worshipping the Daedra and venerating hagravens (witches who gave their humanity to become powerful spellcasters).
*'''Imperials:''' Also known as the "Cyrodiils", the Imperials are a civilised and cosmopolitan people, more or less Roman in culture, but in very early lore they were actually Mesoamerican, and their ancestors the Nedes were ancient Chinese and some still [[Weeaboo|see themselves as ethnically Akaviri]]. Like practically all humans in fantasy settings, they're average at nearly everything, control the world, and are kind of boring compared to everyone else. They've forged three continent-spanning empires in their history, the first with the help of an actual Terminator (Schwarzenegger, not [[Terminator|these guys]]) and the third by using a time-bending magical giant robot. They've also had a space race with the Altmer to colonise Masser and Secunda, and exchanged threats of orbital bombardment. Yes, really. Surprisingly, for most of the Third Era, most Emperors were not Imperials, but Bretons.
*'''Nedes:''' The progenitors of the Bretons and Imperials, and possibly the Nords. Where they came from is [[Skub|a matter of lively debate]], with the competing theories stating they either arrived on Tamriel long before the Nords, or else were the Atmoran ancestors of the Nords. What is known is that while on Tamriel they took beatings from just about everyone, notably the Redguards wiping them from Hammerfell and the Ayleids enslaving them across Cyrodiil.
*'''Nords:''' On the surface, basically [[Norsca|manly as all hell, magic and elf-hating not-Vikings from the frozen land of Skyrim]]. Under the surface, a [[Chaotic Stupid|deeply intolerent, xenophobic and warlike people that would have ran their society into extinction long ago if they hadn't been conquered by smarter people]]. Tend to be very very badass because they have to live in an inhospitable hellhole with bears, sabre-tooth cats, trolls, giants, big nopey frost spiders the size of bears and they also fought and killed almost all the dragons in the past. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Their ancestors, the Atmorans, nearly exterminated the entire Snow Elf race with just five hundred warriors despite being basically cavemen with no understanding of agriculture or the written language, going up against a iron age civilisation with magic]]. The Nords then fell in line behind a badass named King Vrage the Gifted and went full [[Genghis motherfucking Khan]] on Tamriel, conquering a vast empire that fell apart when his grandson Borgas died and Skyrim fell into a succession crisis. Not much happened afterwards - the Nords fought, won and lost a few wars against the Dunmer, the Dwemer, the Akaviri and themselves until Tiber Septim rocked up and folded them into his Third Empire.
**'''Skaal:''' Nords native to Solstheim. Split between those trying to live like the Nords of olden times (read: fighting, drinking, and hunting like there's no tomorrow), and those living in harmony with nature and worshipping the All-Maker through it.
*'''Redguard:''' Fantasy Moors/Africans, but with the sword reverence of the Japanese. Skilled warriors hailing from the sunken islands of Yokuda, which they apparently nuked out of existence by being so good with a sword they could cut individual atoms, and the only guys to have invented gunpowder (''Daggerfall'' mentions their ships have cannon). Redguards are some of the greatest sailors in Tamriel, and they tend to scorn magic due to religious taboos against necromancy and their many past wars with the magic-proficient Bretons. This dislike faded over time and by the 4th era, Destruction and Restoration magic have obtained widespread acceptance due to their straightforwardness.

===Mer (Elves)===
*'''Altmer ([[High Elves]]):''' Every stereotype of Elves being narcissistic pricks, amplified a hundredfold, which either makes them a good non-Tolkien take or an especially insufferable one, depending on who you ask. As of the Fourth Era, their home of Summerset Isle (now Alinor) is governed by the Thalmor, who are out to unravel all creation because they believe mortality was a cruel trick played on them by the gods of Men (and no, this belief is not just some quirk of the Thalmor, the ancient Aldmer believed this as well). While always arrogant, in the 4th era, [[Nazi|they practice eugenics, wear long black coats, kill any undesirable progeny, and have a populist government that's nakedly intolerant to a genocidal degree]]. It is suggested that they don't even have names among themselves, they just assign each other a long number that sounds like a name to human ears. These claims may also be just propaganda, though some of them are certainly true. Nearly every Altmer is either a [[Wizard]] or a magical warrior. For all that, not ''all'' Altmer are dicks, with many that live outside of Thalmor finding their kin as unbearable as everyone else does. If you opt to play as one such Altmer who isn't a complete asshole, you're effectively the Drizzt of the setting.
*'''Ayleids (Heartland High Elves):''' An offshoot race from the Aldmer, the ancestors of the Altmer. Notable for being the original founders of the Imperial City and the founders of the first empire in Tamriel. Also notable for worshipping the Daedra and torturing their Nedic slaves in nightmare fuel ways for shits and giggles ([[Dark Eldar|like skinning runaways alive, making gardens and sculptures out of their guts and bones, setting human children on fire, that kind of thing]]). If the Imperials are Romans then the Ayleids were the Etruscan kings who ruled Rome prior to the founding of the Roman Republic. The Nedes eventually rebelled under leadership of Alessia and exterminated large portions of them, while the remaining Ayleids who refused to fight would live as vassals of the newly formed First Empire of humanity. Then, after a while, a literal intellectual gorilla formed a sect which basically stated that men should have exterminated every single elf, thus the remaining Ayleids fled to other elven lands and were absorbed into the other elven races, and the forests of Cyrodiil where they split into many tribes and kept away from others.
*'''Bosmer ([[Wood Elves]]):''' Wood Elves in the [[Dwarf Fortress]] sense, only not quite as insane. They are some of the greatest archers in Tamriel and they have a long history of warring with the Khajiit. They also happen to be cannibals because of an ancient pact they made with the forest god Y'ffre forbidding them from eating plant matter on pain of turning into [[Chaos Spawn|That Which Shall Not Be Named]], so they are the total opposite of the "vegan elf" stereotype. They have been known to use the aforementioned transformation trick ''en masse'' if their homeland of Valenwood is threatenened. Unsurprisingly, Bosmer have no understanding of woodworking and brew alcohol from animal sources, ranging from pigs' milk to the fermented flesh of their dead enemies. Hardcore. (As a note on the cannibalism thing, you don't actually have to worry about getting shanked and eaten by every wood elf you <s>meat</s> meet, it's just their standard means of dealing with dead bodies. You also needn't do this yourself if playing as a Wood Elf).
*'''Dunmer ([[Dark Elves]]):''' Elves with a blue-grey tint to their skin who got cursed by one of their Daedric patrons for complex reasons. Their culture is a bizarre mish-mash of China, Japan, Mongolia, ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Israelites, with northern English accents (and a distinct gravelly voice for the men). They primarily revere the Daedra along with the Tribunal, three mortals who ascended to godhood by tapping into the Heart of Lorkhan. Since they joined the Empire by treaty instead of by conquest, their homeland of Morrowind has many unique laws, including [[Inquisitors]] and (till the tail end of the 3rd Era) legalized slavery. Highly supremacist and xenophobic, the Fourth Era has bitten them in the arse hard as most of Morrowind was devastated by volcanic eruption and their Argonian slaves have occupied what's left, leaving most surviving Dunmer as unwelcome refugees. How the mighty have fallen.
*'''Dwemer ([[Dwarves|Deep Elves]]):''' Yes, you're reading this right, Dwarves are an Elf sub-type in this setting, specifically Elves who lived in the northern mountain ranges and studied the process of creation in great detail, becoming the most advanced race to have existed. They figured out steam power and electricity, created steam-/electrically/soulgem-powered automata, and invented Tonal Architecture, the manipulation of sound to alter reality. Even though they are for all intents and purposes dwarves, they were actually human-sized - they were called dwarves by the giants of Tamriel. A very strong contender for the single most badass race in Tamrielic history, besides the early Nords and the modern Argonians. Their belief system was terrifyingly alien even to the other inhabitants of the continent and they were seen as arrogant and dogmatic, hated and dreaded by every other race they met. They were [[Fedora Masters RPG|atheists]] in a world where the existence of the gods is indisputable fact, which should tell you all you need to know about how crazy (and also kind of badass) they were. Relatively early into the First Era, all Dwemer on Nirn disappeared after they activated the Numidium, a massive time-bending robot powered by the Heart of Lorkhan. There are multiple hypotheses to explain the exact mechanism of their disappearance: they may have become the armoured skin of Numidium or the metaphysical concept of negation itself, ascended to another plane outside of Aetherius where not even Vivec can sense them, sent themselves forward in time, or just botched their attempt at reforging themselves into gods at the "reduce ourselves to base elements" part of the process, going ''poof'' as a result.
*'''Falmer ([[Snow Elves]]):''' Light-haired and pale-skinned elves originally native to Skyrim, they got their asses kicked so hard by the Atmorans they went into hiding, with most going to the Dwemer for shelter. What the Dwemer didn't tell them was that "shelter" meant "being enslaved and forced to eat addictive toxic fungi that make you blind (and not the manageable "grey-eyes-blindness", no, it's full on "your eyelids grow together"-Hellraiser-style blindness). Several generations of this diet and other factors eventually turned them into blind, noseless, [[/b/|hunchbacked, barely-sentient subterranean goblinoid degenerates]]. A small number of Falmer did escape being wiped out by the Atmorans or enslaved by the Dwemer in an isolated part of Skyrim, until one of them ended up becoming a [[Vampire]] and went crazy with anger at being cut off from his god and killed all of the others except for his brother. After the player kills him in the Dawnguard DLC, his brother may be the last remaining uncorrupted Falmer in existence (unless there are any others who found even better hiding places). He still believes his betrayed kin can be saved, though.
*'''Orsimer ([[Orcs]]):''' Also known as the "Pariah Elves", descended from a race of Elves who got screwed over by Daedric faggotry. Most Orsimer live assimilated into other cultures or in destitute and isolated strongholds, akin to native reservations, far out in the wilderness. Every time they tried to (re)build their city-state of Orsinium somewhere in High Rock or Hammerfell, the Bretons or Redguards came and knocked it over, and as of the Fourth Era, Orsinium exists somewhere on the Skyrim-Hammerfell border. Due to all the shit they've taken, the Orcs developed a warrior culture and also became renowned blacksmiths. Their martial prowess is such that even the Nords wish they could be as hardcore - but rather than eternal enmity, this created an odd friendship between the two races. Finally, it is worth noting that at the time of the first two games, they [[/pol/|weren't even considered people]] by Tamrielic culture, but by the time of Oblivion nobody would think twice about walking into a shop to find that it was run by an orc any more than they would a shopkeeper of any of the other playable races.

===Beastmen===
[[File:Khajiit Family.jpg|300px|thumb|right|A family of Khajiit. Given how these things work it is very possible that the housecat that the catgirl is holding is the father of the tiger in the back. TES is weird like that.]]
*'''Argonians:''' A race of warm-blooded lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Have a weird connection to omniscient networked spore-trees known as the Hist: they may or may not be a genetically-engineered servant race mind-linked to the Hist, as hinted by Argonians starting their lives as perfectly ordinary lizards that only gain sapience and humanoid physique upon licking Hist sap. Despite being weirdos and the targets of discrimination, they have an unbreakable hold on their homeland. Even Tiber Septim never truly conquered Black Marsh; he just barely secured some of the border towns and called it a win, which the Argonians didn't care enough to contest. During the Oblivion Crisis, the invading Daedra were eventually forced to close their interdimensional portals [[Awesome|because the Argonians were counter-invading fire-and-brimstone Hell]]. When they aren't deploying wave tactics or sending child assassins to pre-emptively cut off the enemy leadership, Argonians are masters of Viet Cong-style jungle warfare and invading Black Marsh is about as big a military mistake as challenging Britain to a naval war or marching on Russia in winter, as the province is a veritable [[Catachan|green hell where every blade of grass conceals an angry lizardman just waiting to spear you to death or drag you under the mud and drown you, if your feet or eyes don't rot first]]. [[Lizardmen|In short, they're all-around badass reptile-men who live in swampland, can take down all-comers, and even won bouts against Hell itself]].
*'''[[Catfolk|Khajiit]]:''' Technically related to Elves, but hard to tell by looking because they have many different forms that are determined at birth by the waxing and waning of Masser and Secunda: some Khajiit look like Bosmer, some like furries, some look like housecats except they can talk and use magic, and some get to be completely badass horse-sized tigers, named Battlecats by the Imperials. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their culture is basically the Romani outside of their homeland, and South/Southeast Asian within. The prime Khajiiti export is Moon Sugar, a substance that can be best described as magical opium made from crystallised moonlight. Like the Argonians they are a prime target for racism, and like the Argonians they responded by becoming skilled guerilla warriors, [[Tallarn|except flavoured like the Mujahideen]] instead of the Viet Cong.

===Other===
*'''Giants''': Giant humanoids said to be descended from the ancient Atmorans (which would make them and the modern Nords distant cousins, funnily enough) that after an undisclosed calamity grew in height at the cost of their intelligence. Generally a quite chill, nomadic people, unless you piss them off by annoying them or just looking wrong at their primary domesticated livestock, Mammoths. That said, big numbers of them can cause a lot of trouble for humans and frequently find themselves as targets of bounty hunters or armies. Some more "traditionally" minded Nords also like to hunt them for sport.
*'''Dragons''': Dragons are the timeless children of Akatosh, with Alduin as their leader. Their origin is kind of like a Big-Bang-Theory-ordeal that is complicated to explain. Used to be safekeepers of the flow of time in the world, until Alduin betrayed his purpose and enslaved the Ancient Nords during the Merethic Era, installing an unimaginably dystopic regime under the leadership of the Dragon Cult and its Priests. Said Dragon Cult also built the many tombs your PC steps through in Skyrim. Their way of communicating involves imparting a piece of your soul with every word you speak, using shouts with quite substantial effects on the physical world, which makes fighting and debating between them the exact same thing. Due to a quirk of fate, some mortals can be born as Dragonborn, mortals with the soul of a Dragon, that are able to absorb the soul of a Dragon (and therefore erasing its very existence from time itself) and become more powerful from it. True Dragonborn, however, are extremely rare, with only a handful ever being mentioned in recorded history, including Tiber Septim, the First Emperor and sometimes entire generations going by without one appearing. Moreover, normal mortals are also quite capable of learning how to use shouts, extreme caution and a tremendous amount of training provided, the Dragonborn is merely a natural prodigy at this. They were for the longest time thought to be extinct after the Ancient Nords rose up in revolt against Alduin and his Dragon Cult and seemingly killed a lot of them, only with their plan to kill Alduin failing. Their Plan B was to banish Alduin into another plane of existence with the help of an Elder Scroll, but the plan failed and Alduin was merely sent forward in time by about 5000 years, setting the events of TES 5: Skyrim into motion. While the majority of Dragons seem to be firmly unified behind Alduins leadership, there are quite a couple of them that retained their own agency, like the Dragon Paarthurnax who pitied the Nords while being very turned off by Alduin declaring himself a god and gifted them his knowledge about using Shouts, or the semi-undead Dragon Durnehviir who dabbled in Necromancy and was subsequently tricked by the Ideal Masters who keep him as their enforcer within the Soul Cairn.
*'''Vampires''': Undead, classic gothic horror vampires for the most part. Their origins lie in the unspeakable act of Molag Bal literally and figuratively raping a Nedic woman to her death and damning her to eternal servitude in unlife. Vampires live in hidden covens among mortals in the world, greatly enjoying pulling the strings behind political affairs of the world and generally just going around sucking people dry. Becoming a Vampire typically involves getting bitten by one, which transmits various germs that make up the root cause of vampirism itself. Vampires that don't dwell amongst the living tend to gather in cult-like structures, with the most senior Vampire at the top. Above all of them stand the Vampires that can trace their lineage back to the original Daughter of Coldharbor (aforementioned Woman that was raped) and openly worship Molag Bal as a god, which earns them special powers. There is also the option for mortals who pledge themselves to Molag Bal to repeat the ritual that gave birth to the first vampire. Nearly all of Tamriel despises Vampires and hunts them down without mercy when found out, especially those who worship the god of Mercy, Stendarr, but they are occasionally tolerated, even if their vampirism remains an open secret to some.
*'''Draugr''': Draugr occupy a middle ground in terms of undeath between the fully autonomous Vampires with their own ambitions and the fully lobotomized shells necromancers conjure. They are the embalmed footsoldiers of the Dragon Cult, who in life pledged their souls to its priests for eternal life. In spite of their undead condition, they remain quite lively when left alone, even if their free will is diminished greatly and their souls are mere fragments that get slowly leeched away by the Dragon Priests who need this kind of spiritual nourishment to retain their abilities and consciousness. To cite an allegory, regular Undead work like computers that need input to do something, while Draugr are running on an sophisicated AI (needing input to do anything vs somewhat satient but very predictable). The extremely long time they spent buried in various tombs in Skyrim and Cyrodiil had their physical capabilities reduced, yet they remain fearsome adversaries for anyone who is daring (or foolish) enough to disturb their masters peace.
*'''Dragon Priests''': Technically not a race on their own, they are different and important enough to at least merit a mention. The Dragon Priests were the leaders of the Dragon Cult, numbering 14 in total. Their sole responsibility was to keep the enslaved Nords in line and under Anduins control, while regularly partaking in joyous activities such as necromancy, dark magic and human sacrifices. Each and everyone of them was and is a master at Spellcasting and commanding their Legions of Draugr, who keep them sustained by slowly leeching away at the Draugrs souls. The most powerful of them was Miraak, who, in addition to being Dragonborn, made a pact with Hermaerous Mora, to take control of the Dragons themselves and subsequently betrayed the Dragon Cult only to return thousands of years later on Solstheim.

==Games==
Though several spinoffs were made, when referring to "The Elder Scrolls" only the five central games are being referred to.

===The Elder Scrolls I: Arena===
Jagar Tharn, the Imperial Battlemage and trusted servant of the Emperor Uriel Septim VII turns evil, locks the Emperor inside Oblivion, and takes over Tamriel. His apprentice Ria Silmane discovered this and told the player, so Tharn killed the former and imprisoned the latter. Yet Silmane persisted, and helped the player escape prison and revealed how Tharn could be destroyed: by recovering the eight parts of the Staff of Chaos from all over the empire. The player succeeds, kills Tharn, returns the Emperor and all is well. This was the only game where the player could visit all of Tamriel.

===The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall===
The player, a personal friend of the Emperor, is sent to the city of Daggerfall, High Rock to investigate a haunting by the ghost of the former king. Things quickly get out of hand when you discover the Numidium, a massive golem used by Tiber Septim to gain control over Tamriel. There are several mutually exclusive endings possible; canon opted to [[what|make them all happen]] in an event called the Warp in the West, a Dragon Break, which is a specific type of event where divine fuckery causes [[FATAL|time and space to take it up the ass hard]]. Holds the record for the largest virtual world ever created, being about two times the size of the UK, although due to technical limitations, most of it was copy-and-paste.

===The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind===
[[File:Morrowind.jpg|300px|thumb|right|If you can explain at least 75% of what's going on on this image, you are a true fan.]]
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind}}
Morrowind ships the player to the island of Vvardenfell, in the Dunmer province of Morrowind, where you are to report to the [[Snowflame|perpetually shirtless crackhead]] called Caius Cossades to investigate a [[Cultist-Chan|cult]] that is growing rapidly in size. This cult is revealed to be the doings of the Sixth House, a clan of Dunmer that was destroyed after its leader, Lord Voryn Dagoth, rebelled against Lord Indoril Nerevar, the leader of the war against the Dwemer. Nerevar died shortly afterwards (though it is unclear if he died from the wounds Dagoth inflicted on him, or that his advisors, the Tribunal, murdered their lord so they could use the tools of the Dwemer to grant themselves near-divinity), and the Tribunal took over as the god-kings of the Dunmer.

There was only one problem: Dagoth wasn't actually dead, and he granted himself near-divinity too. He's also completely insane because mortal minds simply were not meant to handle that kind of power, and now he is using a divine disease to influence the dreams of a bunch of Dunmer nationalists, transforming them into horrifying humanoid cephalopods hellbent on driving the Empire and all the other races out of Morrowind.

You take the role of Nerevar's reincarnation, the Nerevarine, and long story short you kill Dagoth, properly this time. However two of the Tribunal lie dead and the last one sacrificed his divinity to help you. Things in Morrowind do not get better after this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ow5lGFju1c Here is a great review about the game. Every N'wah in existence worth their salt must watch it.]

===The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion===
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion}}
You play as a nobody prisoner rotting in a cell in the Imperial City in the waning years of the Third Era. You catch a break when Emperor <s>Patrick Stewart</s> Uriel Septim VII pays a visit to your cell because his escape tunnel happens to be in there with you (it's chalked up to fate or a bureaucratic error). Turns out his heirs have been assassinated, and despite the best efforts of you and Cyrodiil's Finest, the Emprah gets shanked too. Before he does however, he entrusts you with the Amulet of Kings and tells you to go look for the Emperor's last son, a bastard child named Martin (who is voiced by Sean Bean) who is also being sought out by an apocalyptic cult of Mehrunes Dagon led by the last known child of the Camoran Dynasty, the family who had ruled over man for years before St. Alesseia came and slapped their shit down.

By the events of the ending, Mehrunes Dagon's attempted invasion has been thwarted and Tamriel has been saved from a truly horrifying outcome, but Martin is dead and the Septim Empire is officially left without an heir. Things in Tamriel do not get better after this.

It was the first big-name RPG to appear on seventh generation consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money.

===The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim===
[[File:Song of Skyrim.jpg|500px|thumb|Dat Nord Frost Resistance]]
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim}}
Also known as the Volsunga Saga: The Game, chronologically set 201 years after Oblivion. It's been a long time and a lot has happened. Basically the Empire went to shit. A faction of Altmer supremacists named the Thalmor took over the Summerset Isles and seceded, also annexing Valenwood and turning Elsweyr into a client state. Morrowind got properly fucked because the Red Mountain erupted and the northern half of the country was left uninhabitable, the Argonians invaded the southern half as payback for years of slavery, and what isn't run by vengeful ex-slave lizards or covered in burning ash is in the midst of a political vacuum caused by the collapse of the pro-Imperial House Hlaalu. Then the newly-christened Aldmeri Dominion declared war on the Empire and even sacked the Imperial City. The Imperial Legion drove them out at great cost but the Emperor, Titus Mede II, was forced to sign a ceasefire with several punitive terms including a ban on Talos worship and giving up parts of Hammerfell. These terms (especially the Talos ban) were... [[Rage|controversial]] to say the least; Hammerfell, fed up with the fuckery of the elves and the Empire at this point, kicked them both out and declared independence. Between this and their handling of the Oblivion Crisis and the Red Mountain eruption, many people within the Empire began seeing it as weak and ineffectual, selling out the non-Cyrodiilic peoples to save their own sorry hides. But for now, an uneasy cold war exists between the two empires and everybody knows Round 2 is just around the corner.

You're a prisoner, but in a shocking turn of events, this time you're actually told WHY this time! Turns out you crossed the damn border illegally, you filthy alien - of course if you are a Nord or a High Elf then it's just chalked up to an asshole Imperial officer who doesn't want to deal with the paperwork and sends you to the block along with everyone else. See, at this point the Imperial authorities in Skyrim are very uneasy because there is a civil war going on, between the pro-Imperial ''de facto'' High Queen Elisif the Fair, and the eponymous forces of Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak, a former Legion soldier turned Nord warlord who took umbridge to the terms of the ceasefire with the Dominion and now wants to drive out the Empire and claim the throne (so he is basically the Nord version of Robert the Bruce, even down to the controversial murder of a noble puppet that has made him effectively an outlaw king; he is also quite awesomely voiced by Vladimir Kulich), but he was captured and is going to get executed with you. Just mere moments before the frosty-looking bloke with the big axe gives you a discount haircut, a giant dragon god named Alduin the World Eater (Nidhogg with a touch of Jörmundgandr, although his purpose makes him more similar to Fenrir) decides to introduce himself to the world after being banished for ages and begins fucking up the town, giving you, Ulfric and his men a chance to escape. While everyone but Ulfric thinks the dragon is part of Ulfric's plan, in truth Alduin is there for YOU - you end up learning that you're the legendary Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon who can basically do any of the cool shit a real dragon can do (besides flying), leaving you to solve the mystery of why the mysterious dragons are returning and find a way to stop Alduin from eating the world. And possibly also end the civil war by leading either side to victory, leading to either an independent new Skyrim (Stormcloaks win) or a reinvigorated Empire that holds on to its most vital province and has a key figure of the dragonblood once again, leaving it in the best state it has been in decades (Imperials win). Either way, neither side likes the Aldmeri Dominion and war is on the horizon.

Gameplay-wise, it's very skubby; many people praise the sandbox-approach to the gameplay itself and the scale of the map, others criticize the lack of complexity in both gameplay and storylines. People nowadays just mod better looking women and play it for adult action anyway.

===The Elder Scrolls Online===
TES: the MMORPG. Early on it suffered from growing pains and problems, but after surviving the hate and becoming only buy to play, it became a rather nice game. It is set in the Second Era, 800 years before Oblivion and a full millennium before Skyrim. Tamriel is currently locked in a mêlée à trois between three fragile alliances all vying for the Imperial throne - the Ebonheart Pact (Nords, Dunmer and Argonians), the Aldmeri Dominion (Altmer, Bosmer and Khajiit) and the Daggerfall Covenant (Bretons, Redguards and Orcs). You can also play Imperials if you upgraded your account to the Imperial Edition, they can join any of the three alliances. Meanwhile behind the scenes Molag Bal is scheming to meld Mundus with his nightmare realm Coldharbour and enslave all the mortal races. Someone oughta stop that shit, right?

The game had a very rough release, with Elder Scrolls players criticizing it for missing the series's aesthetics and "feel" and MMO players for the lackluster end-game, and also for it's expensive subscription (same price as WoW, but without the decade worth of content). However the game received praise for it's Cyrodill PvP map. Fast-forward a couple of years and various updates, the most notable one being One-Tamriel which completely overhauled the game's balance and dropped the subscription, and had various DLCs released which added multiple zones, classes and Dungeons.

All in all the game today is a decent MMO, with a thriving and relatively non-toxic community. However the game's plot is lackluster compared to other Elder Scrolls games, and it has a notable lack of iconic characters, specially if compared to World of Warcraft. It also has a steady stream of extremely well made cinematic trailers, most of them focusing on the adventures of a fighter/mage/thief trio who go from fighting each-other to fighting alongside each-other, depending on the cinematic.

===The Elder Scrolls: Legends===
A collectible card game for PC and mobile.

===The Elder Scrolls: Blades===
A mobile game that everyone forgot about. It was kinda bad.

===The Elder Scrolls VI===
Announced at E3 2018, the game was confirmed to be in production. The trailer shows a mountainous eastern or western coast with some stone ruins. Bethesda has been completely silent on it and the simultaneously announced Starfield since their announcements, leading to many claiming vaporware.

==Books==
Yes, there actually are books set in Tamriel, The Infernal City and Lord of Souls written by [[Wikipedia:Gregory Keyes|Gregory Keyes]], which were set between the events of Oblivion and Skyrim. {{Spoiler|Someone who's actually read them, or is willing to reserach them more can expand this segment.}}

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<center>
<gallery>
image:Lel.jpg
image:N'wahs with attitude.jpg
image:1402853718622.jpg
image:Averagedayatbeth.png|This is depressingly true.
image:Tribunal_awaken.jpg|[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Almsivi!]]
image:Kobold romance diary by Weaver.jpg|An average day for a TES protagonist.
image:TES_lore_f.jpg|A lorefag's Slaanesh-grade wet dream.
</gallery>
</center>

==See also==
*[http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, the definitive wiki for the series.]
*[[Scrollhammer]]: if the Elder Scrolls and Warhammer had a bastard son, it would probably be like this.
*[[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition]]: If Elder Scrolls and Infinity had a bastard son.
*[[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG]]: A pen and paper [[RPG]] currently dead because Seht decided to take a break, but he's back now. Core 3E is pretty polished with many supplements actively being worked on and released by various anons.
*[[Savage Worlds]]: For which fanmade Elder Scrolls rules exist.
*[[Glorantha]]: Elder Scrolls' equally insane absent father.

[[Category:Video Games]]

Dwarf Fortress

2022-11-01T22:13:44Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1:

[[Image:DFlogo2.gif|center]]
[[Image:Dorf Fortress.jpg|thumb|You know you want to.]]
'''Slaves to Armok: God of Blood - Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress''' (ow my colon) (AKA Dwarf Fortress, Dorf Fortress, Dwarf Ortress, Dorf Ortress, Dor Fortress, Dwar Fortress, Door Fortress, Dwar Ortress, Dor Ortress, Dorf Fort, Dwarf Fort, Dorf Ort, Dwarf Ort, Dor Fort, Dorf Ort, [[Sly Marbo|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!]] or [[Khorne|suicidal tendencies]]) is the best game in the world. It was created in the dawn of time by Toady One, and will continue to be updated by his cybernetically preserved consciousness until the Heat Death of The Universe. The ostensible objective of the game is to manage a dwarven fortress, but the usual result of playing the game is hilarious failure.

The game is named after [[Khorne|God of Blood]], Armok: the one constant across the Dwarven multiverese, who destroys and creates worlds for fun. He is a god of war and conflict, who revels in confrontation and misery. When the world becomes too peaceful, civilised, homogenous and, therefore, ''boring'', Armok brings it to ruin and creates new one, so that blood may flow forevermore.

Unlike most sane games, Dwarf Fortress does not actually have a winning condition. Every fortress, no matter how successful, is doomed to a hideous death at some point - in fact, in older versions of the game, the simple act of mining a certain extremely deep and rare ore would start a hidden timer condemning your fortress to certain destruction at the hands of a [[The Lord of the Rings|balrog]] standin, with the game sadly informing you that your dwarves dug too deep, but keeping your fort going long enough to strike that ore was an achievement in and of itself.

This inevitability has lead to the fan base's rallying cry: "Losing is Fun!" In fact, in discussions on the topic, the word 'Fun' (especially with capital 'F') is entirely synonymous with 'Hideous Demise' and the things that are likely to cause it, in particular the 'Hidden Fun Stuff' described below. And with remembering the abovementioned description of the blood god, this is also the point of a horrible realisation for some: that the player IS Armok.

The gameplay has an exceptional and frankly obsessive depth of detail that no other video game has yet to attempt. Despite being (by default) ASCII-based and extremely obtuse, like the old roguelikes from which it draws inspiration, huge amounts of information are tracked and considered for just about every aspect of the game - down to minute details such as the exact location and severity of injuries (first joint on left little finger slightly bruised, for example). Combat is complex and messy - a typical dwarven battlefield will be full of bloody stains, severed limbs, discarded weapons and crossbow bolts, and the vomit of the unfortunate recipients of abdominal injuries. After-action combat reports give detailed and often hilarious or epic blow-by-blow accounts of the fights that take place, and the player even has the option of entering adventurer mode to explore their world and get in fights themselves, as well as a "legends mode" where they can just read about the history of their world and all the mayhem that happens in it. The game world and its denizens are also procedurally generated, creating the potential for a nearly infinite number of different possible worlds whose attributes can be painstakingly tweaked right down to the average rainfall and biome frequency.
[[File:DwarfMatrix.jpg|right|300px]]
Dwarf Fortress is still in alpha and under development (version 0.47 or so as of September 2020; the developers figure it's going to be at least another decade before it can be called "finished"), but will soon be released on Steam and itch.io for purchase. The <s>official</s> classic game's ASCII-based display of inscrutable letters and symbols confuses the shit out of [[:/v/|fucking casuals]], but unofficial tile graphics versions are available [http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php here], among other places. However, it does have a few minor quirks since that version does not yet fully support tile graphics. The consumer version will feature its own unique tileset, so casuals don't have to deal with ASCII. And after a very long and arduous wait, it seems like Dwarf Fortress is going to release on December 6th, 2022 on Steam.

Just a note for people who intend on downloading ether version (as far as we know right now, as the Steam release could fix a lot of issues). This is actually one of the most hardware intensive games in history. Even the most powerful Intel or AMD processor will '''Choke and Die''' the moment someone forgets to sterilize their pets, to the point that DF world generation is sometimes used as a CPU benchmark.

Posting a Dwarf Fortress thread on [[/tg/]] is a great way to effortlessly [[troll]] a few people, [[Games Workshop|confuse others]], and cause [[Indrick Boreale|multiple, simultaneous and devastating]] [[Slaanesh|orgasms]] in [[neckbeards]].

==Creatures of Dwarf Fortress==
===Dorfs===
[[Dwarves|Dorfs]] (singular: [[Dwarf|Dorf]]) are awesome short beardy alcoholic manic-depressive guys that like to dig.
<gallery>
Image:Dfcomic01.png|Dwarfs are known to come in packs. In packs of FUCKING USELESS <s>VAGRANTS</s> MIGRANTS!
Image:DF_Badass_1.png|Sometimes a proficient macedwarf is able to handle a Bronze Colossus single-handedly. Bronze Colossuses are actually ~7 times taller than dwarves and do not bleed.
Image:DF_Badass_2.jpg|Female dwarfs are the manliest females known to exist.
Image:Ironbeard dwarfbreath.JPG|Dwarfs will use surrounding items as improvised weapons, and become the last thing most fortress invaders ever see. Especially if the flood gate was [[The floor is lava|in use at the time.]]
Image:Hermitdorf.jpg|Standard dwarven hermit.
</gallery>

====Nobles====
Nobles are the bane of the land. They require ridiculously luxurious apartments and develop the [[Slaanesh|weirdest fetishes possible]], then require you to make items out of materials neither you nor merchants can provide, such as demanding glass in the middle of a freezing tundra. And they jail the most skilled workers for not fulfilling their every desire.

[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unfortunate_accident Killing nobles] in the most spectacular way possible is one of the most well-known and lulziest entertainments in Dwarf Fortress.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Noble_Fetishists.png
Image:DF_Gentlenobles.jpg
</gallery>

====Artifacts====
Dwarves get so-called "Strange Moods" once in a while. When in this state, they will claim a workshop for the job they are most proficient in, get some (often obscure) materials and start working on them. Artifacts can be quite literally any craftable item type in the game (including several that normally can't even be crafted by dwarves); examples include millstones, gates, boots, backpacks, and of course weapons and armor. Once completed, you can 'view' your artifact; If you choose to do so, a page describing the attributes of the artifact and its name will appear. For example:

''"Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right"''

This is a adamantine plate mail. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality.
On the item is an image of Landslantern the fire imp and Kib Clinchworks the dwarf in Adamantine. Kib Clinchworks is striking down Landslantern. The artwork relates to the killing of the fire imp Landslantern by the dwarf Kib Clinchworks in Headshoots in the early autumn of 107.
On the item is an image of a dwarf in Adamantine. The dwarf is cheering.

The name of the artifact's creator and the date it was created will also appear.

If a dwarf does not get the materials he needs in time, he goes mad. Sometimes he will kill another dwarf and make the artifact out of the resulting corpse. If he does, he will create some hilariously described items.
<gallery>
Image:DF_artifact_(1).jpg|The cup menaces with the spikes of steel!
Image:DF_artifact_(2).jpg
Image:Dire_Cake.jpg
Image:Trailmachines.jpeg|Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right
</gallery>

====Fire Cults====
Dwarves have strong affection to fire, magma and generally anything that burns. The hotter it is, the better.

The only rational reason behind it can be some suicide [[Salamanders|fire worshiping sect.]]
<gallery>
Image:Elephant final solution.jpg|Drown the world with magma. Its the only way to be sure.
Image:DF_Magma.jpg|Dwarf loev magma.
Image:Magmalever.gif|Urist, what do your dwarf eyes see?
Image:DF_Pants.jpg|Those pants are going to make a valuable addition to my Pants On Fire collection!
Image:Boatmurdered_flame.jpg|Dwarfs don't know that fire burns, so they pick up burning items and bring them to the stockpiles.
Image:DF_FIRE.png
Image:Dwarf_title_boo_radley_anonib.gif|A dwarf on fire. Completely unrealistic, in that the dwarf has noticed.
Image:Fire.png|He would put out that fire. But he's on break.
</gallery>

===Elves===
[[Elves]] (singular: elf) are cannibal treehuggers whose only use is elf bone bolts. Their only role in life is offering to trade with you before their diplomats inevitably bitch about how many trees you've been cutting down. You must open your magma death trap and kill them all, or you will be [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|EAT BY ELFS.]] Elves insist on using only wooden weapons with only rare exceptions, the latter usually due to being raised outside of elven society.

The only proper dorfy elf to ever exist is Cacame Awemedinade, an elf soldier serving in a dwarf-owned city who became king through a hilarious clerical error, then proved his worth killing things with a warhammer.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Elf_Diplomat_1.png|Elves send diplomats...
Image:DF_Elf_Diplomat_2.png|...to ensure you don't cut down too many trees.
Image:DF_elf.jpg|Ha-ha.
</gallery>

===Cats===
[[Cats]] are the bane of your existence. You must slaughter all of them before they outbreed you and Either cause your dorfs to suffocate since all the air is filled with cats (catsphyxiation?), Or your computer to destroy itself due to the sheer amount of cats it has to render. Even the most powerful Xeon processors chokes and dies the minute someone forgets to sterilize their cats.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Cats_1.png
Image:DF_cats_2.png
Image:DF_Cats_3.png|Trust your feelings, you know it to be the only solution.
Image:1194770522105.jpg|[[Artist]]'s rendition of a "catsplosion;" from beginning to devastating end.
</gallery>

===Forgotten Beasts===
[[Carp|Forgotten Beasts]] are either [[Grey Knights|badass motherfuckers]]. Some of them would make a [[Tarrasque]] look like a crying little girl. Their main prey is Dwarves. If any dwarf draws near a cavern, they are immediately at risk of being consumed by the horror. If you see Forgotten Beasts, WALL OFF ALL OF THEM IMMEDIATELY OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. All this, of course, depends on said beast not being a [[fail|blob of water/blood/vomit that falls apart as soon as a dwarf touches it]].

===Carp===
Honorary Forgotten Beasts for killing many a Fisherdwarf. Stay away from the river. They are now much more benign.

<gallery>
Image:Dfcomic03.png|Getting fishdwarfs lost to carp can bring the fortress down in one huge outburst of violence.
Image:DF_Carp_1.jpg
Image:DF_Carp_2.jpg|Magma is the answer. Magma is [[Boatmurdered|''always'']] the answer.
</gallery>

===Elephants===
'''Elephants''' used to be demonic creatures of the plains. They mercilessly killed your Dwarves and then killed the Dwarves that rush out of the fortress to loot the body of their fallen comrade. Elephants never forget, and never forgive, and they never sleep. They spend every moment of every day plotting the downfall of your fortress.

Eventually elephants were turned into much more peaceful beings in the newer versions of the game, so now you can settle near savanna and have your revenge. The vacant place of dwarf-murderer was taken by the vicious [[Dwarf_Fortress#Carp|Forgotten Beasts]].

In a strange turn of events thanks to the latest update, Elephants have fallen from the noble title of "bane of dwarves" to [[Derp|a creature that literally starves to death while eating 24/7,]] thanks to some coding...flaws. Ironically, despite the game making them more peaceful, real-life Elephants are most like the original "train of pachyderm death" portrayal (particularly the African elephants, which are bigger, more aggressive and have longer tusks than the Indian ones).

<gallery>
Image:DF_Elephant.png|That's how it all happens.
Image:DF_Elephant_Engraving.jpg|Fortress Walls are engraved with this kind of pictures.
Image:Dwarf_dorf_anonib.png
Image:DF_Skeletal_Elephant.jpg|Skeletal Elephant. Deadly death of death.
</gallery>

===Giant Sponges===
A recent addition to Dwarf Fortress, the '''giant sponge''' has become more feared than even the carp. A giant sponge can easily wipe out an entire army of dwarves with a single charge, which is rather peculiar as they are completely immobile. And they're virtually invincible, as their lack of any organs or blood allows them to harmlessly absorb blows that would kill anything else several times over. How they are able to kill anything with their soft, squishy bodies is a mystery nobody is willing to risk trying to solve. Unfortunately, the most recent update led to the slaying of a giant sponge via crushing it with a maul.

While common Giant Sponges can "drown" out of water, ''undead'' Giant Sponges are [[Nagash|fucking immortal]]. Setting it on fire will just create a giant torch of undead death. If you see one, say your last farewells to your <s>crazy stupid</s> brave dorfs.

The good news is now giant sponges are now hilariously vulnerable to getting flattened by mundane attacks. They're still just as lethal, so they're glass cannons now. And since undead are now vulnerable only to getting pulped instead of randomly dying after enough hits, undead giant sponges are basically normal sponges, only amphibious.

<gallery>
Image:Sponge.gif|Without a nervous system, the only thing it can feel is ANGER!
</gallery>

==Hidden Fun Stuff==
If you dig below the lava oceans around the bottom layer, you may discover the Hidden Fun Stuff. Down here is ''{{BLAM|the circus}}'', where you can find ''{{BLAM|clowns}}'' and their much sought-after ''{{BLAM|candy}}''. Dig deep and see what awaits you!

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
But if you REALLY want to know...
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
{{spoilers}}
In reality, what awaits you at the bottom is [[Realm of Chaos|Hell/ the Underworld]] and its myriad [[Daemon|Demons]]. Break through either by somehow getting through the semi-molten rock or just mining too much [[Adamantine]], and those fiends will instantly realize a way out of Hell has presented itself and [[/v/|Zerg rush]] to get out and [[Rape|destroy your fortress]]. Nine times out of ten [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|there will be no survivors]], but if you're well prepared ([[Cheese|or know a few tricks]]) they can be defeated.

If the initial tidal wave of demons is killed, congrats, you can now carve out your own little corner of Hell. Be warned though, Demons wander about and are without number here.

Occasionally during worldgen, a [[Chaos God|deity]] can allow [[Greater Daemon|a unique named Demon]] to escape the Underworld and form a Goblin civilization, at the cost of having to write their true name on a slab as to be bound to the surface world. Usually you'll never encounter these demon kings unless you raid the civilization's capital or go into Adventure mode and seek them out yourself. You can also target the vault holding the slab, but a second breed of Hidden Fun Stuff, the [[Daemon Prince|Angels]] (who are of the Biblical variety) of the deity that raised the demon in the first place, will be found guarding the place. Beating them and taking the slab allows you to banish the Demon on the slab or bind them to your service in Adventure mode. Or in Dwarf Fortress mode it's one hell of a prize.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Demon.png|That's what you get for digging too deep.
</gallery>
</div></div>

==The Cat Paws and Liquor Bug==
Given how detailed the game is, some ''very'' weird bugs can show up. To give you an example:

The dwarfs can have cats, to keep the rodent population down and for companionship. After one update, cats were suddenly dying randomly, sometimes after vomiting. The developer realized the cause of this bug, which goes as follows:

# Cats have paws, which can have substances on them.
# The AI for Cats is programmed to occasionally lick their paws to keep them clean, as is the case in the real world.
# Dwarfs, if they're drinking when ordered to do something, drop their beer on the floor and immediately go do it.
# This spilled beer was being absorbed by the paws of cats when they walked over the spilled beer.
# The game was accidentally treating this as if the cat had drunk their body weight in alcohol, rather then the small amount they would in a proper simulation.
# Cats were progressing immediately to lethal alcohol poisoning upon licking their paws, with some of them making a brief stopover in "nauseated vomiting".

Notably, only the quantity of alcohol being ingested by cats upon licking their paws was considered a "bug". The bug was fixed by changing the contamination system to take into account liquid volumes. Cats can still get mildly buzzed after walking through spilled beer.

'''That's''' how insanely detailed Dwarf Fortress is.

==The Rip-offs==
The chief problem with Dwarf Fortress, from the perspective of marketing, is that the interface is so goddamn hard to understand. Thus, a few developers have got it in their head to make "Dwarf Fortress, but playable by mere mortals". Here are a few identified so far:

* Gnomoria. While many long-time Dwarf Fortress player despise Gnomoria for stealing a dragon's-hoard-worth of features from Dwarf Fortress and subsequently departing from the Roguelike genre, it does have redeeming qualities. Namely as a Dwarf Fortress lite. It has a point-and-click interface (more so than DF), an isometric view, full-color GUI, a (relatively) simpler economy and production system, in-game explanations for several gameplay elements, and less options in general. However, there is a project ongoing to give dwarf fortress isometric graphics. (It costs about 8 bucks on Steam currently, so it isn't free, but that's the price you have to pay for being a [[Cato Sicarius|namby-pamby prissy little princess]] who needs training wheels on their Dwarven experience the first few go-arounds.)

* [[Rimworld|Rimworld]], a game which is basically DORF FORTRESS IN SPESS, almost as detailed, though it features no dwarves (or considering it's in space, no [[squats]]). Available on Steam, and has a thriving modding community which does everything from basic changes to incredibly handy utilities to overhauls. There's a WH40k mod on Steam; so instead of your usual colonists dying horrible deaths, you can have your usual guardsmen dying horrible deaths.

* Amazing Cultivation Simulator: A essentially Dwarf Fortress in a chinese Xianxia setting where you're tasked with making a sect of rice farmers cultivate into demigods.

==See Also==
*[[Boatmurdered|The legend of Boatmurdered.]]
*[[Kobold Camp]]
*[[Dwarf Fortress/Goblin Garrison|Goblin Garrison]]
*[[Space Station 13]], which is kind of like this, but IN SPAAAACE, with multiplayer, and you play as one of the dwarfs.
*[[Minecraft]], because that game is ''so'' [[rage|similar.]]
*[[Terraria]], by virtue of being [[Rage|"similar"]] to the above.
*[[Unified_Setting/Dwarf]] for how /tg/ can summarize the little beardy buggers.
*[[Journal of Kith|Some old journal]] written by a dorfan explorer.

==External Links==
;Official
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Official Site]
*[http://df.magmawiki.com/ Dedicated wiki]
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Download it here]
You can find instructions on using it in the recent releases on the Discussion page of this article.
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Development news]

;Improvements
*[http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php Download the unofficial graphical tileset here]
*[http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2431 An version with a graphical tileset already installed]

;Sagas
*[http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/ The Saga of Boatmurdered]
*[https://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace/ The Illustrated Saga of Oilfurnace]
*[https://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder The Illustrated Fall of Bronzemurder]

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Boatmurdered.jpg|[[Boatmurdered]] is the most (in)famous dwarf fortress ever to exist.
Image:DF_Boatmurdered_2.jpg
Image:DF_Cheese.jpg|Dwarfs are known to engrave weirdest things imaginable on the walls of the fortress.
Image:Bronzecolossus.jpg|Say, like this.
Image:Thedwarfisembracingthecow.jpg|They also embrace animals during parties they throw instead of working.
Image:Dwarf_rollingrocks_anonib.png|Dwarf press.
Image:DF_Onbreak.jpg|If the squad leader is on break, then the squad is on break as well.
Image:Babyinabarrel.jpg|How the hell did that even happen?
Image:Dwarf_mechanicook_anonib.jpg
Image:Dwarf_year1_anonib.jpg
Image:DwarfPsion_anonib.jpg
Image:DwarfFortress_is_fun.png|There's casual, there's hardcore, then there's DF.
File:Dorf demotivator.png|And can you believe that this is just the start?
</gallery>

[[Category:Dwarf Fortress]][[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Dwarves]][[Category:Software]]

Dwarf Fortress

2022-11-01T17:45:15Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1:

[[Image:DFlogo2.gif|center]]
[[Image:Dorf Fortress.jpg|thumb|You know you want to.]]
'''Slaves to Armok: God of Blood - Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress''' (ow my colon) (AKA Dwarf Fortress, Dorf Fortress, Dwarf Ortress, Dorf Ortress, Dor Fortress, Dwar Fortress, Door Fortress, Dwar Ortress, Dor Ortress, Dorf Fort, Dwarf Fort, Dorf Ort, Dwarf Ort, Dor Fort, Dorf Ort, [[Sly Marbo|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!]] or [[Khorne|suicidal tendencies]]) is the best game in the world. It was created in the dawn of time by Toady One, and will continue to be updated by his cybernetically preserved consciousness until the Heat Death of The Universe. The ostensible objective of the game is to manage a dwarven fortress, but the usual result of playing the game is hilarious failure.

The game is named after [[Khorne|God of Blood]], Armok: the one constant across the Dwarven multiverese, who destroys and creates worlds for fun. He is a god of war and conflict, who revels in confrontation and misery. When the world becomes too peaceful, civilised, homogenous and, therefore, ''boring'', Armok brings it to ruin and creates new one, so that blood may flow forevermore.

Unlike most sane games, Dwarf Fortress does not actually have a winning condition. Every fortress, no matter how successful, is doomed to a hideous death at some point - in fact, in older versions of the game, the simple act of mining a certain extremely deep and rare ore would start a hidden timer condemning your fortress to certain destruction at the hands of a [[The Lord of the Rings|balrog]] standin, with the game sadly informing you that your dwarves dug too deep, but keeping your fort going long enough to strike that ore was an achievement in and of itself.

This inevitability has lead to the fan base's rallying cry: "Losing is Fun!" In fact, in discussions on the topic, the word 'Fun' (especially with capital 'F') is entirely synonymous with 'Hideous Demise' and the things that are likely to cause it, in particular the 'Hidden Fun Stuff' described below. And with remembering the abovementioned description of the blood god, this is also the point of a horrible realisation for some: that the player IS Armok.

The gameplay has an exceptional and frankly obsessive depth of detail that no other video game has yet to attempt. Despite being (by default) ASCII-based and extremely obtuse, like the old roguelikes from which it draws inspiration, huge amounts of information are tracked and considered for just about every aspect of the game - down to minute details such as the exact location and severity of injuries (first joint on left little finger slightly bruised, for example). Combat is complex and messy - a typical dwarven battlefield will be full of bloody stains, severed limbs, discarded weapons and crossbow bolts, and the vomit of the unfortunate recipients of abdominal injuries. After-action combat reports give detailed and often hilarious or epic blow-by-blow accounts of the fights that take place, and the player even has the option of entering adventurer mode to explore their world and get in fights themselves, as well as a "legends mode" where they can just read about the history of their world and all the mayhem that happens in it. The game world and its denizens are also procedurally generated, creating the potential for a nearly infinite number of different possible worlds whose attributes can be painstakingly tweaked right down to the average rainfall and biome frequency.
[[File:DwarfMatrix.jpg|right|300px]]
Dwarf Fortress is still in alpha and under development (version 0.47 or so as of September 2020; the developers figure it's going to be at least another decade before it can be called "finished"), but will soon be released on Steam and itch.io for purchase. The <s>official</s> classic game's ASCII-based display of inscrutable letters and symbols confuses the shit out of [[:/v/|fucking casuals]], but unofficial tile graphics versions are available [http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php here], among other places. However, it does have a few minor quirks since that version does not yet fully support tile graphics. The consumer version will feature its own unique tileset, so casuals don't have to deal with ASCII. And after a very long and arduous wait, it seems like Dwarf Fortress is going to release on Christmas 2022 on Steam.

Just a note for people who intend on downloading ether version (as far as we know right now, as the Steam release could fix a lot of issues). This is actually one of the most hardware intensive games in history. Even the most powerful Intel or AMD processor will '''Choke and Die''' the moment someone forgets to sterilize their pets, to the point that DF world generation is sometimes used as a CPU benchmark.

Posting a Dwarf Fortress thread on [[/tg/]] is a great way to effortlessly [[troll]] a few people, [[Games Workshop|confuse others]], and cause [[Indrick Boreale|multiple, simultaneous and devastating]] [[Slaanesh|orgasms]] in [[neckbeards]].

==Creatures of Dwarf Fortress==
===Dorfs===
[[Dwarves|Dorfs]] (singular: [[Dwarf|Dorf]]) are awesome short beardy alcoholic manic-depressive guys that like to dig.
<gallery>
Image:Dfcomic01.png|Dwarfs are known to come in packs. In packs of FUCKING USELESS <s>VAGRANTS</s> MIGRANTS!
Image:DF_Badass_1.png|Sometimes a proficient macedwarf is able to handle a Bronze Colossus single-handedly. Bronze Colossuses are actually ~7 times taller than dwarves and do not bleed.
Image:DF_Badass_2.jpg|Female dwarfs are the manliest females known to exist.
Image:Ironbeard dwarfbreath.JPG|Dwarfs will use surrounding items as improvised weapons, and become the last thing most fortress invaders ever see. Especially if the flood gate was [[The floor is lava|in use at the time.]]
Image:Hermitdorf.jpg|Standard dwarven hermit.
</gallery>

====Nobles====
Nobles are the bane of the land. They require ridiculously luxurious apartments and develop the [[Slaanesh|weirdest fetishes possible]], then require you to make items out of materials neither you nor merchants can provide, such as demanding glass in the middle of a freezing tundra. And they jail the most skilled workers for not fulfilling their every desire.

[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Unfortunate_accident Killing nobles] in the most spectacular way possible is one of the most well-known and lulziest entertainments in Dwarf Fortress.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Noble_Fetishists.png
Image:DF_Gentlenobles.jpg
</gallery>

====Artifacts====
Dwarves get so-called "Strange Moods" once in a while. When in this state, they will claim a workshop for the job they are most proficient in, get some (often obscure) materials and start working on them. Artifacts can be quite literally any craftable item type in the game (including several that normally can't even be crafted by dwarves); examples include millstones, gates, boots, backpacks, and of course weapons and armor. Once completed, you can 'view' your artifact; If you choose to do so, a page describing the attributes of the artifact and its name will appear. For example:

''"Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right"''

This is a adamantine plate mail. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality.
On the item is an image of Landslantern the fire imp and Kib Clinchworks the dwarf in Adamantine. Kib Clinchworks is striking down Landslantern. The artwork relates to the killing of the fire imp Landslantern by the dwarf Kib Clinchworks in Headshoots in the early autumn of 107.
On the item is an image of a dwarf in Adamantine. The dwarf is cheering.

The name of the artifact's creator and the date it was created will also appear.

If a dwarf does not get the materials he needs in time, he goes mad. Sometimes he will kill another dwarf and make the artifact out of the resulting corpse. If he does, he will create some hilariously described items.
<gallery>
Image:DF_artifact_(1).jpg|The cup menaces with the spikes of steel!
Image:DF_artifact_(2).jpg
Image:Dire_Cake.jpg
Image:Trailmachines.jpeg|Trailmachines the Fellowship of Right
</gallery>

====Fire Cults====
Dwarves have strong affection to fire, magma and generally anything that burns. The hotter it is, the better.

The only rational reason behind it can be some suicide [[Salamanders|fire worshiping sect.]]
<gallery>
Image:Elephant final solution.jpg|Drown the world with magma. Its the only way to be sure.
Image:DF_Magma.jpg|Dwarf loev magma.
Image:Magmalever.gif|Urist, what do your dwarf eyes see?
Image:DF_Pants.jpg|Those pants are going to make a valuable addition to my Pants On Fire collection!
Image:Boatmurdered_flame.jpg|Dwarfs don't know that fire burns, so they pick up burning items and bring them to the stockpiles.
Image:DF_FIRE.png
Image:Dwarf_title_boo_radley_anonib.gif|A dwarf on fire. Completely unrealistic, in that the dwarf has noticed.
Image:Fire.png|He would put out that fire. But he's on break.
</gallery>

===Elves===
[[Elves]] (singular: elf) are cannibal treehuggers whose only use is elf bone bolts. Their only role in life is offering to trade with you before their diplomats inevitably bitch about how many trees you've been cutting down. You must open your magma death trap and kill them all, or you will be [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|EAT BY ELFS.]] Elves insist on using only wooden weapons with only rare exceptions, the latter usually due to being raised outside of elven society.

The only proper dorfy elf to ever exist is Cacame Awemedinade, an elf soldier serving in a dwarf-owned city who became king through a hilarious clerical error, then proved his worth killing things with a warhammer.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Elf_Diplomat_1.png|Elves send diplomats...
Image:DF_Elf_Diplomat_2.png|...to ensure you don't cut down too many trees.
Image:DF_elf.jpg|Ha-ha.
</gallery>

===Cats===
[[Cats]] are the bane of your existence. You must slaughter all of them before they outbreed you and Either cause your dorfs to suffocate since all the air is filled with cats (catsphyxiation?), Or your computer to destroy itself due to the sheer amount of cats it has to render. Even the most powerful Xeon processors chokes and dies the minute someone forgets to sterilize their cats.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Cats_1.png
Image:DF_cats_2.png
Image:DF_Cats_3.png|Trust your feelings, you know it to be the only solution.
Image:1194770522105.jpg|[[Artist]]'s rendition of a "catsplosion;" from beginning to devastating end.
</gallery>

===Forgotten Beasts===
[[Carp|Forgotten Beasts]] are either [[Grey Knights|badass motherfuckers]]. Some of them would make a [[Tarrasque]] look like a crying little girl. Their main prey is Dwarves. If any dwarf draws near a cavern, they are immediately at risk of being consumed by the horror. If you see Forgotten Beasts, WALL OFF ALL OF THEM IMMEDIATELY OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. All this, of course, depends on said beast not being a [[fail|blob of water/blood/vomit that falls apart as soon as a dwarf touches it]].

===Carp===
Honorary Forgotten Beasts for killing many a Fisherdwarf. Stay away from the river. They are now much more benign.

<gallery>
Image:Dfcomic03.png|Getting fishdwarfs lost to carp can bring the fortress down in one huge outburst of violence.
Image:DF_Carp_1.jpg
Image:DF_Carp_2.jpg|Magma is the answer. Magma is [[Boatmurdered|''always'']] the answer.
</gallery>

===Elephants===
'''Elephants''' used to be demonic creatures of the plains. They mercilessly killed your Dwarves and then killed the Dwarves that rush out of the fortress to loot the body of their fallen comrade. Elephants never forget, and never forgive, and they never sleep. They spend every moment of every day plotting the downfall of your fortress.

Eventually elephants were turned into much more peaceful beings in the newer versions of the game, so now you can settle near savanna and have your revenge. The vacant place of dwarf-murderer was taken by the vicious [[Dwarf_Fortress#Carp|Forgotten Beasts]].

In a strange turn of events thanks to the latest update, Elephants have fallen from the noble title of "bane of dwarves" to [[Derp|a creature that literally starves to death while eating 24/7,]] thanks to some coding...flaws. Ironically, despite the game making them more peaceful, real-life Elephants are most like the original "train of pachyderm death" portrayal (particularly the African elephants, which are bigger, more aggressive and have longer tusks than the Indian ones).

<gallery>
Image:DF_Elephant.png|That's how it all happens.
Image:DF_Elephant_Engraving.jpg|Fortress Walls are engraved with this kind of pictures.
Image:Dwarf_dorf_anonib.png
Image:DF_Skeletal_Elephant.jpg|Skeletal Elephant. Deadly death of death.
</gallery>

===Giant Sponges===
A recent addition to Dwarf Fortress, the '''giant sponge''' has become more feared than even the carp. A giant sponge can easily wipe out an entire army of dwarves with a single charge, which is rather peculiar as they are completely immobile. And they're virtually invincible, as their lack of any organs or blood allows them to harmlessly absorb blows that would kill anything else several times over. How they are able to kill anything with their soft, squishy bodies is a mystery nobody is willing to risk trying to solve. Unfortunately, the most recent update led to the slaying of a giant sponge via crushing it with a maul.

While common Giant Sponges can "drown" out of water, ''undead'' Giant Sponges are [[Nagash|fucking immortal]]. Setting it on fire will just create a giant torch of undead death. If you see one, say your last farewells to your <s>crazy stupid</s> brave dorfs.

The good news is now giant sponges are now hilariously vulnerable to getting flattened by mundane attacks. They're still just as lethal, so they're glass cannons now. And since undead are now vulnerable only to getting pulped instead of randomly dying after enough hits, undead giant sponges are basically normal sponges, only amphibious.

<gallery>
Image:Sponge.gif|Without a nervous system, the only thing it can feel is ANGER!
</gallery>

==Hidden Fun Stuff==
If you dig below the lava oceans around the bottom layer, you may discover the Hidden Fun Stuff. Down here is ''{{BLAM|the circus}}'', where you can find ''{{BLAM|clowns}}'' and their much sought-after ''{{BLAM|candy}}''. Dig deep and see what awaits you!

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
But if you REALLY want to know...
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
{{spoilers}}
In reality, what awaits you at the bottom is [[Realm of Chaos|Hell/ the Underworld]] and its myriad [[Daemon|Demons]]. Break through either by somehow getting through the semi-molten rock or just mining too much [[Adamantine]], and those fiends will instantly realize a way out of Hell has presented itself and [[/v/|Zerg rush]] to get out and [[Rape|destroy your fortress]]. Nine times out of ten [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|there will be no survivors]], but if you're well prepared ([[Cheese|or know a few tricks]]) they can be defeated.

If the initial tidal wave of demons is killed, congrats, you can now carve out your own little corner of Hell. Be warned though, Demons wander about and are without number here.

Occasionally during worldgen, a [[Chaos God|deity]] can allow [[Greater Daemon|a unique named Demon]] to escape the Underworld and form a Goblin civilization, at the cost of having to write their true name on a slab as to be bound to the surface world. Usually you'll never encounter these demon kings unless you raid the civilization's capital or go into Adventure mode and seek them out yourself. You can also target the vault holding the slab, but a second breed of Hidden Fun Stuff, the [[Daemon Prince|Angels]] (who are of the Biblical variety) of the deity that raised the demon in the first place, will be found guarding the place. Beating them and taking the slab allows you to banish the Demon on the slab or bind them to your service in Adventure mode. Or in Dwarf Fortress mode it's one hell of a prize.
<gallery>
Image:DF_Demon.png|That's what you get for digging too deep.
</gallery>
</div></div>

==The Cat Paws and Liquor Bug==
Given how detailed the game is, some ''very'' weird bugs can show up. To give you an example:

The dwarfs can have cats, to keep the rodent population down and for companionship. After one update, cats were suddenly dying randomly, sometimes after vomiting. The developer realized the cause of this bug, which goes as follows:

# Cats have paws, which can have substances on them.
# The AI for Cats is programmed to occasionally lick their paws to keep them clean, as is the case in the real world.
# Dwarfs, if they're drinking when ordered to do something, drop their beer on the floor and immediately go do it.
# This spilled beer was being absorbed by the paws of cats when they walked over the spilled beer.
# The game was accidentally treating this as if the cat had drunk their body weight in alcohol, rather then the small amount they would in a proper simulation.
# Cats were progressing immediately to lethal alcohol poisoning upon licking their paws, with some of them making a brief stopover in "nauseated vomiting".

Notably, only the quantity of alcohol being ingested by cats upon licking their paws was considered a "bug". The bug was fixed by changing the contamination system to take into account liquid volumes. Cats can still get mildly buzzed after walking through spilled beer.

'''That's''' how insanely detailed Dwarf Fortress is.

==The Rip-offs==
The chief problem with Dwarf Fortress, from the perspective of marketing, is that the interface is so goddamn hard to understand. Thus, a few developers have got it in their head to make "Dwarf Fortress, but playable by mere mortals". Here are a few identified so far:

* Gnomoria. While many long-time Dwarf Fortress player despise Gnomoria for stealing a dragon's-hoard-worth of features from Dwarf Fortress and subsequently departing from the Roguelike genre, it does have redeeming qualities. Namely as a Dwarf Fortress lite. It has a point-and-click interface (more so than DF), an isometric view, full-color GUI, a (relatively) simpler economy and production system, in-game explanations for several gameplay elements, and less options in general. However, there is a project ongoing to give dwarf fortress isometric graphics. (It costs about 8 bucks on Steam currently, so it isn't free, but that's the price you have to pay for being a [[Cato Sicarius|namby-pamby prissy little princess]] who needs training wheels on their Dwarven experience the first few go-arounds.)

* [[Rimworld|Rimworld]], a game which is basically DORF FORTRESS IN SPESS, almost as detailed, though it features no dwarves (or considering it's in space, no [[squats]]). Available on Steam, and has a thriving modding community which does everything from basic changes to incredibly handy utilities to overhauls. There's a WH40k mod on Steam; so instead of your usual colonists dying horrible deaths, you can have your usual guardsmen dying horrible deaths.

* Amazing Cultivation Simulator: A essentially Dwarf Fortress in a chinese Xianxia setting where you're tasked with making a sect of rice farmers cultivate into demigods.

==See Also==
*[[Boatmurdered|The legend of Boatmurdered.]]
*[[Kobold Camp]]
*[[Dwarf Fortress/Goblin Garrison|Goblin Garrison]]
*[[Space Station 13]], which is kind of like this, but IN SPAAAACE, with multiplayer, and you play as one of the dwarfs.
*[[Minecraft]], because that game is ''so'' [[rage|similar.]]
*[[Terraria]], by virtue of being [[Rage|"similar"]] to the above.
*[[Unified_Setting/Dwarf]] for how /tg/ can summarize the little beardy buggers.
*[[Journal of Kith|Some old journal]] written by a dorfan explorer.

==External Links==
;Official
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Official Site]
*[http://df.magmawiki.com/ Dedicated wiki]
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Download it here]
You can find instructions on using it in the recent releases on the Discussion page of this article.
*[http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ Development news]

;Improvements
*[http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php Download the unofficial graphical tileset here]
*[http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2431 An version with a graphical tileset already installed]

;Sagas
*[http://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/ The Saga of Boatmurdered]
*[https://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace/ The Illustrated Saga of Oilfurnace]
*[https://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder The Illustrated Fall of Bronzemurder]

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Boatmurdered.jpg|[[Boatmurdered]] is the most (in)famous dwarf fortress ever to exist.
Image:DF_Boatmurdered_2.jpg
Image:DF_Cheese.jpg|Dwarfs are known to engrave weirdest things imaginable on the walls of the fortress.
Image:Bronzecolossus.jpg|Say, like this.
Image:Thedwarfisembracingthecow.jpg|They also embrace animals during parties they throw instead of working.
Image:Dwarf_rollingrocks_anonib.png|Dwarf press.
Image:DF_Onbreak.jpg|If the squad leader is on break, then the squad is on break as well.
Image:Babyinabarrel.jpg|How the hell did that even happen?
Image:Dwarf_mechanicook_anonib.jpg
Image:Dwarf_year1_anonib.jpg
Image:DwarfPsion_anonib.jpg
Image:DwarfFortress_is_fun.png|There's casual, there's hardcore, then there's DF.
File:Dorf demotivator.png|And can you believe that this is just the start?
</gallery>

[[Category:Dwarf Fortress]][[Category:Video Games]][[Category:Dwarves]][[Category:Software]]

High Lords of Terra

2022-10-31T23:14:57Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Three Dynamic Members */

[[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}}

{{topquote|Behold! I've brought you a man!|Diogenes, handing Plato a plucked chicken (it makes sense in context)}}

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 an inordinate amount of 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 going into detail on the actual politicking that the Lords get up to (Mostly concerning the Adeptus Custodes' deploytment, which dominates the first half of the book). Lev Tieron, the Chancellor of the Imperial Council of the time, notes that many of the High Lords he'd known were variously mad, obsessed, verifiably sociopathic, power-hungry, or some mix of the above - yet they were still the best qualified to do their jobs, even if the stresses caused them to burn out quickly. He even obliquely references the long-running fandom perception of them as useless idiots disconnected from the state of the Imperium, and notes that to be a understandable if wrong perception of them. Make of that what you will.

It also revealed that an important part of Terra's political background is the so-called "Static Tendency" - essentially the belief that since the Emperor had decreed the Council of Terra was the best way of running the Imperium, [[Inquisition#Puritans|any proposal to deviate from this was only slightly better than outright heresy.]] In practice however, this was little more than an excuse not to upset the status quo or deviate outside from the comfortable norms. This was made blindingly clear in the lead-up to and '''especially''' in the aftermath of Cadia's fall and the subsequent return of the [[Primarch]] [[Roboute Guilliman]], as the Static Tendency would thoroughly reveal itself as a hollow justification to cling to power by those who didn't deserve it, had failed in their duties, and were now willing to resort to treason and defying the will of the Emperor himself in order to retain their position and status. [[Fail|Needless to say, it didn't work]].

''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.

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 from afar, and the [[Custodes|Talons of]] [[Sisters of Silence|The Emperor]] keeping a much more immediate (and stabby) eye on them from nearby. 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. Some of them got the message. [[Fail|Some did not]].

[[Corvus Corax]] said in ''Corax: Lord of Shadows'' of the ''Primarch'' series that "Few are as short-sighted as those about to lose power" and by <s>Christ</s> the Emperor is that an apt assessment, and one that applies well to the High Lords. Given that this was an express order issued directly by The Master of Mankind himself to his own son and was confirmed by the Captain-General of the Custodes, who himself was now a High Lord, that really should have been the end of it many times over. Instead it lasted about as long as it took for Guilliman to head off on the [[Indomitus Crusade]], whereupon several High Lords (and two prior incumbent deposed by Guilliman) attempted to stage a coup against him in absentia; this involved sapping away manpower and resources from desperately needed areas (including the entire [[Minotaurs]] Chapter) while allowing chaotic cults to flourish on Terra, to grant themselves the forces and pretext necessary to take over. Unfortunately for them however, [[Adeptus_Custodes|The Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Assassin|Assassins]], and later the [[Imperial Fists]] were having absolutely none of it 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, Violeta Roskavler, and replacement Lords were drafted in.

It's later revealed that Guilliman, Trajan Valoris, and Violeta Roskavler predicted that something like this would happen, so at least they're 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 the Chaotic and power-hungry moron kinds in a matter of hours.

[[Just as Planned|That's legitimately clever.]]

==Members==
The High Lords are theoretically a dynamic body of 12 (or 13-14; see below) members that changes based on the needs of the Imperium. That this was the same number of members as are on the [[Skaven]] Council of Thirteen until the Great Rift 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.

Any names in '''bold''' denote the current holder of the listed seat.

===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 (though it seems he doesn't actually know how to work the thing). 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 (to technically do his job in fixing the throne), 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, as his replacement.
*'''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; upset by the Custodes being sent on missions away from Terra (claiming that [[Lawful Stupid|the Lex Imperialis and its restraints were inviolate despite the fact there were ''literally daemons on Holy Terra, Jesus Christ you brainless bitch'')]], she joined and thus got 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 (ie, running their secret pet projects). So more than a few Inquisitors would see the posting more as being assigned to desk duty rather than being in the field, and the decentralized nature of the Inquisition meaning they technically gain no greater authority within the organization (they are a representative, nothing more). 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 however, 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]].
** The current representative is '''Kleopatra Arx''', who has held the position since before Guilliman's return, and she remains there still. As far as the Inquisition goes, Arx is refreshingly competent and reasonable (if a bit appropriately cold and pragmatic), and thus was one of the relatively few High Lords that needed neither a booting nor scolding from Guilliman. She was present when the coup attempt took place, but was having none of it, and may well have shut it down herself had others not already been handling it (thus being another prime example how idiotic the coup attempt really was in the grand scheme of things).
*'''Grand Master of Assassins:''' Perhaps equally surprisingly, the other High Lord who often acts as a check and balance for sanity (as [[The War of The Beast]] demonstrated) 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, both because the [[Assassin]]s are fucking scary and out of concern that he might assassinate the others - mostly because one Grand Master did just that, though they really had it coming. [[The Beheading|Funny story]]. It's seen as tradition for the Master of Assassins to send back the corpses or heads 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. Also meaning due to his highly useful organization and inevitable dirt he would have on other high lords makes the Grand Master far more politically powerful than what would be expected of a relatively small organization.
** 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 incumbent, '''Fadix''', who despite being sceptical of Guilliman's ability to prevail, is almost single-handedly responsible for saving Terra from the aforementioned coup attempt - 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 (the Custodes were a mix of busy elsewhere and too busy laughing their asses off at the sheer idiocy of the plot before them). Fadix's personal inclination to the Static Tendency aside, he clearly takes his role seriously, so when the coup came around, [[Awesome|his belief in the law and his allegiance to the Master of Mankind superseded all else]], thus he still holds the post. As of M41/M42, the Grand Master is considered tied with the Fabricator-General and the Ecclesiarch for third most powerful High Lord.
*'''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 due to how integral the Administratum is to the functioning of all the other organizations and the Imperium itself, and they are fucking territorial about that. With the Emperor appointing [[Roboute Guilliman|his son]] Imperial Regent, the Master of the Administratum is now the ''second'' most powerful High Lord, with the Fabricator-General, Ecclesiarch and Grand Master of Assassins now fighting for ''third'' most powerful. Irthu Haemotalion was very upset about this after being fired and actually attempted a coup on Guilliman only to get killed to death by Fadix along with his fellow traitors/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. And just like Guilliman's [[Rogal Dorn|brother]], she hails from [[Inwit]]. It's eventually revealed that she, Valoris, and Guilliman knew Haemotalion would try a coup attempt like this and planned to use it as an excuse to cleanse the capital of any further political liabilities (so Haemotalion turned out to be pretty useful in a backhanded way).
*'''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 (because, y'know, the guy is considered one step below the Big E Himself, and disrespecting a person who can mulch anything short of a Greater Daemon is a Bad Idea). The current Captain-General is '''[[Trajann Valoris]]''', currently one of four active High Lords (aside from Guilliman, [[Dante]], and [[Morvenn Vahl]]) known to have gotten a model and rules for the tabletop.
*[[Administratum]] Subordinates
**'''Chancellor of the Estate Imperium:''' The Imperium's head paper pusher. Seriously, they're a glorified secretary. Given the name, they probably oversee the treasury of the Imperium as a whole and possibly the tithes. 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 one of their underlings 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 they mostly dictate 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 their record keeping and the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium in charge of their 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 allowing them a 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 a little less wrong in the Imperium. They're the commander of the Imperium's forces (those that listen to the military bureaucracy anyway) in charge of guarding humanity's [[Segmentum|chewy centre, Segmentum Solar]]. One of the more notable examples would be the [[awesome]] '''[[Lord Solar Macharius]]'''.
**'''Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy:''' Discards the shiniest of flying space cathedrals in favour of the shiniest of desks. Like their counterpart(s) in the Imperial Guard, they often gets a seat when there is some Ork WAAAGH!/Tyranid Fleet/Black Crusade/Tau Expansion/etc. happening. Unlike their counterpart, though, they aren't dependent on the Chancellor for money, but they ''are'' dependent on the Navigator houses and the Astronomican for navigation and on the Adeptus Astra Telepathica for communications. As a result, they don'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. In Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 his successor Drang didn't last long either before getting {{BLAM|'''*BLAM!*'''}}-med after being found working for the [[Alpha Legion]], and Admiral Spire (the guy Drang tried to kill with various suicide missions and one of the few people whose faith rivals the [[Ecclesiarchy]] without becoming a blind zealot) becomes his successor. But it is unknown up to which point the story is canon (early parts of the game are canon, merely depicting the Fall of Cadia, but latter parts are not as they end with Abaddon's death).
**'''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 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 remained empty for the longest time. 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]] a Shrine-World. The current Abbess Sanctorum is '''[[Morvenn Vahl]]'''. While it's uncertain what befell of Sabrina, 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 currently helping with the ongoing war in the Charadon sector against [[Typhus]].
**'''Cardinal of the Holy Synod of Terra:''' Some old fart from a group of old farts 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 (and Fourteenth) Lords===
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}}

XCOM

2022-10-28T18:42:18Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1:

{{/vg/}}
{{Oldschool}}
[[Image:Xcom_2.png|thumb|right|]]

This is a [[Dan Abnett|rare treat]]. '''X-COM''', or as it's called across the pond, ''UFO: Enemy Unknown'' (It was released as XCOM in North America, it was ''UFO: Enemy Unknown'' literally everywhere else) is a turn-based strategy game that is, to put it simply, about as close to a game of [[Dark Heresy]] as one can get in isometric 3D. Note that X-COM is significantly older than [[Dark Heresy]], and older than all but the first edition of [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]], so it'd be better to say [[Dark Heresy]] is a lot like X-COM on the tabletop. Which is probably not a conincidence, as the lead programmer on the very first XCOM game had also lead GWs brief attempt as a video games publishing company in the mid 80s. Dating back to the much-lamented Microprose, it set a gold standard for atmosphere and playability that has, frankly, not been breached in ages.

The game is [[Dwarf Fortress|old as balls]] and in isometric view, which, paired with the Dark Heresy similarities, makes it more /tg/ material than /v/.

==A General Gist==
A general synopsis is that in [[grimdark|the not-so-distant future, there is war - and aliens]]. Aliens are arriving, and they are most assuredly hostile. It falls upon the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or the eponymous X-COM, a multi-national task-force, to deal with the invasion by blasting the fuck out of the Aliens, stealing their shit, researching their technology, and using it to fucking kill them off, all the while fighting off terror attacks and trying to figure out where in Uranus these fucking things are coming from (as it turns out, from Mars, and if you win, the final mission involves you going to Mars and dropping an [[Exterminatus]] on their asses). You didn't exactly have a time limit, but the more time passed, the harder aliens arrived, starting with one-man(alien?) scouts to do Roswell-grade pranks to Harvester grade ships to abduct and mutilate cattle, to fuckhuge battleships that eventually started attacking your base.

It kicked ass. It was good enough to spawn a sequel, ''Terror From The Deep'', which was basically the same game, but underwater (therefore areas to cover are multiplied by three. You do the math) and infinitely harder with a direct nod to Call of Cthulhu. Story-wise, the destruction of the Martian base activated a fail-safe in the aliens' system that woke up T'leth (not R'lyeh, but you get the point), their 'secondary' (and mobile) base buried deep under the seas of Earth, ran by a "Sleeping, Gigantic Alien In Coma That Can Manipulate Dreams" with an octopoid face, real subtle there. X-Com now again must protect the people while finding out about where exactly T'leth is and go in to blast it to smithereens with extreme prejudice. It was hard. Really hard. Not only do aliens have a major advantage technology-wise at the start and they tear through your recruits with impunity, but later in the game when you catch up they start using a nasty trick to take control of your troopers, leading to sometimes hilarious and [[rage|extreme rage-inducing]] turn one [[TPK]]s as your heavy weapon trooper gets controlled and fires his heavy weapon inside the transport while the team is busy disembarking. Oh, and did we mention that the only way to research the best armour in the game was to capture a live specimen of a rarely-appearing alien? And that to capture a live specimen you had to send a poor redshirt in armed with an oversized cattle prod to stun it in close quarters? And that said alien was [[rip and tear|able to tear a human apart effortlessly]] in close quarters? And (as if all that wasn't bad enough already), that the poor redshirt then had to pick up and to carry the damn unconscious thing back to the human ship praying [[rape|that the specimen didn't wake up with a grudge before he got there and the mission ended]]? Yeah, it was kinda like that. And the final level had THREE unsaveable separate levels full of extreme ambush points that had to be completed with no failure, a textbook example of "oldschool gaming".

It then spawned a second, far easier, somewhat different but still appreciated sequel, ''X-Com Apocalypse''(a.k.a Libertarian Cyberpunk Paintball-deployed McXenocide Simulator). The destruction of T'leth had a heavy price: when it rose above the clouds, it was self-destructed, killed the whole boarding team and fucked up Earth's biosphere. Humanity retreated to quickly built mega-arcologies to survive, the first among them being Mega-Primus built on the ruins of Toronto, a Cyberpunk corporatocracy with retro-futuristic art guidelines, libertarian system, along with the discrimination of Alien-hybrids and androids any cyberpunk corporate shitholes straight out of Hunger Games Panem city would display. One day, tetrahedral bright gates appear 24/7 in the city's skyline, and spews UFO's; and [[Meme|aw shit, here we go again]]. This time, X-COM, this time being a corporation, can keep existing even when the government hates you if the player gets hideously rich selling psionic crack stolen from cultists. To make the game far easier, the Aliens' Homeworld, a separate pocket universe behind a black hole can be visited and/or attacked any time with appropriate ships, each organic Alien "building" making the Xenos lose steam and eventually stop building UFO's. So unlike the other two games, after a certain breaking point the game gets ''easier'', not harder.

The Alien Planet which orbits a recently supernova'ed star is a bleak, dying world and the hivemind organism that lived there was minding its damn business before we blew up that star in the Prequel, X-COM Interceptor. Isn't it lovely, every time we do desperate stuff life shovels shit in our face?

The quest line is more or less the same: wait for the aliens to show up, down the UFO, research the three alien aeronautics technologies(Energy Source, Navigation, Propulsion), reverse engineer some prototype and strike back while killing whatever ground forces they deposit and vivisecting the survivors. Unlike the two first game, there's a bigger political aspect to things as you have not only to make sure you deal with the damn aliens coming to fuck your shit up, but remain best buds with the other humans while doing so, or risk denial of public and material services(no free travel if Transtellar is mad, and Megapol, the McPolice corporation won't sell you guns or vehicles). It tried to blend Turn-Based & Real-Time strategy into one so you could play it at the speed you wanted, and even attack other human factions for loot and in the case of Cultists, a public service. All in all, a decent and ambitious, if not overwhelmingly good game (mostly because a ton of content was cut before release). Basically this time it was one [[Cyberpunk]] city against extra-dimensional aliens, though the equipment from the first two games gave the player (and humanity) a far greater head start and replicating alien equipment is nanotechnologically done and doesn't need trophy materials but just money.

Combat-wise, both aerial and ground, it's far more beginner-friendly, dynamic with unique armament choices even for the endgame. In the air, corporations have plenty of military gear and flying vehicles to sell, and unlike the first two games vehicles can swarm a single UFO. As UFO's arrive, every passersby with a McRocket launcher or McAutoCannon will tell the organic UFO's to get off their property. The city can be damaged, and flying rubble can instantly kill the biggest UFO's. (Mind you, that game is made in 1999!) The deposited aliens breed and flee across the city slums and sewers, so it pays to watch where the damn UFO's beamed down. And if pissed off royally, Aliens drop a KAIJU-SIZED lifeform to demolish everything in hopes one of the buildings is where you guys live. City damage gets paid out of part Government, part the property owner and they ''will'' angrily ask for compensation when your fusion missile leveled that shiny multimillion dollar mall, hospital, psionic TV station and the CEO's apartment. When you finally make the ships to pass over to the Alien dimension to say hello, it is possible to wipe out the Alien Planet's fleet in advance so no one can annoy you with Alien alarms blaring all over the city for a week.

On the ground, no longer is the game bound to a boring Heavy Plasma/Sonic&Guided Waypoint Rocket combo, necessitating a dozen different weapons, personal energy shields, gas grenades, smoke grenades, explosive grenades and many more gadgets, including psionic projectors. Earliest aliens cannot even penetrate the bulky Megapol armor which is easily available, and only can scratch the lighter, permanently gravitation optional Marsec Armor. Shit only gets dangerous when alien humanoids pack molecular beams which can be easily replicated by YOU once you hit a certain point ceiling which guarantee an injury on each hit unless very lucky. Of course, said beam also works against them, so Aliens develop personal shield generators which you can only capture when gassing the xeno scum without any explosive damage. Match that too? Aliens start packing "Entropy Launchers" which, unless blocked by a shield, LITERALLY MELTS the target in 2 shots max. So the arms race is constant, and it ends up ''dynamic AND asymmetric'', Aliens' final weapon is Entropy Launcher which do not harm theirs, but annihilates your men on impact(you can outrun the living missile if smart). Your side, [[HFY]] develops LITERAL NERVE GAS tailor-made for aliens (Yes, harmless against humans) launchable from corporate-sold McRocket launchers, [[Bolter|Mcminirocket launchers with gyrojet munitions]], grenades and X-COM made PAINTBALL automatic pistols which fuck Alien shit up in miliseconds. Committing biochemical genocide sponsored by McGovernment never felt this fun! Endgame-wise, the Alien Planet is no longer a single mission but 10 different repeatable missions, each weakening the Alien city by one building; level 5 permanently stopping any alien UFO production so the game can be finished at your leisure.

Saddest part /v/-wise, it had a colossal amount of content cut off. Corporations were supposed to be actively buying-selling property buildings and jockey for power which could be exploited by XCOM([[Edgy|threats, ransoms and kidnappings]]), as well as brainsucker-infected civilians could be scanned and arrested. Aliens were supposed to be multiple empires which expand in their home dimensions, all nine dimensions of them with bad ending branches existing if XCOM fucks up the wrong dimension and thinks they are gone for good.

Then Microprose was bought by [[Hasbro|that which must never be named]], who proceeded to nose-dive the IP with games like [[Shit Twinkie|X-COM: Interceptor]] and [[Fail|X-COM: Enforcer]]. At least Interceptor had a decent backstory and for those with a good eye, explained where the aliens in ''X-Com Apocalypse'' came from and what happened after X-Com 2(Written above, Interceptor's Final Mission happened in the same pocket universe the Apocalypse hivemind was chilling in). X-COM: Enforcer was little more than a horribly cheap third person shooter fit for 90's arcades.

Fucking [[RAGE|Hasbro]].

Anyway. Combat is a lot like Dark Heresy's in that it's exceedingly lethal; at the game's outset, you have no armor beyond jumpsuits with Kevlar stuffed into them, and your firearms are the best and most powerful weaponry that chemical propelled explosives can provide only moderately capable against alien forces (though quite diverse). In order to properly take these fucking things on anything remotely resembling their own terms, you need upgrades. And lots of them. Upgrades come through research, and research comes by shooting down UFOs, landing a ground assault, killing the surviving aliens, and stripping the UFO like the [[Blood Ravens]] do other chapters' shiny bits. Once brought back to base, your researchers can look into what makes the alien's gear work, research your own weapons and tech, and develop technologies to help in the fight against the Aliens. Eventually, you can load your forces up with [[Space Marine|Power-armored bad-asses]], but starting out, your forces are fragile, and fighting smart is ''vital''. You ''will'' suffer casualties early on - guaranteed - but such is war, and you must press on, allowing the survivors to grow into [[Colonel Greiss|manly badasses]].

The Aliens in the first two and the Interceptor prequel are a diverse bunch led by some creepy floating cloaked asshats, ranging from the rank-and-file Sectoids (conventional "gray" aliens), to Chryssalids (horrifying abominations that inject targets with eggs that turn them into mindless drones which will explosively birth new Chryssalids thereafter, think Xenomorph meets Genestealer). Their entertainment is neural stimulation implants which trigger exact effects of LSD, and they simply harvest anything and anyone and puree them alive before injecting into their bloodstream when hungry. Nightmare fuel = YES. The game manages to be exceedingly creepy for one so simple, and is one of many reasons that X-COM works so well, making the invading Aliens strangely civilized, yet nauseatingly, well...Alien.

The series' legacy, not just its squad-based combat phase but also the general outline of the Fluff (X-Files meets S.W.A.T) also inspired a fuckton of clones and remakes of the idea, see below.

==Tales of Heroism==
In accordance with /tg/'s love of war stories about [[your dudes]], several examples of awesome have been compiled:

''Instant'' death doesn't ''always'' happen. Occasionally, one Rookie will be touched by God and succeed against all odds. After that, he will die horribly. [[Just as Planned]].

X-COM agent of note: [[Marc Lecointe]]. Lecointe survived numerous missions, got the highest kill count on most missions, killed a Snakemen leader and his bodyguards (despite losing over half the squad), and got shot in the face and back with plasma and lived. He eventually was hit with return fire in an alley and began bleeding. He returned fire and killed the Snakeman, but bled to death before help could arrive. Lacointe lives on in our hearts.

Another agent of note is Gristle McThornbody, a Rocket-Toting Team-Killing asshole who refuses to die OR be mind-controlled. He's so badass, that even when he has 85% or more to hit on a 2x2 alien, he'll still hit the wall twenty tiles to the left.

==New Stuff and Things==
According to things [[/v/]] likes to watch on the Internet, a new X-Com game is in the pipes, set to be made in the gameplay and spirit of the old games, with new graphics and updated for the new generation of gamers to be introduced into the X-Com game style. It lost the dash along the way someplace, and got re-named ''XCOM: Enemy Unknown''. This new game, which has spawned joy boners in many on /v/ and /tg/ alike, is believed to stem from the utter, burning [[RAGE|fury]] that was originally spawned from 2K's simply-titled ''XCOM'' game, which, near as we can tell, is an FPS that takes place in the 1960s and has exactly ''nothing'' to do with the actual X-COM franchise. Seriously, don't look into 2K's game if you're a fan of the series on any level - it will cause veterans to spontaneously transform into [[Angry Marines]] and/or [[Khorne|Khornate Berserkers]]. Apparently, those in charge had the wherewithal to note that if they didn't make a ''proper'' X-COM game, [[/tg/]] (and by extension, [[/v/]]) would [[Anal Circumference|leave their asshole in ruins]]. They even went ahead to declare the two games take place in separate universes. If only [[Games Workshop]] had [[Matt Ward|that much sense]]...

==XCOM: Enemy Unknown by Firaxis==
[[File:XCOMGameplay.jpg|200px|thumb|An in-game screenshot of the new game.]]
And Firaxis came to the rescue, promising to return to the roots of XCOM (note the lack of a hyphen this time around, although the logo ''does'' have a horizontal stripe taken out of the "COM"). Since Firaxis has a lot of ex-MicroProse people, a lot of them have had to do with the original as well, and the original musical score will make a return. Although it's changed a few things to avoid hurting the brains of [[/v/|delicate little console kiddies]] like removing time units, removing ballistic simulation, cutting down on your maximum amount of squad members (4 at the start and 6 maximum) and limiting us to one base (though each base location gives its own unique bonus), it still somehow manages to be a good game in its own right. If the original X-COM is like Mordheim, then XCOM is like Space Hulk: massively simplified and more heavily dependent on the luck of the die, but with less micromanagement and long-term planning required. Save-scumming is pretty much obligatory, the midgame difficulty ramp-up leaves you no time to train up a second team if your best get wiped out.

If you haven't bought the game and you're a TBS fan, everyone in /tg/ that isn't [[That guy]], would highly recommend you give it a whirl at the modest price of <strike>
$39.99 </strike> $16.49 for all the good remade XCOM games because of our father Gabe Newell on PC,
still is 39.99 for console/Non-Steam or $9.99 on mobile/tablet devices. Like always, we have footage for vidyas: https://youtu.be/qDhuZ4b51hA https://youtu.be/-SKoS5BYVuY https://youtu.be/bxuzLyR-000

===XCOM: Enemy Within===
[[File:MectoidMEC.jpg|200px|thumb|Did we mention melee combat with exosuits?]]
''Enemy Within'' is an expansion pack (and unlike most "horse armor" tier DLCs with the name this one actually deserves it) that completely re-defines how the game progresses, compared to the original one. The game's story still progresses like the original game, but expands on it for a more entertaining experience.

It adds the "meld" resource to the game, a type of alien organic/synthetic-hybrid nanomachine that allows you to unlock two powerful technologies: MEC and genetic modification. MEC allows your troops to interface with a Mechanized Exoskeleton Cybersuit, a heavy exoskeleton that brings the heaviest of weapons to the field (Including the option for a powerfist equivalent called a "Kinetic Strike Module". Yes, make your own faux [[Terminator]] squad! Especially when the Tier-3 Paladin upgrade bulks up your suit's armor that you look vaguely similar to Termies.). Genetic modification allows you to augment your troops using data gathered from dissected aliens, making them killier than ever before. In fact, you can create your own equivalent of an Imperial [[Space Marine]] with the list of available modifications you can do (Two of these specific upgrades are a second heart and the ability of self-regeneration). The neural dampener mod absolutely neuters the aliens' endgame trickery by giving troopers +20 will, immunity to panic, and immunity to mind control.

It also adds new aliens to the xenos' side, like a cloaking squid robot that chokes your troops to death and their own brand of exosuit troops. It also introduces another enemy into the game: EXALT. EXALT are a bunch of power-mad blokes who sees the alien's invasion as a way to gain power by adapting their technology for themselves, inching them closer to world domination. They see you as an obstacle and are determined to undermine your efforts to defeat the aliens by disrupting your operations through a number of ways and sowing panic amongst XCOM-member nations, generally making your already hectic life even more hectic. You must now defeat this new threat through a combination of [[Ork|cunning brutality and brutal cunning.]] They have most of your technologies to go toe-to-toe with you (Except for their own exosuits) and they are well hidden, so bringing them down won't be an easy affair.

===XCOM 2===
[[File:People%27s_reaction_to_XCOM_2%27s_Vipers.png|200px|thumb|Turns out they ''are'' poison glands. Hee.]]
A direct-ish sequel to EU/EW, XCOM 2 seems to decide that what's canon is not: not "you killed all the aliens, now here's more aliens", but "you know that Impossible Ironman game you played for a laugh and got utterly stomped? That's the canon ending". (The utterly stomping part takes place in the base assault, and it is so bad that two of the most important things got taken: The Commander, and more importantly, central officer Bradford's sweater). The aliens won before humanity even got to laser weapons, taking over the world and unifying humanity (read: ruling over them in a pseudo-utopia "Brave New World"-style), and basically preparing to turn them into another of their slave races (not that most of humanity knows this).

XCOM refused to back down even after the Council of Nations ceased to exist and instead went underground, hijacking an alien supply ship to act as a mobile base for hit-and-run operations against the alien occupiers, in the hopes of toppling the ADVENT (the puppet government aliens've set up) and exposing the true purpose of their supposedly ideal society to the world. So they free the captured Commander (sans the sweater) and it's <s>gorilla</s> guerilla warfare time.

This is where the first core gameplay mechanic differs from the previous entries in the franchise. Where before now you had to push forth inch by inch before getting jumped by sectoids and surprise sectopods lurking around corners, most missions start with your strike team in concealment, letting ''you'' get the jump on the aliens. Once you execute this initial ambush, however, it reverts back to the standard formula for the rest of the mission.

New features include:

*The Assault class has been given a makeover to focus even more on [[Rip and Tear]], replacing the sidearm with a sword and changing title to the Ranger.
*The Sniper has been renamed the Sharpshooter and given a pistol-focused skill-tree-route that turns the soldier into Clint Eastwood (literally, like you can have a stand-off by firing 3 pistol-shots in the same turn).
*The Support class has been renamed the Specialist and been given a drone to hack, heal, shield and/or zap shit remotely.
*The Heavy has been given a nice grenade launcher to act as your cover-stomper, and been renamed the Grenadier.
*Psi-operatives are their own class now as well, and get hate-hair and [[Cadia|purple eyes]] because that makes sense and all psychically talented people look like neo-punks.
*Troops can be captured, and then rescued, which also reclaims any expensive gear they had on them (but it's never the captured troops you actually need back).
*New enemies (without spoilers), including "human" ADVENT security troops (who really love to say "bitch" and pointing towards your soldiers) with magnetic weapons who look like humans till you get their armor off, sectoid-human hybrids with teeth, thumbs, and belly buttons (which can be really creepy if you '''really''' think about it), and Snake-women called Vipers (which is what the Thin Men actually look like without their disguises).

Yes, there were snaketits on the thread that announced this to /tg/. No they are not actually tits, being venom glands. No /d/ did not care. Yes they have drawn porn of them. Yes, it will be added to the gallery. And yes... Chimera City confirmed Viper fetish as canon. Yes... There are viper bordellos are in the game.

Fortunately this is somewhat balanced out by the Archons, which seem to be the refined version of the floaters. Rather than looking like a muton that fell victim to the Borg from star trek, they look like the floating torsos of male strippers that joined the armies of the Goa'uld from Stargate. In fact they're honestly far more fanservice-y than even the vipers, in that they, unlike the vipers, give the impression of having actually been designed with fanservice in mind. Seriously, ask any fa/tg/irl who isn't asexual or a lesbian to look these up and she'll tell you they're some of the sexiest videogame enemies she's ever seen.

Moving on.

XCOM 2 also contains an in depth explanation for the aliens' motives that many fans felt was lacking or too ambiguous in Enemy Within. Apparently, the Ethereals have some kind of fatal disease they can't cure, so they've been trekking around the galaxy culminating genes to form the ultimate bodies for themselves, while amassing a genetically supreme army. When the Ethereals found humanity, they found their genes to be so awesome and powerful that just adding some of them to a lowly sectoid turned it from a pathetic 3' tall creature you could kill with basic weapons, to an 8' tall psionic rape machine that could raise the dead and withstand salvos of bullets to the face. They then set up an alien government on Earth so they could discretely process humanity's best genetic material and slowly form new bodies for themselves that don't die called Avatars. And by don't die, we mean have copious amounts of health, teleport every time they're injured, regenerate like crazy, are guaranteed to successfully mind control anything, and are immune to any of your psychic status abilities(ie: panic, disorientation, and mind control, you can still annihilate them with psionic fire). And the boss fight involves killing three of these dick-butts and an endless wave of alien reinforcements. Using human DNA is also where their ADVENT troops came from, they grew armies of human spliced with unspecified aliens to act as their public face to the humans. But humanity wins anyway, because humans are just that fucking awesome.

The game is also notable for abandoning the usual conditions for losing. The norm for the series is for your funding to get cut if too many countries lose faith in XCOM. Since you're fighting a guerrilla war and your support are humans fighting to survive outside the aliens' control zones, that isn't happening. Instead you lose if the aliens complete the Avatar Project, their goal to mass produce the bodies for the Ethereals. If they do you get treated to a scene of almost all resistance being crushed because the Avatars are dangerous enough in small numbers and an army of them would unstoppable. You can slow progress, but can only stop it by finishing the game.

So far there have been recently four DLCs for XCOM 2. "Anarchy's Children" added new customization features for your soldiers, most of which you wouldn't ever really use. "Alien Hunters" adds a new mission, weapons, and alien rulers who you have to hunt down. The alien rulers get to take an action every, single, time, one of your soldiers takes one of their own (this was slightly nerfed in War of the Chosen to only trigger on all non-free actions taken within the Ruler's sight, because firaxis realized it was bullshit. Squadsight Snipers and Grenadiers ''will'' be your friends here). This is even more infuriating then it sounds. Some more customization options are added too. "Shen's Last Gift" adds another mission and the SPARK class soldier. SPARKs are robots you have to make in the proving ground, functioning extremely similarly to the MEC soldiers from Enemy Within. In Vanilla XCOM 2, they were very undertuned for the resource investment required to make them. War of the Chosen rebalanced them in a way that makes them significantly more viable; the addition of weapon mod slots for their primary guns can allow them to perform substantially better right out the gate and their immunity to exhaustion and hostile non-damaging psychic powers (namely mind control and insanity) combined with their ability to deploy on missions even when grievously damaged gives them a slight edge over their meaty counterparts in terms of consistency. Having said that, they still require a fairly heavy resource investment per unit to build, as in "do I go ahead and build a SPARK, or should I just upgrade my weapons to the magnetic/plasma tier?" Optional mods have improved their balance to outright making them a super unit if you wish.

And here comes the fun part; if you read the developers blog, their idea of "balance" is to actually nerf plenty of stuff...so the game is harder after having a buffed-up alien lord chase your dudes all over the game. Was old-school really this hard?

You think that's bad, the end game unlocks second wave options, like increasing all Health by 50%, having your guys get worse as they get injured, have their stats rolled at random, so you can make the game even HARDER! Because dying is ''fun''.

And finally, if you find yourself bored with the vanilla experience, XCOM 2 has a very healthy and active modding community adding anything from extra voice packs to full on reworks of the entire game akin to the famed Long War of the original game. Do you want Bob Ross to lead your squad to victory? Want to bring back weapons and MECs from the EU and EW? How about rival third-party factions of Storm Troopers or Geth to turn what's seemingly a stealth mission into a chaotic three-way bloodbath? Your own custom [[Deathwatch]] kill team? The possibilities might not be ''endless'', but you can ensure no two games are ever the same. A warning though, due to how easy it is to create and add mods to your game, care should be taken when implementing them, [[rage|as conflicting or poorly made mods can crash the game or corrupt your saves.]] Additionally, unoptimized or script-heavy mods can make lower-spec computers run like absolute ass. Unreal Engine 3.5 has annoying stability issues as well. You read that correctly. [[Derp|It runs not on the latest version of Unreal Engine 4, but a modified version of Unreal Engine 3.]] [[Fail|Not even the DLCs or WOTC itself have fixed these issues]]. Even a high end gaming machine will experience game crashes due to the age of the engine. With a higher chance if one is running over 150+ mods. Care should be taken when concurrently running a large number of them. Damn it, Firaxis patch your damn game!

While most of the character customization mods introduced (like the Halo: Reach MJOLNIR armor, Mass Effect Turians/Asari/etc, Star Wars Clone Troopers n' such) are entirely cosmetic, one particular mod bears special mention for you elegan/tg/entlemen out there. Armors Of The Imperium is a Warhammer 40k mod that adds fully fledged Space Marine power armor into the game, including a standard set, an Assault variant, a Terminator variant, an Apothecary variant, a Techmarine variant and a Librarian variant. For the ladies in your army, they have access to the Sisters of Battle power armor alongside the Seraphim variant. These armors can be upgraded much like the standard armors ingame and offer significantly better protection than the vanilla equivalents (as you would expect), with the specialized armors offering additional benefits to their wearer. The customization available to your personal Space Marines is ridiculously expansive, allowing you to mix and match virtually any version of the armor from Mk. II through Mk. X and enough additional bits and bobs that'll make any kitbasher weep with envy. The inhouse customization doesn't quite end there either, as the pack comes with dedicated Space Marine Chapter "nationalities", letting you perfectly recreate a significant number of popular or well known Space Marine chapters down to the last detail. Combine this with the available voice packs, bolter and plasma weapon mods to create your very own personal Space Marines to defend holy terra in style!
Mods that aren't Space Marines or Chaos are mixed bags and some even downright offensive to the eyes. As most of the armor and weapons look like they are made of plastic for some reason [[fail|and seem to be ported from mobile games.]]

When 2K rolled a bunch of Firaxis' games into their own custom launcher (XCOM included), it initially [[Fail|didn't have mod support]], meaning that you were unable to activate or alter any mods installed post launcher update. This was adjusted, thankfully, but many older mods didn't take too kindly to the new launcher and don't properly load when launching the game. There are a few alternate XCOM game launchers that you can find and download that restores the game to pre-2K launcher, so there is a way around that inconvenience.

====XCOM 2: War of the Chosen====
This brand new expansion gives us three new allies to aid us. It's actually more than large enough to be a game into itself.

*Reapers: Stealthy hunters who wear [[Shadowrun|trench coats and gas masks]] and are armed with nothing but a rifle and explosives. It's enough. Reapers are ''the'' defacto masters of infiltration and assassination and right out of the gate have a dramatically buffed state of concealment called "Shadow". When in their "Shadow" mode, Reapers are virtually undetectable and can only be revealed by the enemy if they literally run into them by sheer dumb luck. Yes, you can have your Reaper sit ass out completely out in the open in the middle of the street and the aliens will be none-the-wiser. Reapers can and will begin to reveal themselves on the offensive, however, as they have an exponentially increasing chance to reveal themselves after every shot they take. Upgraded reapers can mitigate this slightly by taking a perk that prevents the odds of being revealed from increasing if they kill the target they shot at. [[Dakka|They also have an ability that lets them shoot at an enemy until they run out of ammo.]] Long story short, these guys are only slightly less powerful than the Reapers from Mass Effect.

*Skirmishers: ADVENT defectors who are armed with a grappling hook that can pull them to a rooftop and pull themselves to the enemy or vice versa and at max level allows them to have the [[Awesome|alien rulers ability to gain action points every. Time. The. Enemy. Moves.]] Except it only works three times a turn, and doesn't trigger on non-move actions. [[fail|The game doesn't tell you this.]] Their Bullpups have lower range and damage over the standard rifle, but make up for it by being able to shoot multiple times a turn and being wielding by dudes using grappling hooks to zip between buildings like Spiderman. Despite the longer barrel would give it the same stats and longer range. Once again you need download a workshop mod to fix this.

*Templars: [[Grey Knights|A resistance group made of only psionics]] that wield psi blades and machine pistols, but you'll probably never use those. They're fast, hard to kill, and hit like a brick. And like any good psi-based unit, they can fry their enemies with lighting from their hands. They're like the [[rip and tear]] half of the Ranger, but with psionic powers. They have access to some rather obscene powers (like being able to teleport your allies and enemies across the map or summon lightning storms to disintegrate several enemies at once), but this is tempered by them needing to build up Psionic Focus by killing enemies in melee in order to use them. They're also fantastically hammy and roll their Rs.

But these new allies come with a catch as you now have to fight the titular chosen who can adapt to your soldiers' abilities with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the Lost ([[tarpit|zombie swarms]]) that attack both you and ADVENT. Along with these new allies and enemies is trying to get the three resistance groups to work together, as well as a new fatigue and relationship system.

The faction leaders are voiced by actors from [[Star Trek|Star Trek: The Next Generation]]. [[Fail|They do pretty good job except for Marina Sirtis poorly performed lines.]] Good thing the game allows players to switch to a better voice for your first Reaper(and their other soldiers).

====Tactical Legacy Pack====
A mini expansion pack that adds 4 mini-campaigns detailing some of the adventures of Bradford and Lily Shen during the tumultuous days of ADVENT's takeover, adds new weapons to your WotC playthrough for each of these mini-campaigns you beat, allows you to choose between three soundtracks, (X-COM 1, X-COM 2, and Legacy Remixes), allows free access to all of the 100 challenges rather than the random daily challenge system, and even allows you to make your own challenge missions. Also has more than a few bugs and oddities that needs to be fixed with workshop mods. However it isn't as a glitchy broken mess compared to some [[Fallout|other games]].

The missions themselves range from awesome to just plain bad. Blast to the Past has central explain what happened after XCOM EU/EW. Finishing it unlocks the TLP weapons from EU/EW. The worst campaign a long drudge of several levels makes up It Came from the Sea. With respawning Chrysalids and Faceless. With the reappearance of the worst character in any XCOM game. Jake Levy aka the DJ. Who goes on annoying rants and the reason everything in the mission is happening in the first place.(He may be a hand in the Bugtown Massacre mentioned in Chimera Squad. Since he can't keep track of his shit, its very likely.) The only reason to play it is unlocking basic cosmetic armor for each class(i.e. variants of Predator and Warden armor, what you use until building the good stuff.) No one would blame players for cheating and modding the game to get a high score either. As its just that bad.

Avenger Assemble is Lily Shen's logs about how she collected parts for the Avenger. XCOM's current base into a flight worthy state. It has some great lore bits and at the very least is not as bad as the previous campaign. Her personal Gremlin, Rov-R isn't as overpowered as it's depicted in Shen's Last Gift to preserve game balance.

The last one Lazarus Project, is just pure fanservice. All the canon characters are playable for the first and only time on the same squad. Including Peter Osei and Ana Ramirez who died during the tutorial missions of XCOM 2. The last two levels of Lazarus Project are only two missions besides Operation Leviathan to allows players to have more than six soldiers, without mods. The second to last has the first canon appearance of Doctor Tygen. Whose callsign is Hamburglar. Referring to a recurring gag from the main campaign. The fact that he is mentioned early on in Avenger Assemble by Lily means those two campaigns take place outside of chronological order. Unlike the second campaign, there good enough to play at once without mods.

While their supposedly canon, there are some strange oddities. As the magnetic and plasma weapons used by the Reapers, Skirmishers and Templars were invented by XCOM, so are Psi-Amps So those shouldn't exist yet. You can fix that on your own with some mods and text edits with Notepad+. The last is the Avatars that show up on the final levels of every campaign. Central says he fought them or "something like it" but the real reason is that Firaxis didn't bother to make a new model for it.

IT WAS Free until Dec 3rd, 2018, for all WotC owners. Though it's still a cheap buy at $7.99 on Steam. The ability to switch between three soundtracks alone is worth it.(remixes of classic XCOM tracks, the OST from Enemy Within and the vanilla War of the Chosen soundtrack. )

=== XCOM: Long War ===
The big daddy mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown made by a small developer known as Pavonis Interactive that is single-handedly responsible for XCOM 2's thorough mod support (alongside Firaxis [[Blood Ravens| "borrowing"]] some notable aspects of this mod for the actual sequel), Long War is a ''very'' extensive rework of the entire game from the ground up. While the mod greatly expands the classes, perks, weapons and armor players can gear up their dudes with, it also greatly enhances the aliens' arsenal, which now adapts and evolves to combat the player the longer the game goes on. The number of changes made to the game is well into the hundreds and the difficulty is so stepped up that it makes the vanilla game a walk in the park comparatively. This mod is almost universally praised, to the point that not only did Firaxis make it a point to make the sequel as mod-friendly as possible, but they actually partnered up with the Pavonis team to help develop the core XCOM 2 game as well as the first wave of miscellaneous mods to showcase how easy it is to plug-and-play community made content into the game.

As said previously, this is pretty much ''the'' XCOM mod. It's such a big mod that a lot of other XCOM mods are metamods designed to modify ''this'' mod!

=== XCOM: The Board Game ===
From [[Fantasy Flight Games]], there's a board game adaptation of XCOM (in fact, ''XCOM: Enemy Unknown'' was quite inspired by board games, with the two-actions-per-turn system instead of the old 'time units'). There's a companion app for smartphones, tablets, and computers which controls the aliens and informs players of events, a bit like a [[Game Master]], but without exposing the players to too much bookkeeping. Amazing what games can do with computers these days -- just imagine if such a thing had been available for [[FATAL]]! On second thought, don't.

Players (1-4) take on different roles in the XCOM organization. The Commander keeps an eye on the budget and allocates interceptors. The Chief Scientist directs research efforts. The Central Officer works the app and solicits input from the others (if there are any) to make decisions (many of which are time-critical). The Squad Leader manages troops and base defense. Together, they need to allocate their resources, judge when to push risky but rewarding avenues (inviting retribution from the aliens if they fail), and defend humanity. Like the games, successes are rare -- a die only has a 1/3 chance of coming up with a success, and tasks may need multiple successes. There is also an "enemy die", a [[d8]] that is rolled against the number of times that task has been attempted. If it rolls equal to or under that number, something bad happens. So, do you pool resources for critical tasks (neglecting anything else, and hoping that your priorities are correct), in order to most likely be successful before the threat level climbs too high? Or do you stay flexible but push your luck? Your call, commander.

===XCOM 2: Long War 2===
If you thought XCOM 2 was ''already'' hard, thanks in part to the involvement of the original Long War modders in the game's development, said modders come back with a sequel mod for the game. Not only does this go even further than the first Long War in going into a lot of detail, such as new graphical touches, significant rebalancing and completely overhauling the global map to be more reminiscent of classic X-com. But the difficulty is amped up even more, with missions even requiring you to send in potentially fatal scouting parties to make sure your ''other'' squads don't die on the spot. Also, rather than launching parties directly into battle, missions spawn on the geoscape with an expiration timer. The player ''can'' launch immediately, but the enemy presence will be drastically increased! Instead, the idea is that the squad can spend time infiltrating, to let ADVENT get complacent and draw troops elsewhere. Having more Resistance folks working Intel increases mission expiration times, but the bigger and heavier the squad, the more infiltration time is required. And vice versa -- short-staffing a squad can allow a player to infiltrate to high percentages on short notice... but now you've only got like four guys on the ground, and that might not be enough firepower if activations go badly...

This mod requires dramatically more strategic thought and care. Weapons, armor, and equipment are all purchased individually, forcing you into decisions like 'do I continue the rollout of my newly available armor-piercing coilguns, or do I buy armor for the two rookies I've trained up?' and 'do I send my last seven man team to secure me an engineer, commit them to a long infiltration to wipe out an advent tower, or hold them in reserve for a better opportunity?' The difficulty is likewise much higher, but you have dramatically expanded options to combat it with special weapons, squad leaders, extra inventory slots packed with flashbangs, veteran troop skills, choosable bonus perks, a psi advancement training regime that makes some actual sense, and many, many more troops and mission opportunities. Minor reinforcement on that last one, in fact: in stock XCOM 2 you'll likely end the campaign with fewer than twenty soldiers, whereas here it's pretty common to have a hundred active-duty troopers at a time.

The Shinobi ([[Derp|all the Ninja IRL schools have closed up shop]]) is the most overpowered class. Making missions easier then they should be as he can [[derp|bypass Overwatch]] and has a very low impact on infiltration. Making missions unrealistic for players who hate RNG and want a pure stealth game.

The devs of Long War have said they will not be making a Long War for War of the Chosen. The reasoning for this is two-fold; sifting through all the new/reworked code introduced in WotC would take months, if not a year or more just to ensure compatibility with the expansion, much less add to it. The second and more important reason is that Pavonis is focusing heavily on their own X-COM type game and would much rather put their time in that project (understandably).

Some faggot on reddit, however, has recently (as of late 2019) made some impressive strides. While Long War of the Chosen isn't ready for primetime and is missing some important features, anyone can download the beta for it here: https://github.com/long-war-2/lwotc

===XCOM: Chimera Squad===
A surprise entry into the XCOM series, being teased on April 14th and coming out 10 days later. It was supposed to another expansion for War of the Chosen. However, since XCOM 2 was already bloated, Chimera Squad was turned into its own game instead, at the healthy and low-budget price of $20 (and preordering or buying it on sale reduces it to $10).

The game takes place 5 years after the human victory achieved in XCOM 2, and centers around City 31. So you'll have to wait until XCOM 3 to see 2s sequel hooks resolved. In this city, former aliens and humans live together in a tentative peace, and you take control of the namesake Chimera Squad composed of both alien and human agents, lead by the Irish Ranger Jane Kelly who is the one of the survivors of 2's tutorial mission(alongside Bradford), making her canonically survive the events of that game. It's their job to clean up the remaining remnants of ADVENT as well as other violent troublemakers around the city, while solving the mystery of the beloved local mayor's recent assassination. Gameplay-wise, Chimera Squad seems to play more like ''Final Fantasy Tactics'', rather than the modern ''XCOM'' entries, in that units move on a timeline rather than using block turns. There is also a bigger emphasis on individual agents, as you fail a mission if any of [[Your Dudes]] die. And the team's composition ranges across all human ethnicities and even other Alien species, including [[Monstergirls|a sassy Viper]], a gentle giant Muton and a smartass Sectoid.

It's more or less a combination of ''Alien Nation'' (the aliens are former slaves) and <s>Brooklyn Nine-Nine</s> ''SWAT''/''Police Quest'', while being a loose remake of XCOM: Apocalypse.

The individual maps are considerably smaller, and mostly divided into "rooms", with each room usually containing a set number of enemies (there are exceptions; endless reinforcements can, and will, arrive on certain mission types). Each mission starts with you breaching the "room," taking a free move or attack action, and letting enemies hunker down (if you caught them by surprise) or take their overwatch fire (if they were expecting you), before the game goes to turn-based mode, and once you've cleared out a room your agents heal a set amount of their HP based on difficulty before you breach the next room, and move on to the next "encounter".

All agents have a dedicated melee attack called "Subdue" which deals a small amount of damage (3 - 4), which, if it defeats the enemy knocks them unconscious instead of killing them, potentially allowing you to gain bonus Intel after the mission is over. Multiple agent abilities are dedicated to making it easier to "arrest" enemies for this intel boost, although with the number of captures that are happening in a single week, you got to wonder what they're doing with all of those prisoners... <s>Soylent green</s> <s>Advent burger</s>Burger Palace anyone?

And it has Vipers as fetishized [[monstergirls]] with exclusive sex worker locales as canon and anime style advertisements featuring the various aliens. Make of that what you will. There is a also Sectoid conspiracy theorist Floyd Tesseract. But unlike the IRL douchenozzles Floyd is actually intelligent and locates the hostages of a terrorist cell before Chimera Squad does. [[Fail|Compare this to the moronic DJ from XCOM 2 who accidentally created Chryssalid Lures before the events of the main campaign]]. Dude even sounds like someone doing a semi-accurate J.K Simmons impression. [[Marvel_Comics|
One wonders if he annoys XCOM (or at least Bradford) with frequent calls about a certain wall-crawler.]]

A few have joked that the whole game is actually happens in the mind of your XCOM agents whenever they get mind controlled, and why they fight with the aliens against humans. Which if true, says a lot about XCOM agents regarding their attitude towards Vipers. [[/pol/|Though it's mostly the usual morons whining about diversity.]]

Major sore spots on an otherwise-popular game include balance issues among available teammates and the fact that you can't get them all on one playthrough, balance issues among resources (Intel is better than almost everything else, and it's rarely worth spending valuable time getting anything on the tech tree but better guns and armor), and Tranq Ammo being by far the most useful of the ammo types because shooting the fuck out of enemies instead of messing around with subdual makes it trivally easy to take lots of prisoners and therefore lots of extra Intel.

Also currently buggy as fuck with the game defaulting to integrated graphics before the only patch released in May 2020, agents would lose their loadouts, along with the standard freezing and crash to desktop. So you're better off waiting for further patches or downloading Workshop mods to fix them if you want to play Ironman. The impatient should keep the Task Manager open on another monitor just in case.

Since Firaxis doesn't have DLC or expansions to work on and instead are focused on Civilization VII, any bugs that persist after the May patch will likely never be fixed. Compare this to XCOM:EU and 2 when all the DC was already released before the end of the year in the same timeframe. So if you want a 100% bug free experience, you'll have to search for fanmade patches on the Steam Workshop. It is also lacking on the mod front compared to other games.

There are a few saving graces here. A required level states that XCOM are working on making new Interceptors, that EXALT or a group like them will surface and the Elders (aka Ethereals) will be back. Which is why XCOM would wants any human or alien with combat skills they can recruit. As those bastards won't play nice next time.
However the next XCOM could be delayed, as their working on an Avengers spinoff. At the very least it'll be better than
Eidos's shitty game. Also stop asking for a Terror of the Deep remake/reboot. Jake Solomon (the guy currently in charge of the franchise) hates that fucking game and it's never going to happen.

==The Bureau: XCOM Declassified==
Despite having the name XCOM in the title, the game really has little relation to the series. The reason behind this is because 2K passed this game on to the lovely people that brought you Bioshock 2; meaning it was made by a studio that makes more or less decent games. It was first revealed in the E3 2009 only as "XCOM", a first-person shooter set in the 1950s where you would fight black-goo/geometrical eldritch abomination aliens things. While it looked decent, it had the unfortunate problem of being the latest XCOM game since ''Enforcer'' and a far cry from the beloved strategy game the fans all knew and loved, the reaction was so bad that Firaxis' ''XCOM: Enemy Unknown'' became a thing, while "XCOM" was retooled into ''The Bureau: XCOM Declassified''.

It's supposed to be a prequel, set in the 1960s during the Cold War era. The protagonist, William Carter, was a CIA agent just delivering a suitcase of classified "documents" until an Outsider disguised as a female agent got ahold of it. Not long after that, an alien invasion commenced!

The Bureau is a RPG that plays like Mass Effect, but not as good for a variety of reasons. One reason is in the dialog scene, you're given choices of what to ask/say. They really don't impact the game, nor changes it for the most part, so you can skip a majority of it if you want to. The agents in your squad are pretty dull, sure you can change their names and how they dress, but really doesn't offer any friendship/foe engagements. If they die, you will need to recruit another agent and start him off from scratch, but really, leveling them up isn't fun and customizable, so just restart a checkpoint if they do die.

The agents in your squad have bad AI if you don't babysit them and give commands on what they should do, and their skills at fighting Outsiders are... Well, okay. The best they can offer is their abilities, so spamming them and you taking care of the killing is an effective way to go (Some recommend starters to start their first mission with a Recon to cause critical damage on certain enemies and a Commando for [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX|taunting the grunts and make them easy picking for you]]).

There would be more to go on, but if you want to know more about the game, you can search up reviews of XCOM Declassified. In short, it's a decent prequel that fans can find some enjoyment, but it's not as good as Enemy Unknown. Without going into spoilers, there's also a reveal during the last few levels that's surprisingly meta and well-written. Still worth looking into if you can find it for cheap or rent it.

Interestingly enough, turns out that the universe in XCOM Declassified is the same as that of Enemy Unknown/Within's. After the events in The Bureau, all records were wiped. This explains why the player had to start from scratch at the beginning of Enemy Unknown. You could also regard EXALT as a fanatical remnant of the Bureau, given hints that they had known of aliens longer than XCOM and their love of business suit battle dress. When the Ethereals of Unknown/Within spoke of their [[Derp|own failure to ascend,]] they really meant that they wanted to be like the Ethereals from The Bureau. Either way, only time will tell exactly [[Grimdark|what the hell they were preparing humanity for.]] However since XCOM lost the war and were forced underground by ADVENT in XCOM 2. Asaru's efforts were made pretty much worthless. Just like the game itself.

==Xenonauts==
X-Com coded by [[Reasonable Marines]].

A faithful remake of the original, with time units and all that. Changes a few things (like lack of Psionics on your side) and re-adds vehicles (yes, blowing up half a building with a rocket jeep is awesome) and the first controllable dogfights since Apocalypse. Basically the alien invasion is during the Cold War and makes everyone shit themselves simultaneously when THOUSANDS of spaceships are openly in orbit and fucks humanity's shit up in creative ways. Every day the UFO's are left wandering, news bulletins full of terror and destruction emanate from the screen adding to the drama and suspense.

The ending is very creative, particularly concerning the plot of how an inferior species can imagine how to defeat a powerful empire. Stunningly well-made, desperate final mission which may result in a glorious ending, or a bittersweet ending where you still win but the assault team is martyred.

It seems the Alien Empire never had any rivals in history for *millions of years*, and basically a decentralized feodal shithole with a sickeningly decadent ruling class, the Praetorians leading mindless, slave soldiers with subliminal radio chips in their brains. To them, we are just another province to be absorbed: DNA to be assessed in a cat-and-mouse siege so the Praetorian can eat us, process us as another lobotomized slave troop class or added to their aristocracy's DNA, or all three. The immortal, amoral sons of bitches called Praetorians took every little advantage from races they conquered. The "Sectoids" called Caesans were meek and mild, peaceful researchers whom Praetorians conquered, killed and remade into docile, vat-grown slaves, stealing their telepathy. From reptilian Sebians, they stole their regeneration and even refined their genomes into medical immortality, and it all snowballed from there. So the Xenonaut Institute goes for the Achilles Heel. Which brings us to...

...hyperspace travel. The insufferable head scientist we got develops a mathematical equation, and constructs a gigantic jammer which blocks all attempts to enter space-time in a radius of 10000 lightyears, securing millenia of breathing room even if we are just one solar system. Flipping the switch freaks out the Praetorians who land to destroy Earth, and this is where the team starts an assassination run to the High Praetor, the leader of Sol System invasion. Rampaging across the luxurious cruise ship, you can zerg rush and kill him as he snorts space coke in his high garden, and die as hundreds of Reapers swarm upstairs from the ship's hold as martyrs. If you are feeling particularly crazy, divert your attention to blow up the to security locks in different corridors so you can escape after the High Praetor is dead, preferably not Reapers buttraping your team.

Maps are mostly pregenerated, not fully procedural.

Fewer weapon and ammo types. Seriously, you've got the big five (pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper, and LMG) and a rocket launcher. No variant ammo types, although the weapons do have researchable types adapted from alien materials(which are simply damage-ups: Laser, Plasma, Railgun-Kinetic).<s> This means no unfairly powerful weapons like the Rape Launcher or the Stun Grenade Launcher.</s> There *are* a few super weapons but seriously, if you waste a "Singularity Generator" which is an ENTIRE CAPTURED BLACK HOLE (a hot commodity salvageable from alien battleships) for a 50 kilogram (without ammo) glorified grenade launcher that needs specialized armor to carry and doesn't even one shot its AoE, you are a fucking moron.

More basic inventory control. You don't micromanage producing and storing individual ammo, and you can have as many magazines, grenades, and med-kits as you want, limited by carrying limit. You just build the alien-based laser or plasma guns, base gives you ammo made fashioned from a melted-down alien cells. (Alenium is basically a quantum-grade battery aliens came up with. Usually it powers the alien craft, the player creatively salvages the spent ones into explosives because [[HFY]].)

Smaller team sizes. Max troop count on a mission is 12, with the best drop-ship.

Fewer oddball items, like the motion scanner or psi-ball, but there is now an assault shield, so your dudes don't immediately die when popping open a UFO. Said shield gets upgraded with Alien alloys, and even the final mission sees use of it. Trust me.

Rookies are better out of the gate, but are still shit compared to your colonels. Still, they have a decent chance of killing a simple enemy in a turn with a LMG, doubly so if carrying a missile launcher, no longer do operatives miss the broad side of a barn.

Explosive weapons damage items, lowering the amount of money you receive from selling. This is for the best, because explosives are stupidly powerful and are probably the most reliable way of putting a fool down. Considering Reapers, the expy for Chyrssalids are even faster and crazier, you *are* going to need them.

Saveable, customizable loadouts for all of your troops, and obviously no engine-based limit on the amount of items you can bring into a mission.

Aliens don't really hide in corners or really hard to find spots, which makes flushing them out a lot easier. I said flushing out mind you, as they DO charge out and deal serious amounts of damage before going down, to say nothing of teleporting aliens that go burst fire in your face if they are lucky.

Troops remain vulnerable a lot longer. You are never at the point where you can float an invincible army of death-dealing demigods over a cowering cadre of snakemen, raining death and destruction down with maddened glee. Even if you do, weird aliens will teleport close and blow you out of the sky, or your flyer will fry a nerve from psionics.

Country relations are more important than after-mission loot.

You can kick or pistol whip an enemy to death. Cue surrounding an annoying alien marksman and beating him to death with riot shields. It's not impossible to simply storm an earlier Alien base with shields-and-shock batons and simply rush for the Alien commander and beat his ass, sling him over your shoulder and escape to interrogate.

You can call airstrikes to cancel boring UFO raids.

No Psionics for Earthlings so there is no way to counter some of the aliens methods to dominate their enemies save for high morale and endurance.

===Xenonauts 2===
Now with 3D graphics! A demo is available through GOG.com and Steam, with the release planned to be <s>later in 2017</s> <s>late 2018</s> <s>early 2019</s> <s>early 2020</s> 2021 at the earliest. In closed beta early access as of June 2020, going public in February 2021.

==UFO: After[Blank] Trilogy==

The (almost) first X-COM clone.

A separate trilogy that was made before the other remakes, straight after oldschool XCOM. Has features that was undeniably adopted by Phoenix Point and XCOM 2012 remake such as starting in post-invasion ruins, experience points spent on increasing stats rather than training a stat by action, add-ons to weapons, modifications, portable turrets, friendly, but technologically-ideologically distinct factions with unique units, equipments and resources spent on buildings/units/equipments.

'''Ufo: Aftermath''':

Fallout meets XCOM.

The game starts on a different level than the others. On day one, a swarm of UFO's sporebombed earth and destroyed most of humanity. You start as a single soldier gathering survivors and taking over an old military base, clear the surroundings of mutant creatures which are transgenic amalgams.

Restoring the base, plundering old earth weapons from bases and gathering survivors, the player reactivates old airbases and eventually downs a UFO with old fighter jets with kickass cinematics straight out of Ace Combat. Eventually the aliens turn out to be "Reticulans", just Grey aliens from Zeta Reticuli star system. Storyline and several interrogations later we learn the Greys were USA's buddies after a pair crashed to Roswell in 40's, trading art and culture for technology. Around that time, something worrying happens on the world map: a wave of biomass starts expanding from a certain point, destroying everything in its way.

Eventually, restoring bases, survivors and gathering equipments reveals the aliens are grooming a biomass jungle with psychic properties to cover the planet and husband transgenic creatures from corpses and animals. (this plot point is directly adapted to Phoenix Point)

Extended campaigns against the Aliens, fighting, and retrofitting their technology earns the player an offer from the Aliens: apologizing for the inevitable scientific experiment on your planet and an offer of peace with a guarantee of safely evacuating all humans off planet to a beautiful orbital station, so the biomass experiment can go on. The sequels happen post-surrender but any human worth his salt will refuse and fight to death to PURGE THE XENOS FOR MANKIND AND EMPEROR.

If you refuse, you keep fighting and expanding and holding the biomass at bay just enough to ransack surviving cosmodromes and satellite launch sites for parts to retrofit an UFO to storm the Moon, where the aliens keep some...sort...of...hive. Destroy it and it's over.

Crunch-wise, very forgiving in logistic terms, but ''far'' more complicated than XCOM(and clones) in damage types and armor choices; a weapon type named "Warp" deals almost no damage to unarmored people, but absolutely '''murders''' heavy power armor wearing men. There is no concept of money or resources but number and location bases. Worldwide, you expand and take abandoned bases whenever they pop up. These bases are then chosen (and can be changed) wither exclusively for military (troop deployment from the player's unit pool and UFO interception), research (each speed up research progress), development (producing some equipment and/or applying technological theories) or Biomass Repulsion(because any base swallowed by it is permanently lost). Unit-wise, 7 is the maximum team size, and ammo reserves matter, as does damage type so it's best to keep an arsenal of various damage outputs for different enemies, as well as setting up unique armor/weapon combos such as a twin-SMG plus light armor to hit and run, or power armor with collapsible quad cannon turret for heavy duty murderfuckdakka and a small plasma pistol for backup. Sadly, ballistic weapons are limited in game, as manufacturing blueprints are no more: you can only produce some laser and plasma from scratch, but not that juicy G3 or Kalashnikov, which is very bad because short range weapons are utterly useless.

'''Ufo: Aftershock - The Alien Boogaloo''':

Aerial combat is no more. From now on, it's squad-based ground combat with a mix of Total War and Civilization on the strategic map.

Remember the surrender offer we got in the earlier game? Canon-wise, seeing the biomass spread like mad, provisional Earth Government accepts and Humanity is evacuated safely by the aliens and even given many goodies and supplies. Biomass ends up covering the planet for...an...experiment.

Except not really.

Biomass reaches a certain amount, screams, giving painful signals reaching to cosmos and dissipates. Laputa orbital station falls into a civil war and some guys jump down Earthside in a pod, only to discover the biomass scream didn't destroy the world as expected. There are a lot of survivors and local wildlife, more than enough to rebuild civilization at city-state levels as well as two separate friendly factions with unique gear and resource types helping you rebuild, Psionics and Cyborgs. Cyborgs are men who are compatible with replacement cybernetics with no tissue rejection and adaptability to electronics. Psionics are Eldar-like women who can use mental powers, influenced by the biomass' psychic scream and developing mental powers with delicate crystaline artworks. [[Crunch]] hint: cyborgs are for pure tankiness and psionics are the wizards.

The player starts clearing mutant creatures from the wilderness, establishing cities on Earth gathering resources, conquering territories to mine resources and connects them with monorails, building cities, buildings, factories, research buildings, just like civilization and any other RTS run-of-the-mill game. The environment has more or less recovered as well, and older military stockpiles and alien wrecks can be mined for components which we cannot produce ourselves.

Then a third civilization, the cultists who worship the aliens, tame and assemble old biomass parts and stuff start declaring war, complicating things a bit. So far it's typical Total War expy with combat on squad level rather than XCOM...

Until the cultists are reduced to a certain level, and we get a warning from Laputa station that an object is approaching earth in relativistic speeds. Several shat bricks later, we get an alien race which are like Warhammer Orks named Wargots shout threats and pour out of their spaceship to settle Earth and conquer. In the meantime, some of your own personnel in Laputa also lead a rebellion for some "power of love". And cultists buddy up with Wargots and tell you to fuck off. Last but not least, some Wargots board your orbital station as well in a fanatical crusade!

Creepy but interesting, several combats, research and brick shitting later, we finally get some lore in action. The Wargots for some reason were riding a giant hollowed out asteroid to conquer Earth for...a holy war...? At this moment the research focus turns on the spaceship, and Laputa Command shits more bricks when a SECOND, exactly same looking asteroid sized ship arrives, spewing a "civilization" of energy beings and quasi-psychic metallic constructs we dub "Star Ghosts" and it's a merry free-for-all on Earth. Less difficult if player pre-emptively sends a specialized ship to destroy the Wargot Asteroid Ship with a very, very, very long campaign, knocking out the Ork expies' "crusade". Fun Fact: any territory "conquered" by Star Ghosts are cleansed of all life, lost forever, and their mothership is smart enough to escape any boarding attempts and stays way away from Earth. So it's about holding the line until a miracle happens. And it does.

All the chaos and terror eventually has a twist in the shape of a giant mothership full of...Reticulans! For some reason, their leader wants to talk and is terribly apologetic, feeling sorry for the pain humanity went through and swears the earlier game has nothing to do with them. He then mentions the Reticulan Queen has sent a big aid package and says the "rebels" actually rode an asteroid-shaped transport and came here.

It eventually dawns on us that the "asteroids" are nothing but giant psychic monsters named Myrmecols "dueling" and "teasing" each other's crew treated like adopted pets for...some...reason. We'll learn that in game three, but it's righteous vengeance time now.

Rallying partiarchal Cyborgs and matriarchal Psionics, local humans, friendly Aliens and our crew, we cleanse the planet as much as we can and finally send a party to the Moon to kill the Reticulan Myrmecol and stop her interstellar booty call that caused a fucking extinction level. At last, Reticulan aliens make up for their psychically enslaved rebels' injury on Earth, help humanity take its place in the universe, and we can have some hope for humanity.

The game is much more forgiving than the last game but less than the first. Though instant game-over conditions don't exist, recruits now cost resources to be paid to their families, other factions let you recruit too at a heavy price for experienced warriors, and the third Myrmecol boogaloobois, the Starghosts permanently disable territories if they take over... Still it's far more user friendly.

The last base is especially easy, the Reticulan Rebels reduced to little more than half-starved, psionically fried militia your units should not even bother firing at and slap aside.

But what happened to Mars? Laputa command mentioned some humans were settled there...

'''Ufo: Afterlight - The Martian Weeaboo Boogaloo''':

During the events of Ufo: Aftershock we turn to Mars. Reticulans settled 10000 humans in cryo-sleep to Mars, and started a rudimentary terraforming effort with highly automatized resource systems, water coming from the Martian north pole. Just when Laputa falls into civil war, Mars base loses contact, and strange robots attack the polar aquaducts, forcing the skeleton crew to learn how to handle a gun. Then there's the Reticulans who want to help and even send some "men" to help but do you really ally yourselves with the assholes who started all this? You can fight the Reticulan neighbors to conquer them violently for an early game hell which WILL pay off later on.

That game is much more unique, with VERY limited crew (some of which even will eventually retire from fighting and producing, dedicating themselves to preparing cultural legacy for the eventually waking colonists) and a stupid time limit of 540 days for no reason (patchable). On the other hand, combat is smaller, and deaths are very problematic. What's more, most crew will be used in working, producing, clearing Martian soil and placing terraforming equipment as we seem to be more like combat engineers than a military force.

The game puts emphasis on much more customized units, equipment and even modifying the add-ons of the add-ons of add-ons, as well as the terraforming itself. On low level Martian atmosphere scale, even glancing hits can leak oxygen from the suit, necessitating a retreat and repair lest the character chokes on CO2. Movement will be clunkier until the atmosphere allows for lighter suits, and eventually, going bare-faced on Mars.

Fighting the robots reveals a "gateway" ruin. When triggered or on day 56, the gate activates and spews a very angry army of humanoids with advanced polymer and non-metallic technology intent on reconquering Mars like some punk-apocalyptic tribe. It's like UFO:Aftershock but no stockpiled resources, much like Civilization 5's constant flow of materials from resource territories connected with an automated monorail.

Retrofitting and rediscovering weapons technology, and fighting the new ant-like "Beastmen" the player discovers the rest of the whole plotline enough to make the most stoic gamer say [[Meme|"Oh yeah, it's all coming together"]]. The punchline comes after visiting the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos which were...that's right, Asteroid sized.

Apparently the Reticulans who ruined Earth were psychic slaves of the Myrmecol which landed on the moon, who was a female. She made the Reticulan Science Expedition rebel against the home planet, travel to Sol, disable Earth civilization and coerce them to [[/d/|cover the planet with her self-replicating secretions]]. The fem-jaculation, after reaching critical mass, summoned male Myrmecols in an interstellar booty-call to fight for the female, each of whom brought their psychic pet crew for a RTS multiplayer session of "who brought the best fighting civilization" game.

But, [[HFY|humans being humans]], we beat all three with our savage mental endurance(and some freak mutations of cyborgs, psionics and friendly Reticulans). Which brings us to Mars.

Phobos and Deimos were, as you see, Myrmecols who had mated with another female(or died, we have no idea each being quiet). The revelation is staggering: Mars' surface was once verdant, beautiful...and for some reason, it has plenty of fuel underneath...Which proves the researchers that another Myrmecol came, [[/d/|gushed her secretions all over the planet]] and called some males across the cosmos who eventually became Phobos and Deimos. So who were the survivors? We find out after another long campaign and treasure hunt, contacting Laputa, cultists and Reticulan Queen's friendly armada along the way using a big-ass antenna. It gets funkier when Reticulan Fleet lands on Mars, forcing you to choose between the much more powerful armada or your neighbor Reticulans, which you hopefully betrayed and killed off not to look awkward. Then an underground Martian city is revealed, bringing green men with Antennae who speak in polyphonic garbles and claim they are "Martians".

A chain of skirmishes, awkward moments, plot dialogues and research adventures later, the plot unfolds.

Mars' original inhabitants turn out to be the Beastmen, who escaped the planet to another dimension/or/planet with the gates, hatefully building up for centuries, if not millenia, evolving from cavemen to quasi Viet-Cong guerilla chemical experts of polymers, evolution and drugs when the female Myrmecol came to the planet(pun intended). The winning male's civilization, the green men were released from psychic enslavement either as a reward or their male died too and built a city and went to sleep. Now everyone has woken up, settled on Mars and Beastmen want to retake their homeworld with no diplomacy possible. As time passes, Beastmen assaults will increase in intensity and at the day 540, they will unleash such a legion from their exile world that it will be counted as game over. Presumably.

The player invents a very powerful virus tailored against the "Beastmen", virus-bombs the main fortress and destroys every gate to block wherever the Beastmen are coming from as the final mission. Of course, any gamer worth its salt would have slaughtered the green "Martians" alongside them because why would you bother leaving a competitor in the solar system? Especially a FUCKING XENO.

The last game, as mentioned earlier, is very, very unforgiving. Equipments have more customizations, less diverse damage types and has a greater emphasis on melee combat to the point that [[The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic|agility-max characters with twin katanas can destroy entire armies while dodging lasers and beastmen poison bullets]]. And yes, the [[Weeaboo|finest melee weapon is the katana.]] Good thing is you can damage or outright destroy attacking aliens with missile batteries off map before the battle has started. Bad thing is as Mars terraforms, you can move faster and more comfortably. So do the aliens. And you start losing some rich territories to flooding as seas form, as well as getting attacked constantly, and worse, have a special lifeline called water supply, which, if gets compromised for too long means game over. Have fun while your 12 man roster is trying to fix the plumbing as you are tag-teamed by robots, martians, other martians, greys with penis laser cannons and your central base is under attack.

Plot-wise, it's extremely deep, and being made just after XCOM oldschool, all three are worth playing.

==UFO: Alien Invasion==
The most detailed opensource version of XCOM based on the Quake 2 engine.

Buildings are not destructible and it doesn't have a great fog-of-war. It doesn't have unmanned vehicles like the current iterations and sadly doesn't have any sort of Chryssalids yet.

Has a better world map than any other XCOM in that you can fully explore it like google-earth, even showing ship movement on the globe in real time. The campaign is more forgiving in that it does not force you through Acts like Enemy Unknown where you can't possible keep everybody happy, or has nations constantly bitching at you for radar coverage like in Xenonauts. Instead you get to bid captured UFOs and give preference to unhappy nations that feel neglected or where you haven't been saving civilians frequently.

The camera is completely free in battlescape mode just like in Enemy Unknown, complete with zoom capabilities. Lots of different weapons, though you will find yourself a fool if you don't immediately start using alien weapons. Also levels tend to have more floors than other iterations, such as one mission in which you're going through an office building or another where you're entering a subway.

The only major problem with the game is that the smoke grenades are so overpowered your guys will be coming out of your drop ship like Snoop-Dogg out of his trailer. Otherwise you'll find aliens are more than happy to shower your guys with plasma from across the map.

After a general huge update smoke is now useless and aliens are much, MUCH more powerful.

Oh, and its free. Still, fuck it. Final version is broken, often locking the game, and developers have lost interest, and no one picks up the game...Even though the Ufopaedia is far more detailed than the entire series and has hard-science explanations for equipment.

==Abomination: The Nemesis Project==

The ''first'' X-COM influenced clone, purely focusing on squad tactics and a few, very vague concepts of base management. A Lovecraftian virus destroyed most of the planet after some crazy cultists stole an artifact from a museum, so the US Government remnants activate 8 supersoldiers with pseudoscientific abilities (plus an endless supply of regular soldiers) and goes for the usual "strike, kill, research&autopsy, find a way to stop them" routine. Crunch-wise nothing fancy, though the 3d real time combat with weapon ballistics similar to Total Annihilation made in 1999 may attract some interest. Unit AI is fucked except for basic self-defense, weapons and equipment you get from abandoned factory raid missions, and the whole world is racing against time as a flesh hive is slowly engulfing it so get cracking. Has a dark, user unfriendly and haunting interface that goes hand in hand with the 90's low budget horror games.

==Phoenix Point==
A spiritual successor by Julian Gollop himself. As of the time of this edit, fully funded and in development with a hard-as-balls backer, pre-alpha having been released. The basic idea is; some kind of strange virus has been dug up in the permafrost and has had two outbreaks so far, each escalating in severity. Now it's invading the land a third (and fatally final) time, most of the humanity is gone (Partly cause of the virus, partly cause of WW3 happening during the second outbreak), and you must defend the survivors from both the creatures and each other, you poor sap.

The virus morphs all life into Lovecraftian horrors. Literally Lovecraftian; it is implied that [[H.P. Lovecraft|Howard the Great]] was inspired by ancient findings describing an outbreak of the same virus a few million years ago. It even came from Yuggoth, a rogue planet that passes close by every 17000 years. Bad for the alien entity living there, the most recent pass had his meteor seeds hit Antarctica and freeze, [[SJW|bad for us, Global Warming released the virus to the seas]]. Humanity being humanity, there are several factions with drastically different ideas on how to deal with it; there is a faction based around a religion [[Genestealer Hybrids|worshipping the mutations that is also capable of retaining human consciousness despite said mutations]], another is [[Eclipse Phase| high-tech anarcho-communists trying to coexist with the virus and other factions]] while the third faction [[Starship Troopers|Is a high-tech PMC turned militaristic civilization with "Service Guarantees Citizenship" that just wants to destroy the virus and any of its sympathizers]].

So far, the game has managed to gather enough funding and reach one stretch goal for a floating base that will be given as FREE DLC, along with other stretch goals at a later date should the game be successful.

Expected; large bosses(as in two story house-sized), your own mutated soldiers with breakable limbs, the option of saving a group of people by [[Dawn of War II|landing on a giant creature and injecting it with poison]], Deep Lore, A hybrid of the old TU and new Two-Action system, unique tech trees for each faction (which you can also get in on by either allying with or stealing from them) and randomized global events (à la Crusader Kings 2).
Oh, and there are [[Flamer|flamethrowers]], Shoulder-Mounted missiles, power armour, gauss rifles and other goodies, such as a mutant mount for the cultist faction.

What we got; so far the game is an anachronistic mix of old school and new X-COM features along with plot-and-Crunch stuff taken from other X-COM clones thrown in the mix, albeit with a '''very''' high difficulty curve and a mixed-to-negative reception. Its user interface is extremely friendly, and even has anti-frustration features such as editing the soldiers' inventories on the go as they fly to the mission, auto-replace any changes to inventory due to combat at the end of the mission, vehicle fuel refills on every point of interest and base facilities are extremely streamlined (global laboratory/workshop pool with no micromanagement, auto-heal-rest at bases). Tactical interface is also far more intuitive, aiming is a mix of RPG-based skills and ''actual'' aiming should the player wish it so: every soldier has two cycles of aiming, the innermost and outermost, and every shot has a RNG system of 50%/50% of landing in a random location of the inner or outer circle so geometry, distance and soldier skills are all involved, allowing smart players to land hits on aliens even with the worst soldiers. On the other hand, the worldwide mutagen mist spreads extremely fast, and the current Game Over ticker, changed from "Delirium Index" to "Global Population" has no longer a slowdown feature with some cities having almost no food supplies, and resources to build is near nil considering bases worldwide need a huge resource injection to activate. And aliens, albeit slow at first, mutate so fast many players complained about it online. And unlike XCOM, your bases will be attacked constantly the moment you build them, recruit prices are off the roof, and the largest alien, Scylla, is the most powerful entity any XCOM clone ever had. And you need to capture one. Its stun rating is around 400, your maximum squad size is 8, and your stun weapons need to be either at point-blank in range of its One-Hit-Kill talons, or shoot expensive shock lasers who take an insane amount of ammo. And your inventory only takes 6 items, plus 3 on the belt. [[Troll|Good Luck]].

Apparently Gollop has been overcome with spite: with the last DLC "Tainted Skies", virtually every human equipment, accuracy and ability is nerfed further while bringing the Behemoth to the game. What is the Behemoth? [[Cthulhu|Let's just say it's a few hundred kilometres long alien monstrosity from space, rests under the water, and spreads chaos, insanity and death when it wakes occasionally]]. The monstrosity is visible from space, and sports flying defender beasts who need specialized(e.g. hard to produce and expensive) air-to-air combat units to shoot down. The Behemoth automatically destroys nearby havens(cities), infects random cities with alien control viruses and requires [[Troll|an endgame technology and a specialized(expensive) craft to stop it, by that time you should be gunning for the final mission already]]. Expect [[Rage|the usual]].

==XPiratez==
What XCOM 2 was to XCOM: Enemy Within, XPiratez is to X-COM: UFO Defense. Made of pure [[Awesome|awesome]], you lead a crew of female mutants on a quest to kick ass, gain riches, and fuck bitches. A mod for OpenXcom, it's completely free and gets constant updates. Go check it out! Nothing's more satisfying than crushing a pureblood's head in with a sledge hammer and then mowing down his mates with your [[Dakka|custom Boarding gun]]. Basically, post XCOM defeat, humanity is a province in the alien empire, and a long, long time later, you lead a band of mutant female pirates living the pirate life, looting, capturing, ransoming, and eventually enslaving prisoners. More detailed, fanmade, with a morally darker atmosphere for the protagonist faction (apart from turning prisoners from human factions to slaves -miners for men, [[Edgy|maids, slave warriors and prostitutes]] for females, and ahem..."squires" for [[/d/|shota younglings from Cult of Sirius]]), PirateZ offers a unique, if very dark experience.

==The X-Com Files==
This megamod for OpenXcom will allow you to grow X-Com from its humbled beginnings, as a two-men team travelling the world in an expensive-looking car to global the military force we all know and love. It contains many, many additions, like new mission types, enemies, equipment and story arcs (including the entirety of my previous project, the Final Mod Pack). It also places the game a bit more firmly in the 90's conspiracy genre and its clichés.
Defeat the enemies from the outer space, the oceans the underground, but primarily within our own society! This mod and XPiratez have become very popular on Twitch, a questionable website sometimes described as a hive of scum and villainy with thots.

==The Tabletop Game==
Yes, there was a Tabletop game, made by [[Fantasy Flight Games]], so this article has some direct /tg/ relevance. The problem is, [[Derp | you need a cell phone app to play it]].

==Aliens==
Needless to say, in this game, there are many different types of aliens that your teams are going to have to fight.

===Original Continuity===
====X-COM: UFO Defence====
'''Sectoid''': Doesn't matter what game, these guys are always the first things you face. They're not tough, but they are annoying, and the higher ranked ones (yes aliens have ranks, just like your guys in the old games) can and will successfully mind-control your guys all the fucking time.

'''Cyberdisk''': The original flying, metal pancake, these guys only show up supporting Sectoids. They can take an abusive amount of punishment, and deal it out just as much, before exploding when they are finally disabled. Expect to see your bullets passing over or under it all the fucking time.

'''Floater''': Changed significantly in the remake. Here they're a still mostly intact torso and abdomen mounted on a giant, floaty antigravity ball. They can't fly as freely as the ones in future versions, but they're far less suicidal, and prone to setting up ambushes.

'''Reaper''': Big, spiky dogs that appear alongside Floaters on terror missions. They're dumb as shit and only attack in melee making it easy enough to lure them out and turn your entire fire team against them. Now if that would actually kill them.

'''Snakeman''': Another basic type, these guys are easy pickings on any mission other than Terror Missions. Their autopsy states that they are stuffed full of fertilised eggs so take that "men" part with a grain of salt.

'''Chryssalid''': And these are the reason you'll hate Snakemen on terror missions. They bring Chryssalids with them. Twelve foot tall murder bugs that kill people, plant their eggs into them, turn them into shuffling zombie, which hatch into new Chryssalids unless killed, ''quickly''. Unlike the remake these guys can take a beating, and it's entirely possible to have an entire squad with laser weapons and repeating grenade launchers hit one of these bastards with every shot, and it'll still be standing at the end. You see one of these things, you do not let your squad break apart or approach blind corners.

'''Muton''': As always the aliens' equivalent to your guys, except they're better armoured (despite wearing goofy green jumpsuits), better armed, and just better being as they're not the best janitors all the world's militaries have to offer. Mutons don't have Psionics on their side, so if you want to play with them bringing along your Psi Specialist is a good idea, otherwise they're going to take an absurd amount of punishment to put down. A superhuman grade Muton can take a block of High Explosive to the chest and come out shooting, so bring the plasma, and bring enough it of for a small city block.

'''Celatid''': One of the two terror units found alongside Mutons, it looks like nothing more than a floating kidney bean. It's small, it's fast, and it has the most damaging non-High Explosive attack in the game, which becomes even more destructive against non-armoured targets like your rookies, or civilians. Thankfully this attack works on a lobbed arc so its range is severely nerfed down to 7 tiles, but out in the open that goes up to 16 tiles, and it can attack up to three times in a turn if it doesn't have to move.

'''Silacoid''': The second terror unit that is deployed alongside Mutons, and the most useless alien unit in the game. It crawls along at a speed of 8 tiles a turn, has no ranged attacks, and triggers reaction fire from even the worst of your guys allowing you to use it as a reaction fire training sponge, especially if you use Incendiary rounds as it will not take any damage from fire or incendiary rounds, but your guys will still gain experience. High Explosives work well against it.

'''Ethereal''': Far different from the remake game, Ethereals are packing heat in conjunction with their insane Psi abilities. These cloaked bastards can fly, will rain plasma fire down on your squad, spot for their allies to make their job easier, and at the end of it all, they'll mind control or panic the ragged remains of your squad. Kill them as quickly as you can, preferably from long distance with a Blaster Launcher.

'''Sectopod''': Giant metal murder toads. These guys aren't actually robots, although they come close, they are intact Remote Control murder mechs for the ethereals so that they don't have to get close to you while they turned you into plasma fried Kentucky X-COM rookie. The scary thing about these guys is just how much punishment they seem to take, even from late game weapons; however if you can target their rear armour, and bring laser weapons (which deal x1.5 damage against these guys) you'll be laughing all the way to the ICU. Of course this is going to make your prospects against their Ethereal controllers far, far worse, but hey-ho, win some, lose some.

====Terror From The Deep====
IA, IA, CTHULHU FATAGN

'''Aquatoid''': Genetically, and surgically slap gills and flippers onto a Sectoid, et Voila! You have an Aquatoid. Their commanders still have the Psionic abilities of their land locked cousins, but they call it Molecular Control, because they're fancy like that.

'''Gillman''': Apparently an earth creature, these creatures from the black lagoon were around when DINOSAURS ROAMED THE EARTH!, and submitted to the aliens when they arrived the first time round. They make for 'poor' soldiers (although this being TFTD that just means their only better than your guys by a factor of 1 or so, and not 3) and can take a bit of punishment from basic weaponry, although by the time you get Sonic weaponry, they start dropping like wheat before the scythe. Taking one of these guys in alive, and dead is critical to researching melee weapons (???), and accessing the final mission. So get catching.

'''Lobsterman''': An organic Sectopod, these guys will walk off whatever you throw at them, and then strike back with extreme prejudice. Ironically though they're mostly weak to stunning weapons, making tasers, and stun grenades the best weapon to use against them if you've got them. If you don't, well you can always use drills to pierce their hides, or hope that the tiny plinking of your harpoons cause them to laugh themselves to death.

'''Tasoth''': A clone vat species based off of humanoid velociraptors, these guys would be awesome, if they were on your side. As they are not, they are assholes. In combat they function as Ethereal lite's, unable to fly, and not quite as psionically potent, they make up for this by having much more physical strength, health, and durability.

'''Bio-Drone''': A brain-in-a-jar mounted on a super speaker. Electrical impulses torture the brain and use its screams (without vocal chords, don't ask me) to project a wave of hyper-condensed sound which will melt the victim's brain inside their head. Noise Marines might have stolen this idea for their Doom Siren. Grimdark as fuck because often the brains are made of kidnapped civilians.

'''Calcinite''': A Gelatinous green goop inside an old school diving suit, it might be possible to mistake this thing for one of your guys while you're underwater, but they remain fully suited up while on land, so the helmet is a good indicator. They lack any ranged attacks, and will instead try to run up and claw your agents face off, to add to this, their antique diving suits are tougher than your guys starting body armour (WHY?), nonetheless any weapon will put them down.

'''Deep One''': You'd think this would be the perfect place for some Cthulhu monstrosity, but sadly no. These guys are more "The Fly" than anything else. Humans that have been captured, tortured, and then surgically and genetically altered to become alien shock troops, the only original bit of their humanity left is their eyes. Their primary ranged attack is an arcing electrical burst (which is treated as a Gauss weapon for damage types) which allows them to fire over walls and other obstacles so nowhere is safe.

'''Hallucinoid''': Giant electrical jellyfish. The aliens keep on taking earth creatures and turning them into weapons of war. Although choosing jellyfish may have been a... poor decision. These things aren't particularly aggressive, preferring to just gently float into range when they can be bothered, rather than hunting your agents down. Unfortunately they're still tough enough to weather the storm of fire that their slow approach allows you to unleash on them, and their melee attack is devastating.

'''Tentaculat''': BECAUSE IT WOULDN'T BE A X-COM GAME WITHOUT CHRYSSALIDS, NO MATTER WHAT YOU CALL THEM. THEY CAN FLY NOW SO HAVE FUN! (appearance is directly identical to Grell from [[Dungeons & Dragons]])

'''Triscene''': A mother-fucking T-REX! The aliens brought back a T-Rex, slung two sonic cannons onto its sides, and let it loose in battle. These guys are the sectopods of TFTD, without the sectopod's weaknesses. However they have one glaring flaw, which is they have no under armour, and one well placed grenade will severely hurt them, or outright kill them if powerful enough.

'''Xarquid''': An overgrown Nautilus that swims in reverse, the things act like sniper tanks, preferring to sit in one corner of the map, usually several levels up, and snipe your squad from a safe distance. Other than the reaction fire you'll inevitably take when hunting these things down, they're not particularly dangerous, just use cover and explosives if they're on the ground, or get underneath them and take out their weak underbelly.

====X-COM: Apocalypse====
'''Brainsucker''': Because Facehugger was already taken. Why is the first alien you encounter in this game another GOD-DAMNED CHRYSSALID? FOR FUCK'S SAKE! These guys are fairly weak, and can be dealt with simply in RT mode, in TB however, their movement speeds enough to take them from outside your field of vision and into attack range, considering that their melee attack is a one hit kill keep enough time units back for reaction fire.

'''Multiworm''': One big ugly green fat worm the size of a human that shoots acid like a machinegun. Kill it with piercing weapons for a surprise burst of FOUR land equivalent of piranha, the Hyperworm. Use fire and nades for a pentakill in one shot.

'''Hyperworm''': Doglike rapid moving worms with a vicious bite. Toss fire and grenades to kill quickly.

'''Chrysalis''': In 72 hours, the Hyperworm turns into that to produce new aliens. Harmless meat bag.

'''Anthropod''': Ugly blue humanoid alien with decent stats. The first gun using alien. Helpless on its own but Alien equipment becomes TPK bait afterwards complete with personal shield and fuckhuge bazookas.

'''Psimorph''': Huge flying blob [[Psyker]] with fuckton of HP. Kill on sight as it will mindrape every agent. Luckily stays in the Alien Dimension... Mostly.

'''Spitter''': Misunderstood Pink Guy from Uganda who looks for de way, spitting on Heretics. Weak.

'''Megaspawn''': Imagine an Imperial Knight but alien scum and wholly organic. Its' rapid firing, replenishing rocket launcher arm and ORGANIC LASER CANNON ARM says it all. Huge and powerful.

'''Popper''': It's all in the name really. An alien who's here for a good time, not a long time, and he's taking your soldiers with him.

'''Skeletoid''': Anthropod V2.0 with flying. Fast reacting, agile and smart. Dangerous with endgame equipments.

'''Micronoid Aggregate''': Actual alien rulers. Hive mind of single cells running across all Alien veins and buildings.

'''Queenspawn''': Mother whore, land octopus and breeding bitch. If you stun her, you get the best Alien toxin gun... AND IN GAS FORM! Now you can start a race war and gas all xeno scum, like humanity should.

'''Overspawn''': Kaiju alien dropped from top 2 biggest UFO's. When aliens get mad, it will rampage across town, and can destroy the xcom base underfoot if it hits its building. Scramble all crafts and shoot it down, try hitting it with rubble for instakill.

===Reboot Continuity===
The reboot continuity has its own array of different monsters, with some changes in variety between the first and second game.

====X-COM Enemy Unknown / Enemy Within====
'''Sectoid''': Tiny little grey men in the first game, these are the first Psionic enemy you'll meet, with the ability to boost each other in combat. This can be rather nasty giving them an extra hit point and a +10 to hit and dodge, although if you kill the booster, you'll kill whatever Sectoid they're boosting as well thanks to Psychic feedback.

'''Sectoid Commander''': Only in the first game, these guys are Sectoids on psychic steroids. You'll see one on the tutorial mission and get a taste of what they can do, even if you don't fight it. They're stronger, tougher, and more psionically powerful than the basic sectoid, and are the first unit that can possess your guys mid-firefight.

'''Thin Man''': Apparently an "Infiltrator Unit" nobody would mistake these guys for human at close distance as they have snake scales running up their necks, and are skinny enough to make a supermodel jealous. They make no appearance in the sequel, having been scrapped for far more convincing Faceless. Apparently they were made from genetically modifying Snake-women as they can spit clouds of poison at great distance, and will explode into one when they're killed. Otherwise they're real flimsy. Do not underestimate them, however, as their choice of weaponry and habit of frequently spawning on high ground means that they will often one-shot soldiers through full cover if not dealt with quickly.

'''Muton''': How you know the aliens are stepping up their game. Everything up till now has been child's play (for a particularly psychotic child), then these guys come along. Big, tough, cunning, brutal, and dangerous, these guys will mulch a squad equipped with regular weapons and armour without breaking a sweat, and capturing one of these guys alive brings one of the better upgrades. Have fun.

'''Muton Berserker''': Ha, ha, ha. These girls are melee monsters, capable of soaking up bullets by the magazine, and slowly getting angrier and angrier as they do. If they can get in close they'll unleash the melee hurt, but thankfully they're not amazingly fast. Thankfully, their instinctive charge of the last person who shot them means you can set them up to run a gauntlet of Overwatch fire, with a bit of luck.

'''Muton Elite''': As much health as the Berserkers, plus armor, and lacking the berserk charges. Instead, they carry heavy plasma cannons.

'''Floater''': Apparently reject Mutons, stripped down to an upper torso and fitted up with cybernetic implants, mainly a jetpack. They're your first hint that the aliens may not be one big happy family, as they have an idle animation consisting of them ripping at their flesh and bionics until blood spurts. They're basically the fastest unit in the game, great Overwatchers, and pack about as much punch as a standard Muton. They have a special ability that sacrifices all their actions for the turn to instead fly to any single spot on the map, which they love to use to get the drop on your team and/or commit suicide via reaction fire.

'''Heavy Floater''': A tougher, armored version of the standard Floater, with a bigger gun. Basically just replace floaters in the late game to keep them competitive, but they've got no new tricks up their sleeves.

'''Outsider''': Strange "energy" lifeforms that serve as the technicians of the UFOs. You need to capture one of these in order to advance the game. They're wimpy, but their light plasma rifles are deadly accurate, so they can gun down whole teams if you're careless. For some unexplained reason, they just up and completely vanish from the game as soon as sectoid commanders turn up, never even being mentioned again. The most popular fan explanation is that they are actually not so much ''crew'' of the UFOs as ''hardware''.

'''Sectopod''': The aliens' equivalent of a tank; an enormous, heavily armored killer robot that walks around the battlefield in a perpetual squat, it has insanely high health, high armor, a 50% damage reduction ability with the Enemy Within expansion, and the ability to blaze away with both a fuck-off huge fire-laser-beam-thing and to launch showers of cluster bombs. They also blow up when you kill them. Your most hated enemy.

'''Cyberdisk''': A ridiculously fast flying robot that can shapeshift between a flying saucer-like flight-mode (in which it's harder to hit) and its unfurled combat mode. Not quite as killy as the sectopod, but still really adept at ruining your day.

'''Drone''': Small flying robots that basically zip around like laser-spitting wasps. They don't do much damage, but they can repair mechanical aliens and they explode like a grenade when killed. And they're extra-hard to hit, for added nuisance factor.

'''Chryssalid''': An absolute fucking nightmare, just like the original series. These bugs are lightning fast, vicious, and if they kill anyone they'll automatically plant an egg in the corpse, which will turn into a zombie before hatching a new chryssalid three turns later. And these zombies are tough enough to weather several turns of shooting. One of the standout points of Enemy Within is a pre-baked mission where you get to investigate a whaling ship that crashed ashore in Newfoundland after being infested by Chryssalids who turned the catch into their personal hive. Your job is to first investigate the area, and then light the place up for your bombers so they can carpet bomb the place into fire and rubble, running your squad away the whole time.

'''Ethereal''': The leaders of the alien forces, physically frail but masters of [[psionics]], which they can use to ''really'' fuck up your day.

'''Seeker''': A relatively weak squid-like robot that uses camouflage to sneak up on its prey and then tries to crush it to death with its tendrils. They like to go after isolated members of your squad, which can be used to bait them into going after Assault troopers with Close Combat Tactics for hilarious effects.

'''Mechtoid''': An armored exoskeleton piloted by a sectoid, carrying twin plasma mini-cannons. Sectoids can use their mind merge ability to give a layer of shielding to mechtoids; killing the sectoid removes the shield and causes some damage to the mechtoid.

'''EXALT''': Not really aliens but modified humans who use [[Emperor's Children|genetic tempering to lengths that even Dr. Vahlen isn't willing to go]]. Their skin tones are inhuman & sickly because of this.
They wish to use alien tech to seize power and take over the planet using alien technology. They also get their own weapons and equivalents to XCOM's agents but not Plasma weapons, Psionic agents, SHIVs or MECs. So they're basically what everyone who frequents [[/pol/]] wants to do, only without the alien tech. I.e. White Supremacists using crack science per usual, but too stupid to understand the more advanced shit. Despite most of Enemy Within being the canon route until the base attack. They are absent from XCOM 2.

====X-COM 2 / War of the Chosen====
'''ADVENT'''

The end results of what the Ethereals want to do with humanity. Puppet soldiers controlled by a series of psionically linked chips that feed back to command nodes. It's stated that the Commander's brain was a central "tactical command" processing node for these, providing the ADVENT officers and troops with advanced stratagems. The fact that XCOM rescued him in the tutorial mission serves to explain why the Resistance has such an easy time with ADVENT during the game itself, forcing the aliens to send in the more advanced otherwordly brawn.

*'''Trooper''': The grunts come in three flavours, with increasing HP, Dodge, and Accuracy as they tier up. [[Imperial Guard|Challenging only in high numbers primarily by way of sheer volume of shots and by overrunning soldiers pinned down by said firepower]].

*'''Officer''': These guys aren't a threat on their own, however they can Holo-Target one of your guys, granting their ADVENT and alien allies a +10 to hit against that soldier. Killing the officer removes this mark from your soldier and as such, you should prioritize taking down the officer should you become afflicted by it.

*'''Shield-Bearer''': The most annoying ADVENT type in the base game, these guys can pop a shield that gives every ADVENT and Alien soldier in range +3 or +5 temporary HP. Combined with their armour these guys can take a licking and keep on ticking. Taking them out will drop the shield on everybody else, so they should be a target priority otherwise each affected enemy will require significantly more effort to drop. They also kinda look like Robocop so they have that going for them.

*'''Stun-Lancer''': Melee focused, these guys are noticeable by the fact they were far less armour than any other ADVENT soldier. They're addicted to melee and will almost exclusively favor charging in to taze your guys with their electric Melee beatsticks. While this normally just runs a good chance of disorienting or stunning your soldier, it can straight up knock your dudes unconscious if RNG fates it so. In the event some affliction prevents them from slapping your dudes with their tasers, they do carry a standard ADVENT Rifle. They however can be easily dealt with if you have a Ranger with Blademaster, Bladestorm and upgraded blades. They'll run towards your Ranger only to be swiftly cut down like chumps.

*'''Priest''': Introduced in WotC, these guys are the ADVENT Psions. Primarily a supportive unit, they can boost another ADVENT soldier much like Sectoids could in Enemy Unknown (and like that game if you kill the priest the soldier will suffer psionic feedback and die), or they can put one of your guys in Stasis for a turn, preventing them from doing anything. Advanced and Elite priests have additional tricks that allow them to Mind-Control your guys, and place themselves in Stasis if they would be killed, instead staying around with 1 HP for another turn.

*'''Purifier''': Flamethrower wielding ADVENT troops that only appear in WotC. The guys are kept "secret" from the public (despite that fact they can appear in any mission if the RNG says so) as they are supposed to hunt down and kill the lost in the old, abandoned cities. As stated they use flamethrowers, alongside incendiary grenades, and when you kill them there's a good chance they will explode, so don't kill them with melee unless you want to lose your eyebrows. Although that can lead to some hilarious chain reactions if you're lucky.

*'''General''': Only appears in assassination missions in WotC. Essentially just a beefed up Officer with a shit ton of HP, and the ability to throw Flash-Bangs.

*'''MEC / Heavy MEC''': The first truly heavy ADVENT Unit. These things come with an absurd amount of HP and armor for the early game. They're not particularly smart however and cannot use cover at all, instead relying on their durability to weather your shooting so take advantage of this. Remember not to bunch your guys up as they have a shoulder mounted missile launcher that they will use on your guys if they're clustered together. MECs can also use suppression at the end of their turn if they can't target a group. The Heavy MEC is just tougher and more accurate, you can think your way through this fight. The best way to deal with them is hacking or anti-machine equipment such as EMP rounds and grenades.

*'''Turrets / Heavy / Superheavy''': It's a turret. What more do you want? They have some armour and a decent amount of HP as well as the ability to fire up to twice per turn (more often than not, they'll shoot once then enter overwatch). As can be expected, turrets don't move and are usually positioned up on building rooftops or on trains for that high-ground advantage. Like most mechanical enemies, you can hack it with a Specialist or simply destroy it by using Bluescreen rounds. If the turret is on a rooftop, you can also utilize conventional explosives (like grenades or rockets) to blow out the floor from underneath it, destroying the turret instantly.

*'''Sectopod''': The final and toughest ADVENT unit. It's just as much of a nightmare as it was in the first game. Sectopods have three actions per turn as opposed to the nearly universal two, can extend their legs to give themselves a height advantage over your soldiers and walk through nearly all buildings and terrain (destroying cover or even blowing out the floor from underneath your soldiers as it does so) in their path. The basic shots they fire do devastating damage and shred armor, potentially killing even highly ranked soldiers if caught even slightly off-guard. They explode rather violently when they are finally defeated, likely killing or severely injuring any units caught in the blast. So don't be stupid by making your melee units deliver the finishing blow. As with any robotic unit they can be hacked by a properly specced specialist, although their rather high hacking defense makes taking control of them extremely difficult. Bluescreen Rounds, EMP Grenades and/or acid grenades are all highly recommended when fighting it.

'''Aliens'''

*'''Sectoid''': Tougher than you remember due to the infusion of human DNA. Now have the ability to resurrect dead troopers - yours and ADVENT - as zombies, and all sectoids from the get-go can lay a mind whammy on your troops, randomly panicking, disorientating or controlling them. That said, they're vulnerable to melee attacks so a halfway decent Ranger should chop them up without much trouble.

*'''Chryssalid''': Because why the fuck wouldn't the Ethereals keep their most effective terror weapon. These guys have changed from scuttling horrors to burrowing, venomous, scuttling horrors, capable of turning anyone they kill, either with their venom or their claws into a slowly metamorphosing cocoon that, if it reaches maturity, will spit out '''THREE''' new chryssalids, because Firaxis hates you. They are rendered mostly harmless by being set on fire, so if you think you're going to run into them bring incendiary rounds, fire bombs, and hell weave vests. The previous sentence is no longer the case in War of the Chosen, so prepare your anus.

*'''Viper''': The most famous of the new aliens because they look like [[serpentfolk|humanoid snake-women]] with [[furry|nice tits and a sweet pair of hips]]. Appear pretty early in the game; not much tougher than sectoids, but quite annoying. They can drag you out of cover with their tongue whip attack, spew toxic clouds like the Thin Men, and strangle you in melee like a Seeker. These gals represent the true form of the Thin Man alien from the last game. (And yes, the thin ''men'' were actually disguised snake ''women'' the whole time.)

*'''Andromedon''': One of the cooler new alien designs, it could almost have been ripped out of the old X-COM series. It looks like a combination of an old diving suit and an iron lung, filled with green acidic sludge, and a single pickled alien who apparently needs that sludge to live and dies if exposed to Earth's atmosphere. When you kill it the first time the glass torso-visor shatters, exposing the pilot's corpse, and the suit reboots and come to life by itself, dropping its heavy plasma cannon and charging into melee. In its first form, an Andromedon is a tough customer, with more armour & health than a Muton while packing the same firepower. In its second form it will only ever try to hit you with its fists, but it leaves behind trail of acidic and poisonous sludge that hurts your guys if they try to move through it (because jumping isn't a thing, despite the ability to haul yourself up drainpipes) which makes navigating the battlefield a hassle, especially in densely packed urban missions. Thankfully their second form will be easier to deal with. Due to the immense control of the battlefield these guys possess (being able to simply destroy cover by running through it and leaving acid trails that can cut off avenues of approach) in addition to their rather devastating firepower, it's highly recommended you fully focus these things down if no other priority targets (like Sectopods) are immediately present.

*'''Faceless''': A new enemy that should only appear in Terror Attack missions, but they can be seeded in regular missions if you pull the Dark Event that allows them to mingle with the regular citizens. Isn't that lovely. Shapeshifters that look like ordinary humans until your troops get too close (or all other aliens are killed), then they turn into ''fucking huge'' moaning melted-wax men with claws the length of shotguns. With the Ethereals now having these under their command, it's no surprise that the Thin Men from the previous game are no longer in use. In the early game they can be a hard target to drop due to their fairly high HP and ability to regenerate lost health every turn. That said, as exclusively melee units that rely more on ambushing unsuspecting XCOM operatives, they can easily be kited and picked off at range. In a pinch, your Scanner Grenades and Specialists can reveal concealed Faceless by scanning the area, so there's a touch of counterplay against them.

*'''Muton''': Remaining as the ethereal's shock infantry, these Mutons have apparently been crossbred with humanity, making them slightly smaller and faster, but also slightly smarter. But considering just how badly the A.I. can flub up sometimes, you have to wonder about that last one. They aren't packing any more HP, but they now have a point of armor, which means that the first point of damage from every attack gets ignored, so they'll soak up more damage unless you can shred their armor with heavy weapons and explosives. They'll still be a threat until you get Plasma weapons, and 3rd tier armour, but once you're there, they pretty much become chaff beneath the scythe. They also like tossing grenades if they don't have a direct line of sight on your troops. Along with the ability to use suppression if a Muton can't get into melee. Making them an annoyance well into the late game. They're also the only Alien that has countermeasures against melee, being able to parry and riposte. Worse, they can instantly kill stunned soldiers, including the ones that their counter stunned.

*'''Berserker''': Now visually more distinct from the regular Muton instead of just having a fancy costume, being entirely naked and seemingly skinless, looking like the musculature section of a human anatomy book. While mostly the same extremely tough melee combatants with the same instinctive berserker charge, [[Derp|the Ethereals have gotten worse at making these instead of better.]] While Enemy Unknown's Berserkers could distinguish between friend and foe no matter how angry they got, with these Berserkers, it's possible to make them attack their allies by hurting them to piss them off and then keeping your units out of punching range. This game also reveals that Berzerkers are actually the Muton ''women''. Gives a whole new meaning to the term [[Amazon]], huh?

*'''Codex''': A replacement for the Outsider, but far more annoying. The Codex first appears when you Skulljack an ADVENT officer, and it looks like a weirdly sexy woman made of pure yellow, but with a cybernetic brain & spinal column. They can teleport around the battlefield, and when struck by an attack that fails to kill them, they split into two Codexes with half of their remaining health. They can also create temporary [[Matt Ward|zones of energy that suck all the ammo out of your guns]], and then close with deadly force. Naturally you want Snipers or Magnetic/Plasma Weapon chain attacks to kill them quickly. Which you should have by the time of encountering them. Unless of course you rush the skull-jack out in your first run, and get one of these while you still have conventional weapons, in which case... have ''fun''. Or just toss a flashbang at them and turn them into slightly more dangerous ADVENT Troopers.

*'''Specter''': Another WotC specific enemy. These guys look like the Codex if they were men and made out of Necron Scarabs rather than pure energy. It's fitting too as they are a collection of Psionic nanobots that can grab your guys, stun them, and create a shadowy doppelgänger with all of your guy's skills and gear, and none of their bad luck. Thankfully killing the Specter will also kill this doppelganger and bring your guy back into the fight, but if you can't take it down immediately, expect the tide to turn against you. In a pinch, you can revive a soldier possessed this way with a medically inclined Specialist, though you'll still have to fight the doppelganger. Oddly, attacks that harm biological targets without requiring a will test can harm the Specter.

*'''Gatekeeper''': A giant, floating, psionic ball that might be the replacement/upgrade to the cyberdisks. No, we're not joking. For all the goofiness of trying to summarise this thing, it's a shockingly vicious threat. That big metal sphere contains a psionic powerhouse in the shape of a fleshy mass with tentacles which will unfurl to bitchslap your soldiers into the ground if they get too close. When moving or firing its eye-beam (a very strong, if semi-inaccurate laser), it remains enclosed in its heavily armored sphere (We're talking 4-6 pips of armor, difficulty dependent). In order to use its most powerful attacks, however, it must unfurl out of its armor in order to cast them. These include the ability to create a ''massive'' explosion that deals heavy damage to everything within it and reanimates ''all'' humanoid bodies within its radius as zombies that it controls (this includes any humans killed ''by'' said explosion) and the ability to grab your soldiers and siphon their life to heal itself. Additionally, it'll try to use cover despite being a 2x2 giant, floating, metal, psychic ball of doom. As a final FU, when killed they explode with a blast that will reach all tiles around them, heavily wounding or outright killing any of your squad next to them. Melee units such as Templars should be kept far away if they don't have Fortress. One of them is always encountered during the Psi Gate mission and will likely be the first time seeing them. Hilariously these tiny Eldritch Abominations can be mind controlled by Psi Operatives, if their will stat is good enough. Another way of dealing with them is using explosives and heavy weapons that shreds their armor. These would be the first targets to use Frost Grenades on if you encounter them early in the maps. You should have Magnetic or Plasma Weapons by the time Gatekeepers start showing up or they will be nearly impossible to defeat.

*'''Archon''': So someone in the Aliens' side realized that having a heavily mutilated torso mounted on jetpacks, which actively tore at its implants and constantly mounted suicide charges so it could be put out of its misery was bad for PR, so they replaced the Floaters with these guys. They look almost angelic or like something out of a high-tech ancient egypt, and their design incorporates a lot more white and gold with much less obviously chop-shop cybernetics. The nigh-constant pain going away has made them far smarter too. They still like to jump around the battlefield, but now they can also use a new ability called Blazing Pinions to rain rockets down on your guys after a turn's delay and will actually take advantage of cover. They also happen to have the Adonis-like musculature of a Chip-n-dale dancer. No seriously, ask any fa/tg/irl who isn't asexual or a lesbian to look up these, and she'll tell you they're one of the sexiest videogame monsters she's ever seen. Snaketits, meet mechpecs.

*'''Avatar''': The Ethereals' plans are revealed when you discover these creatures. Avatars are genetically engineered lifeforms created from the genes of the most psi-capable humans, crafted to house the essence of the Ethereals, whose own bodies are breaking down irrevocably. Extremely tough and powerful psionics, these guys are arguably your highest priority on the battlefield. The Commander gets one of his own at the end of the game. This is because they plugged him/her into their psionic network and never bothered to remove or change anything after XCOM recovered them. [[Fail|As the Ethereals are really quite stupid despite claiming to be the superior race.]] While lacking the full skill set of the Psi Operative, they have useful abilities that can still perform near their level. Avatars also come an awesome gun that they hardly ever use; [[Cheese|it ignores armor values, uses only one action point that allows him to fire twice in one turn, and can knock a Sectopod down to half health in a single volley.]] It can be acquired through workshop mods should you want it outside the final mission, though most such mods restrict the weapon to Psi-Operatives. It wouldn't make much sense otherwise.

'''The Alien Rulers''':
If you played the previous game, you may have been wondering: "what happened to Dr. Valen?" Well, the first DLC for XCOM 2, "Alien Hunters" reveals that she went off and set up her own base in an abandoned alien genetics lab, where her experiments in undoing the genetic suppressants on three cryogenically suspended subjects created three amped-up alien variants so powerful that the Ethereals couldn't control them. Great work, doc! Alien Rulers have a huge health bar and many unique abilities, but one of their more bullshit traits is that they have, no shit, Lair actions from D&D 5e. If you don't play D&D, this means they get a free turn in reaction to ''every'' action your troops take. This is nerfed somewhat in the WotC expansion to only reacting to anybody taking an action in its immediate line of sight (so dudes hiding behind walls or who are too far away won't trigger them). The best way to deal with them is heavy use of Incendiary, Acid and Venom Bombs. Not only do all these grenades stack damage over time effects (such that they take damage on every one of their own turns), but the burn limits the number of things they can do on their turn, the acid shreds almost all their armor while the poison severely hampers their accuracy, if it doesn't just gimp them of their reaction entirely. Free actions (like the Lightning Hands perk) and reloading don't trigger reactions, while abilities that allow your troops to make multiple attacks (like Rapid Fire or Chain Shot) count as one action. In WotC, Sharpshooters abusing the Squadsight mechanic can attack them without triggering a reaction if they are doing so from outside conventional range. Something you should have before facing them in mid to late game. Because fuck these guys. War of the Chosen also allows you to "integrate" this expansion, eliminating the special story mission in lieu of just shoving the Rulers around various facilities and just giving you the special guns. Doing this means missing out on a couple minor cutscenes, controlling Bradford for a mission and missing out on the opportunity to take his fancy gun kitted out with [[cheese|every possible upgrade]] for a spin.

*'''The Viper King:''' The only male Viper in existence, this creature shows why the Ethereals removed the male gender from the viper species with how rampantly he set about fertilizing every female viper he could encounter, filling an entire base with a huge array of hatchling vipers you have to fight through. His unique abilities allow him to spit a freezing gas instead of the normal venom. The weakest of the Alien Rulers, the Viper King is usually the first one you encounter. He's ironically also the most vulnerable to the Frost grenade, so slap it in a Grenadier with the Heavy Ordinance perk and hit him with it from out of sight to maximize your attacking opportunities. If you manage to tag 'n' bag Subject Gamma, you can turn his carcass into a unique Spider Suit, the Serpent Suit, that can scare the scales off of normal vipers and lash out with freezing whips.

*'''The Berserker Queen:''' Just as much bigger and scarier compared to normal berzerkers as they are compared to male mutons, Subject Beta can not only unleash a howl that can panic your whole squad, but is equipped with cybernetically integrated wrist-mounted hammers she can use to create earthquakes. Because fists the size of the average adult human weren't enough apparently. From her carcass, you can build the R.A.G.E Suit, which not only terrifies mutons and berserkers, but lets your trooper make a berserker-style charge attack themselves.

*'''The Archon King''': Subject Alpha is the nastiest Alien Ruler in the game, and has the most health. His special attack "Devastate" is a version of Blazing Pinons (the Archon's "shower an area with rockets" ability) that does less damage, but which can also disorient, stun and knock unconscious. Worse, it hits on the next Ruler Reaction, meaning you have no chance to get away from it the way you do from Blazing Pinions. He also has a unique attack where he grabs a trooper, hauls them into the air, and then power dives them into the floor. If you can take down this asshole, his corpse can be refashioned into the Icarus Armor, a superior Warden Armor suit that grants the Vault ability and the ability to pull off the Archon's "move to any point on the map you wish" twice per mission. Give it to your best Sniper, as this allows them to keep up with the rest of the squad and find the nearest vantage point.

'''The Chosen''':
The new Dragons aka Second in Command below the Ethereals. These three alien hybrids were once human before being abducted by the aliens (indeed, the Hunter was once one of the Reapers before his capture) and molded into the Ethereals' ideal elite agents. Each of them acts as an antagonist to one of the three resistance factions XCOM allies with and usually come equipped with a bunch of BS abilities that can wreck your troops at lower levels. You also want to find their base ASAP as they gain upgrades through the game like you do and can hurt your income. Getting their OP shit is also a nice bonus.

When first encountered they'll attempt to stun and either siphon the knowledge from or capture one of your troops for intel. If they succeed in doing so, it gives them a massive boost to their progress against you and will ultimately lead to a potentially game-ending assault on the Avenger. Additionally, soldiers that they choose to capture will go off the grid for quite some time before you can get the chance to rescue them. If they appear during a Blacksite mission, The Chosen AI will just straight up murder a squad member instead. [[Rage|The game doesn't give any hints to this change in behavior.]] So if you're counting on manipulating their AI into kidnapping a soldier who is near death during those missions. The Chosen will just slaughter your squad like the rest of ADVENT. Because all bets when are off when your trying to kill mommy? and/or err daddy? Shklee? Maybe?
Thankfully, the game rolls to give them permanent weakness, along with an arch enemy who will deal extra damage to a Chosen among the new Hero classes. They will also roll for one immunity and a special ability, though the immunities are things that many players will hardly ever use against a boss regardless. The special power can either be meh, or fuck you right over. Good thing for the player the summoning powers are mutually exclusive and can't gain strengths that counter most of their weaknesses.

They can also be countered by researching Mindshields, your own (fully upgraded) Psi operatives and the buffed Sparks. When you have the latter two the Mindshields are redundant as the last two are right out immune to being stunned and mind controlled. Too bad there aren't new lines for a Spark with Julian's voice. As hearing a GlaDOS expy with the attitude of Bender snark back at The Chosen would have been hilarious.

*'''The Assassin''': The first of the Chosen you'll meet if you're playing the "Lost and Damned" mission to introduce yourself to the new mechanics introduced in WotC, the Assassin is a dark reflection of the Ranger class. The biggest [[Weeaboo|weeb]] in all of Advent. She attacks mostly with her Katana (although she does have a rarely used shotgun called Arashi, and you'll thank the programmers she rarely uses it), striking out of concealment to stun one of your guys (Who you'll then have to revive or risk them getting kidnapped), before running away. In the same turn. Because the Bad Guys get to move, shoot, move, but the player doesn't get nice things. To top this all off she's immune to overwatch so you either have to try and escape from the current mission, or take the fight back to her just as hard. Oh yeah, and avoid bunching your guys up, or she will stun half the squad at a time with an area of effect special attack, but don't get too spread out or you won't be able to revive stunned soldiers before she kidnaps them. Thankfully, her concealment works by the same rules as yours, and it'll break if one of your guys flanks her, so if you've got a good idea of where she is, you can move someone in to reveal her, and then light her up with the rest of the squad. To make her easier to deal with make sure to take a Specialist with Scanning Protocol. After killing The Assassin you can build Arashi and her Katana. Though many will find her Katana redundant after they have tier 3 Axes and late game Templars.

*'''The Hunter''': While you would expect a roided up [[Space Wolves|Craven the Hunter cosplaying furfag]] by name alone, he is instead a more or less a [[Vindicare|hit man armed with a pistol and sniper rifle]] with an Affably Evil personality.[[Ork_Snipers| He's also known to have team killed some of the weaker Advent aliens when he got bored]]. Unlike his siblings he outright admits that he is a psychopath who likes killing things. The Hunter's abilities are a bit mundane compared to the other Chosen. While still being effective none the less. His Tracking Shot can aim at your troops from the other side of the map, and if they don't move he will kill them the next. This makes mind controlling Advent and hacking MECs for recon useful for once. He also come with a grappling hook with no cool-down, stun grenades and pistol tranq shots that never miss. So don't be stupid and send in a lone Reaper without Banish. Even if he rolls them as a weakness. As they don't put out enough damage to out snipe him and will end up killed or captured instead. His Sniper rifle Darklance and pistol Darkclaw are obviously weapons that are meant for your Snipers. So Reapers can't use it without modding the game. Not a good idea regardless as it can't be modified with extended magazines and mods that can do this might cause conflicts. The Hunter is by far the most popular of The Chosen among players. While all three of them are edgelords, he adds a huge load of snark to his. He even mouths off to the Ethereals. This shouldn't be surprising as he's voiced by the very talented Nolan North.

*'''The Warlock''': Probably the most dangerous of The Chosen, if you don't have Mindshields. If you do he's about as dangerous as the final boss of the game. If you don't he's damned near impossible as he'll mind control your entire squad at once. In the event his mind-wiping powers are ineffective/on cooldown, he'll summon waves of exploding spectral zombies or psionic copies of Stun Lancers to swarm after you. On his direct offense he has a buffed up plasma rifle that will do extra damage to psionics (i.e. your Psi Operative and Templar), a mind bullet that will split off to affect up to two additional targets, and the ability to teleport his own allies into flanking positions. Sometimes his AI does some stupid shit such as teleporting an Advent next to him. Bonus points if said Advent is the target your supposed to kill during the mission. Once you get his Disruptor rifle, it has every possible upgrade in the game. Though only Rangers, Psi-Operatives and Specialist can take it in an unmodded game. A waste on the latter two as by the time you get it. Their late game abilities and equipment make giving them a 3.5 tier weapon redundant.

'''The Lost'''
Also know as the laggers, as the game starts slowing down if there are too many of them on screen. Introduced in WotC, the Lost were created when survivors of the initial invasion decided that returning to the desolated ruins of their former cities still infested with radioactive alien drop-pods and trying to live off the scraps [[derp|was a good idea]]. The Lost serve as a sort of third enemy faction and will attack XCOM, ADVENT and Alien forces alike (though with a very high preference for [[your dudes]], go figure). Any explosives, be they from grenades, gas tanks or cars will summon hordes of them in the missions they can appear in and can potentially overwhelm both your soldiers and your computer's RAM in high enough swarms. They have a notable weakness to fire and if ignited, will run away panicking before burning to death. Any successful killshot (be they from you or the aliens/ADVENT) will refund the action point spent to kill it, which helps significantly when dealing with swarms of them. Like both the aliens and ADVENT, all variants will start appearing with more base health as time passes, but as long as you're on top of your research game, they shouldn't be a problem.

*'''Regular''': Standard Lost behave exactly like any prototypical zombie; they beeline it towards whichever enemy suits their fancy and try to peg them in the head with their rotting limbs. In most cases, they can easily be killed in a single shot with most guns, bar the unlucky miss/damage roll.

*'''Dasher''': Faster and with slightly more initial HP (4-5, as opposed to 2-3) these guys aren't much more of a threat compared to regular Lost. They do have a surprising threat range and can easily surround isolated soldiers if not picked off immediately, however.

*'''Brute''': These guys have a lot of HP for a Lost, can actually deal some melee punishment. Early on they do require a little bit of focus fire to down them and they become more and more common by endgame. Then again, by endgame you'll have the best weapons and armour, so once again... only really a threat if you're unlucky, and there's a lot of them.

Recommended soldier classes for missions involving lost are Reapers with Banish and Annihilate, Skirmishers, Rangers and Templars with Bladestorm and Templars/Sharpshooters with Faceoff for room clearing. Dragonfire rounds also ensure that even if by some miracle the Lost shot by them survives, they'll be rendered harmless and die shortly after. There is also a mod that makes their targeting more realistic, as by default they target XCOM(70%) over Advent(30%). Which doesn't make sense as Advent would have no reason to deploy Purifiers. They become even more annoying if the game rolls to deploy a Chosen at the same time. Be wary of your RAM and don't rely on autosaves.(16GB+ is the bare minimum you want to have! If it still lags use lower settings. High settings look about as good as maximum and still run at a decent FPS.)

====XCOM Chimera Squad====

'''Gangs/Terrorists''': Chimera Squad doesn't really bring in new aliens due to being an asset flip built on top of XCOM 2 code. Instead they introduce new subtypes (which should be covered in their sections instead) of all but the least humanoid aliens, even humans but not robots. In fact only one actual new unit is introduced in this game, Androids. Which only three factions including XCOM have. While yours need to be upgraded to be useful. However unless they get really bad roles or just have shitty luck in general. Players won't need them. Enemy Human npcs are mostly reskinned ADVENT Troopers. The enemies, missions and route depends on player choices along with some RNG. As each final mission, except for the two endgame levels after all other factions are defeated, have their own variants. This makes the "canon route" hard to figure out.[[GrimDark| Chimera Squad makes all those gross genetic and cybernetic enhancements the Ethereals did to the aliens canon as well.]] While also explaining why they look different in XCOM 2 from EU/EW.

*'''Gray Phoenix''': Made up of mostly of the technically inclined Mutons.(they were apparently [[Jokaero]] style reptile giant space dwarfs before the Elders got to them) Grey Phoenix is composed of aliens who want to find a new home. Even if it means that launching their hijacked vessels will damage City 31 itself. Their the only faction who deserves any sympathy at all. The only gang that deploys a Sectopod and multiple ones (one per turn) during their final raid if their the last faction chosen. If not there is only one of them.

*'''The Progeny''': Psionic human supremacists (what /pol/-tards wish they were) who abduct hybrids. Have the most annoying human npcs due to their abilities ignoring armor of the Player's agents. Their leader is a psychotic Karen who is the product of ADVENT experimentation.

*'''Sacred Coil''': The remnants of ADVENT in City 31 who worship the Ethereal. As such they use most of the enemy NPCs from XCOM 2. Still not very bright though as their schemes get uncovered out by a Sectoid J. Jonah Jameson/Fox Mulder expy long before XCOM figures it out. The only the only faction to deploy Androids and MECS during missions(besides the last one). They also have the hardest boss in the game, a pissed off insane Gatekeeper whose has been stuck in ADVENT's portal network since the end of XCOM 2.

*'''Shrike''': The main villains. Mercenaries who used to be the police of City 31 when ADVENT was in control now made up of former Resistance and XCOM soldiers. Their alien forces must be made up of former Skirmishers because they employ Hybrid, Sectoid, Viper and Muton variants.(the sentient aliens who are closest to humans in shape if not size, requiring the least amount of work. Yeah, Firaxis's laziness almost rivals [[Games Workshop|a certain other company]]) Their agents appear infrequently in missions of every other gang as additional muscle. Their goal is to cause enough chaos in City 31 to force the main XCOM forces to step in. Despite the fact that they themselves would be utterly curbstomped due to being defeated by a division as poorly armed as Chimera Squad was. It's easy to see why their former XCOM because their leader is a piss weak standard hitman(basic soldier with a pistol) who has some annoying upgrades. Some players think their backers are the newly risen EXALT. Which only makes sense if they either had [[Fallout]] style underground bunkers or defected to ADVENT before the events of XCOM 2. As despite being an alcoholic, Central isn't dumb enough to ally with or employ guys who will stab XCOM in the back as soon as the main bad guys are defeated. Nor would the Commander want to keep them around, maybe except as cannon fodder.

==See Also==
*[[X-Com Play By Post]], experimental rules for playing X-Com on a forum.
*[[XCOM: Tomorrow's War edition]], a conversion of [[Tomorrow's War]] for playing X-Com on the tabletop.

==Gallery==
{{Promotions}}
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image:Torque E621J2UFrW2ozmYGxIMnBiw-8R7y qOlCsGLJHmEiKxvYtw.jpg|Torque finds herself on E621
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==External Links==
* [http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Main_Page UFOpaedia.org], a wiki dedicated to X-COM (and sequels, and mods, etc.).
* [http://openxcom.org/ Open Source engine for the original game]
* [http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=269&enmi=XCOM:%20The%20Board%20Game Fantasy Flight Games's official X-COM game.]
* [http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom/mods/88/? Long War main page.]
* [http://ufoai.org/wiki/About UFO: Alien Invasion]
* [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BqoEJUWKVRFSKXOA2Ks3Ce7Kvphmg0kAFKcuXJHgmr0/mobilebasic?pli=1 Things X-COM operatives are not allowed to do], a list in the vein of Mr. Welch's list. Occasionally hilarious
* [https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=5026.0] A 40k mod for openxcom NO idea as to why it hasn't shown up here.
[[category:Video Games]]
[[Category:Software]]

Kroot

2022-10-25T21:28:30Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Physiology */

{{cleanup}}
[[Image:Kroot.png|thumbnail|right|300px|In Tau Empire, chicken eats YOU!]]

{{topquote|They are fierce indeed these Kroot, and savage. I look upon them and tremble at their ferocity. I can only hope that when the enemy sees them they tremble as I do.|Por'vre Tau Cho, Water caste envoy}}

The '''Kroot''' (''Krootis <s>spencer here</s> aviana'') are a vassal species to the [[Tau|Tau Empire]]. Rather bitey. Basically carnivorous space chickens who look like a cross between the dreadlocked aliens from ''Predator'' and ancient [[Terra|Terran]] terror birds, with a bit of D&D's [[Aarakocra]] thrown in. They steal genetic traits of things they eat, and work for people who aren't the Tau. Which means they are cool.

However, the Kroot see little support from [[Games Workshop]] and players in general, likely due to the fact that their odd stats, high frailty despite being billed as a melee force, and lack of wargear in the Tau list make them less than effective, and their [[Warhammer_40,000/Chapter_Approved/Kroot_Mercenaries|mercenary codex]] is from an old [[Chapter Approved]] (and thus no longer legal).

For those interested, there's [[Codex - Kroots: /tg/'s 9th Edition]]. Most people will let you use it in a friendly game.

As of the most recent [[Dark Eldar]] codex, the [[Haemonculus]] Covens has taken a liking to the way Kroot gastronomy reacts to evolution and had conducted a gigantic raid which, to put it lightly, utterly destroyed Pech a new one. The Dark Eldar pretty much [[Looted]] a new one, stealing dozens of shapers and whole raiders full of Kroot corpses for their experiments. Suffice it to say, Pech was saved by a counterattack by the Tau and viscious reprisals from the native Kroot, but by then it was too little too late, the invading forces having gotten what they needed withdrew as quickly as they arrived. The Kroot's homeworld recieved one of its worst invasions to date and the rescuing Tau party was greeted with a grisly scene of mutilated Kroot corpses laid out in Eldar Lexicon which translates to, "[[Rape|Welcome to the feast.]]" The Tau in all their naive weeaboo hats, promptly shat themselves a brown stinky brick whilst the captured Kroots were promptly turned into KFC.

It is uncertain, and probably unlikely, that we will ever get a kroot codex thanks to the Imperium centric focus of the setting. Thanks Geedubs. However, we ''did'' get Kill Team rules for a Kroot Mercenary faction in the January 2019 White Dwarf. Strictly fun and noncompetitive, but it's ''something''.

GOOD NEWS! With all the new options with Ninth edition, it is now possible to run a <strike>mostly</strike> Kroot Army! EDIT: [https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/01/26/field-an-entire-army-of-upgraded-kroot-with-codex-tau-empire/ | Now you can run an <i>entirely</i> Kroot army!]

GOOD NEWS! With the new boxset of Kill Team: Into The Dark, The Kroot have their own specialist Kill Team.

==Physiology==
[[File:OW EOI Kroot Shaper.png|thumbnail|right|300px|''By instinctively isolating and analysing the DNA contained with the flesh of potential food sources, these exceptional Kroot, known as Shapers, can determine whether the prey’s characteristics are favourable or detrimental to the genetic advancement of their Kindred, and can thereby guide the development of the other Kroot. They are the wardens and caretakers of their Kindred’s genetic inheritance, and they guard it against regression, corruption, and unwanted mutation.'']]
[[Xenology]] suggests that the reason Kroot are humanoid, able to walk and think, and able to build weapons and spacecraft is because at one time in their history, an [[Ork]] ship crashed on Pech (the Kroot's home planet). The Kroot promptly started eating the dazed survivors of this crash (how they managed to not end up with a full-blown Ork infestation remains anyone's guess. Maybe the kroot lick their plates when they are done eating, leading to no spores left behind, anyone's guess.) and subsequently managed to gain some of the Orks' innate understanding for technology, as well as a measure of their resilience. Oh, and the basic humanoid body layout on top of that. Two arms, bipedal gait, the whole shebang. Evidence for this are pieces of wreckage marked with Ork glyphs scattered all over Pech that the Kroot regard as sacred objects, as well as the presence of hybrid fungal matter in parts of their body. It could thus be argued that the Kroot are an entire race of "Half-Orks", or at least Hybridized with the Orkoid Fungus genetic genome to a degree. Also, "Kroot" spelled backwards is "To ork." It is unknown if this is intentional. The "Mother" of the Kroot race in their Legend is called '''Vawk the Huntress''', and her rival, '''Gmork''', whose description matches Gorkamorka/Gork and Mork, along with the name sounding like Gork and Mork smashed together. When Vawk took bites out of Gmork, his blood poisoned and killed her, but as she dies, she vomited forth the Ancestral '''Kroothawks''' out upon Planet '''Pech'''. Also, Kroot starts like Krork, the original Orkoids who devolved into modern Orkoids.

For some reason, the fluff likes to point out how revolting the Kroot are for their carnivorous practices, even though, when you really stop and think about it, the Kroot are one of the more morally upright races around. They're explicitly not xenophobic racists, they ''have to'' eat dead sapients to stay intelligent (unlike, say, [[Space Marines]] and [[Tyranids]] who also eat people's brains to gain knowledge, or the fucking [[Dark Eldar]], who do it purely for lulz), and they're not notably more cruel than anyone else but the Tau, who seem to be the only people in the universe who more or less tolerate them. Although this may have to do with point of view, most of the time it's the Tau or [[Imperial Guard]] who would find the eating of the dead, friend or foe, gross. Tyranids are viewed as mindless animals, so eating things isn't as "wrong" for them, and most people forgot Space Marines can gain knowledge by eating brains [[Blood_Angels#Red_Thirst|(occasionally chasing it with fresh squeezed blood)]]. Most who do spend their time around Kroot generally seem to like them, though. The "revolting" part may be more of a knee-jerk reaction from people not used to seeing bird people eating dudes.

You may have noticed that this article talks a lot about eating. According to Chapter Approved in [[White Dwarf]], the Kroot physiology basically revolves around their mouth. They have multiple stomachs, no excretory organs (what they can't digest, they puke up), and females even breed by transforming a stomach into a womb and then vomiting up the baby/babies when it's/they're full grown. [[PROMOTIONS|Take a wild guess how they conceive]].

...The answer is back rubs. Male Kroot have specialized pores that secrete a gene-bearing bio-fluid (what experts refer to as "alien bird-jizz") on their palms, whilst female Kroot have "receptor pores" for this fluid on the smalls of their back. So when two Kroot make babies, the male has to give the female a back rub. Yeah, we thought it would be [[Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position|kinkier]], too. The main question though is why would they need sexual reproduction in the first place, since it's goal is intermixing genomes to spread useful genes, and they already have controlled horizontal gene transfer on par with fucking Tyranids, which is orders of magnitude more efficient. Guess, noone in GeeDubs attended Genetics 101.

Fun Fact: they are the only nonhuman species that can have [[Blank]]s, likely because they ate one at some point.

==Culture==

Kroot also moonlight as [[Codex - Kroots: /tg/'s 9th Edition|mercenaries]] for races other than the Tau, though about the only sapient beings whose flesh they won't eat are the Tau, since the Tau saved them from extinction. Mercenary bands eat lots of different stuff, and so [[Kroot_Kindreds|can have various genetic traits]]. Thus, Kroot can use [[Eldar|Weeaboo Fightan Magiks]], be [[Orks|cunnin' but fighty]], or have [[Space Marines|balls of steel]], depending on who they've eaten, but not as well as the originals. Eating [[Chaos]]-types causes Bad Things™ to happen. They also refuse to eat the 'Nids, because the Shapers, the Kroot leaders, fear becoming slaves to the [[Hive Mind]] (though realistically there'd eventually come along one or two Kroot dumb enough to do it anyway). They also can't eat anyone infected by the [[Necron]]s' Nanites because Nanites will turn Kroot into another Necron/[[C'Tan]] zombie slave. They also get paid in weapons, allowing them to use Imperial and Tau special weapons together, and nearly their entire army can infiltrate, <strike>and get 1st turn assault if they're lucky</strike> (NOPE, 6th edition ended that shit). Kroot don't use tanks or much in the way of tech (aside from [[Kroot Rifle|long rifle-like guns with blades on both ends]]), instead using native animals derived from the Kroot genus. They have attack dogs, gorillas with elephant guns, riding beasts like allosaurs, and really big riding beasts like T. rexes. Think the Gungans from ''The Phantom Menace'', only <s>not totally lame</s> [[Awesome]]. There is no contention that Kroot are exponentially cooler than Gungans. <span style='color:red;font-size:115%'> More meat? Good! BWWAAAK! <span style='color:yellow;font-size:115%'>

They also have a rather dark sense of humor; for example, offering human meat to human diplomats because [[Troll|they think seeing their reactions are funny.]] This is also shown in the second Last Chancers book "Kill Team", where Kage is forced to eat a human brain (while he goes into horrific detail about the taste and texture). After this, the Kroot reveals that this was a secret test of character, but also that it was good for shits and giggles. In general, the Kroot sense of humor revolves around making other people profoundly uncomfortable. For example, a Kroot might walk into the same elevator as a Water Caste diplomat, turn up her pungent pheromones to full blast, and silently laugh her bird-woman ass off as the increasingly-uncomfortable fellow passenger tries to ignore it with less and less success.

Kroot also have shamans (psykers). They pilot warp ships called [[Warspheres]]; ''very'' large, spherical vessels of dubious quality but nonetheless capable of warp travel. Warspheres also double as mobile communities for the Kroot when they are away from Pech.

In the short story "Warsphere", which all of ten people have read, where Dahyak Grekh of Blackstone Fortress fame tricks a dark eldar Archon into giving up the location of said Blackstone Fortress, we gain a little bit of insight into the technology and culture of the Kroot on their eponymous space-cities. On a spiritual level, the Kroot believe in a warrior-spirit named Vawk the Huntress, who assumedly blessed the Warsphere of the story, and that vast chambers and halls of their ships are carved with the histories of the Kindred who made them. We also learn that the Kroot are incredibly proud of their heritage, and even think its funny that someone would try to repair a warsphere, thinking that no one but the Kroot could understand its technology. Oh, and that the Kroot can learn the memories of the things they eat, such as the location of a Blackstone Fortress. On a technological level, they are riddled with traps that are impossible to disarm without the aid of a Kroot, as their user manuals consist of memory-imbued scraps of flesh and totemic symbols. Oh, also, Warspheres have mechanical birds that defend the insides.

The book Liber Xenologicus gives more details on the Kroot religion. In their origin myth, Vawk the Huntress flew across the primordial chaos of the Nothingsea until she encountered the rival god Gmork. This battle was so intense that it created the stars and planets of the galaxy. Vawk gained Gmork's strength by drinking his blood and so was able to defeat him, but it was a short lived victory as his blood was poisonous. Her last act before perishing was to descend to the planet Pech, where her feathers became the forest and bones became the mountains, and vomit a great flock of eagles into the sky. This is likely a crude genetic memory of the Kroot's original evolution into sapience by eating Orks.

==Known Kroot Forms==
As mentioned above, the downside of Kroot consumptive evolution is that it's really easy for them to get "stuck" on the wrong path and devolve permanently into an atavistic form. As a consequence, every animal-filled ecological niche on Pech is now filled by some form of degenerated kroot. But, so far, only a select handful of Kroot offshoots have been explicitly called out...

*'''[[Kroot Hound]]s''' are one of the most iconic of these strains, having been around since the Kroot were released. These Kroot degenerated into small, sleek, pack-hunting quadrupeds, easily tamed by their still-sapient cousins.
* '''[[Krootox]]es''' are the second-most iconic Kroot strains; degenerated into hulking, ape-like herbivores, they're mostly used as beasts of burden and as mobile mounts for heavy artillery.
*'''[[Lesser Knarloc]]s''' are sort of a step-up from the Kroot Hounds, being analogous to either a pack-hunting terror-bird or a more avian pack of velociraptors. Kroot like to ride them as cavalry.
*'''[[Great Knarloc]]s''' are much, ''much'' bigger, solo-hunter variants of the standard Knarlocs. If a lesser Knarloc is a Velociraptor, the great one is a beaky T-Rex.
*'''Krootors''' are swamp-dwelling, amphibious predators, essentially a Krootified alligator. Their only known appearance in the canon so far is in [[Black Crusade (RPG)|The Screaming Vortex]], on the planet Asphodel.
*'''Kroothawks''' are either another offshoot of the kroot species, like the hounds, or the ancestral grandaddy of the whole shebang, as supposedly when their creator-goddess Vawk was dying she vomited a crap ton of them into Pech's sky. Whichever is the case, the kroot venerate the hawks and use their likeness in their totems and rituals. Unfortunately, we've never seen a kroothawk model or image, so how big they are or what they exactly look like is up to debate, but they're basically pterodactyls.
**'''Pech'ra''' is likely some offshoot of the Kroothawk that was introduced in a 2022 Kill Team box. While (probably) nowhere nearly as dangerous, these birds are just as good at tracking targets, enabling their Kroot handlers to spot targets from far away.

==TL;DR==

Kroot: Shoot like Tau with bolters. Move and hit like Eldar. Die like Guardsmen. (And have an amour save that will save them from [[lasgun|lasguns]] and nothing else—16% of the time) As of 8th, Kroot lost infiltrate for a Scout move, and hit like Space Marines in close combat. As of 9th, Kroot have a slight buff (but still awful) to their save in cover but their strength, attacks, and armor penetration was buffed, with the Shaper even being given the option to throw a once in a battle grenade belt.

==Building list==
Do you like to win more than you like to have fun? No? Good, you might enjoy a full Kroot list in the 9th ed. version of the Kroot Mercenaries / T'au Empire. With the welcome promotion of the shaper to an HQ unit, coupled with their own relics and warlord traits, you're free to run wild and eat your enemies to your heart's content.
*A small note, however, is that including but a single ethereal, despite being counter to a pure kroot army, goes a long way in the effectiveness of your kindred. With a single floating hippy, you gain access to a <Sept> for the detachment, which should always be Dal'yth, so then your Kroot (and your vespids if you're feeling saucy) can benefit from Tactical Philosophies. On top of that, Ethereals can chant a prayer explicitly for upgrading Auxiliaries. It might be worth kitbashing an ethereal to look like a kroot shaman, but all-in-all, it should be a serious consideration, unless you're a die-hard fan of Predator and Halo's jackals.
*Secondly, unless you're willing to dip into Legends or used Unaligned units, your army won't end up being very diverse. While its very possible to get over 1k of mainline bords, your liable to field up to 80-100 models in carnivores alone, which is just. . . a lot to manage. But! If your gaming group is chill with it (and they should be because fighting an army of pure kroot seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity), the inclusion of the Legends units really helps make the list more well-rounded.
**Unfortunately, with the transition into 9th, Dahyak Grekh got the axe as a unit, but not before leaving a lasting impression. His model can be used to represent a shaper with an alternative set of wargear, giving them them a pistol and grenade belt in exchange for their ritual blade. The kroot may have lost their Sly Marbo, but he shall never be forgotten.

In terms of list-building, the kroot benefit from the fact that no units are competing for slots. Shapers are your only options for HQs (unless you're taking an ethereal, but we'll circle back to that), carnivores are your only troops, so on and so forth. This is because of the '''Kroot Pack''' rule that carnivores have, which means that for every squad of them you take, up to one unit each of shapers/krootoxen/hounds can be taken without filling a slot. Meaning that hounds and knarloc riders will never compete for fast attack slots (because you should just run the hounds as NOFOS), and if you're feeling adventurous, you can spam three ethereals for your obligatory HQ slots, and still take up to three shapers (for the same reason). Round out the list with some Great Knarlocs in your heavy support, and you have something that actually resembles an army.

Gameplay wise, the Kroot benefit from being fast and having ok melee. Shapers, carnivores, and hounds all get a pre-game move before the game begins, while both types of knarlocs can auto-advance 6", and hounds can re-roll advances and charges. Coupled with one of your warlord traits, you can even still keep up all the shooting while they're all advancing up the board. At the same time, while they are realistically a horde army, the sheer volume of their melee should be enough to surpass some of the low-tier armies on the assault, but naturally you'll crumple against every army that's better at melee, as Kroot universally have shitty armor saves and no invulns, with your only durability boost coming from a stratagem.
*Ironically, however, a somewhat competent gunline can be made from massed krootoxes, your best shooting unit, an attending shaper for re-roll 1s to hit, and at least one baggage harness Great Knarloc for exploding 6s to hit. With a potential 18 auto-cannon shots (plus more if you're adding Great Knarlocs with their own guns to the mix) you've got some pretty scary fire coming down wind.

You're not likely to win anything with this army, but you are basically free to goof around. You aren't strong or competitive in any way, but part of this hobby is fun, so shut up and have fun. [[Kroot Conga Line|And on the occasion you do win, the loser will seethe even more.]]

== Modelling ==
A slight issue with the Kroot range is that it's incredibly small and unsupported. In that, GW has only ever made a handful of kits for them, the majority being metal or resin. The only plastic Kroot kit is the carnivores, while knarlocs and great knarlocs, their most badass kits, haven't been supported in years.

However, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, my fellow bird-lovers! If you don't mind 3rd party, there's a seller on Etsy that makes off-brand Kroot models that are honestly pretty fucking fire. He's made remodels of the long-lost knarlocs, resin prints of hounds, alternative bits to make regular Kroot look sci-fi, and even has some GSC/Kroot prints. Honestly he does a good job, nuff said.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MasterShaperFelix?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=1051976211

== Gallery ==

<gallery>
Image:YesIagree.png|They also have quite a way with words.
Image:Kroot_Maw-Krusha.jpg|They would do well in the Mortal Realms, as this Kroot Maw-Krusha conversion shows.
Image:KrootKindreds.jpg
</gallery>

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000]]

[[Category: Xenos]]

[[Category: Tau]]

[[Category: Kroot]]

[[Category:Minor Xenos Species]]

{{Template:Tau}}

{{Template:Important Species in 40k}}

Kroot

2022-10-25T21:28:11Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Physiology */

{{cleanup}}
[[Image:Kroot.png|thumbnail|right|300px|In Tau Empire, chicken eats YOU!]]

{{topquote|They are fierce indeed these Kroot, and savage. I look upon them and tremble at their ferocity. I can only hope that when the enemy sees them they tremble as I do.|Por'vre Tau Cho, Water caste envoy}}

The '''Kroot''' (''Krootis <s>spencer here</s> aviana'') are a vassal species to the [[Tau|Tau Empire]]. Rather bitey. Basically carnivorous space chickens who look like a cross between the dreadlocked aliens from ''Predator'' and ancient [[Terra|Terran]] terror birds, with a bit of D&D's [[Aarakocra]] thrown in. They steal genetic traits of things they eat, and work for people who aren't the Tau. Which means they are cool.

However, the Kroot see little support from [[Games Workshop]] and players in general, likely due to the fact that their odd stats, high frailty despite being billed as a melee force, and lack of wargear in the Tau list make them less than effective, and their [[Warhammer_40,000/Chapter_Approved/Kroot_Mercenaries|mercenary codex]] is from an old [[Chapter Approved]] (and thus no longer legal).

For those interested, there's [[Codex - Kroots: /tg/'s 9th Edition]]. Most people will let you use it in a friendly game.

As of the most recent [[Dark Eldar]] codex, the [[Haemonculus]] Covens has taken a liking to the way Kroot gastronomy reacts to evolution and had conducted a gigantic raid which, to put it lightly, utterly destroyed Pech a new one. The Dark Eldar pretty much [[Looted]] a new one, stealing dozens of shapers and whole raiders full of Kroot corpses for their experiments. Suffice it to say, Pech was saved by a counterattack by the Tau and viscious reprisals from the native Kroot, but by then it was too little too late, the invading forces having gotten what they needed withdrew as quickly as they arrived. The Kroot's homeworld recieved one of its worst invasions to date and the rescuing Tau party was greeted with a grisly scene of mutilated Kroot corpses laid out in Eldar Lexicon which translates to, "[[Rape|Welcome to the feast.]]" The Tau in all their naive weeaboo hats, promptly shat themselves a brown stinky brick whilst the captured Kroots were promptly turned into KFC.

It is uncertain, and probably unlikely, that we will ever get a kroot codex thanks to the Imperium centric focus of the setting. Thanks Geedubs. However, we ''did'' get Kill Team rules for a Kroot Mercenary faction in the January 2019 White Dwarf. Strictly fun and noncompetitive, but it's ''something''.

GOOD NEWS! With all the new options with Ninth edition, it is now possible to run a <strike>mostly</strike> Kroot Army! EDIT: [https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/01/26/field-an-entire-army-of-upgraded-kroot-with-codex-tau-empire/ | Now you can run an <i>entirely</i> Kroot army!]

GOOD NEWS! With the new boxset of Kill Team: Into The Dark, The Kroot have their own specialist Kill Team.

==Physiology==
[[File:OW EOI Kroot Shaper.png|thumbnail|right|300px|''By instinctively isolating and analysing the DNA contained with the flesh of potential food sources, these exceptional Kroot, known as Shapers, can determine whether the prey’s characteristics are favourable or detrimental to the genetic advancement of their Kindred, and can thereby guide the development of the other Kroot. They are the wardens and caretakers of their Kindred’s genetic inheritance, and they guard it against regression, corruption, and unwanted mutation.'']]
[[Xenology]] suggests that the reason Kroot are humanoid, able to walk and think, and able to build weapons and spacecraft is because at one time in their history, an [[Ork]] ship crashed on Pech (the Kroot's home planet). The Kroot promptly started eating the dazed survivors of this crash (how they managed to not end up with a full-blown Ork infestation remains anyone's guess. Maybe the kroot lick their plates when they are done eating, leading to no spores left behind, anyone's guess.) and subsequently managed to gain some of the Orks' innate understanding for technology, as well as a measure of their resilience. Oh, and the basic humanoid body layout on top of that. Two arms, bipedal gait, the whole shebang. Evidence for this are pieces of wreckage marked with Ork glyphs scattered all over Pech that the Kroot regard as sacred objects, as well as the presence of hybrid fungal matter in parts of their body. It could thus be argued that the Kroot are an entire race of "Half-Orks", or at least Hybridized with the Orkoid Fungus genetic genome to a degree. Also, "Kroot" spelled backwards is "To ork." It is unknown if this is intentional. The "Mother" of the Kroot race in their Legend is called '''Vawk the Huntress''', and her rival, '''Gmork''', whose description matches Gorkamorka/Gork and Mork, along with the name sounding like Gork and Mork smashed together. When Vawk took bites out of Gmork, his blood poisoned and killed her, but as she dies, she vomited forth the Ancestral '''Kroothawks''' out upon Planet '''Pech'''. Also, Kroot starts like Krork, the original Orkoids who devolved into modern Orkoids.

For some reason, the fluff likes to point out how revolting the Kroot are for their carnivorous practices, even though, when you really stop and think about it, the Kroot are one of the more morally upright races around. They're explicitly not xenophobic racists, they ''have to'' eat dead sapients to stay intelligent (unlike, say, [[Space Marines]] and [[Tyranids]] who also eat people's brains to gain knowledge, or the fucking [[Dark Eldar]], who do it purely for lulz), and they're not notably more cruel than anyone else but the Tau, who seem to be the only people in the universe who more or less tolerate them. Although this may have to do with point of view, most of the time it's the Tau or [[Imperial Guard]] who would find the eating of the dead, friend or foe, gross. Tyranids are viewed as mindless animals, so eating things isn't as "wrong" for them, and most people forgot Space Marines can gain knowledge by eating brains [[Blood_Angels#Red_Thirst|(occasionally chasing it with fresh squeezed blood)]]. Most who do spend their time around Kroot generally seem to like them, though. The "revolting" part may be more of a knee-jerk reaction from people not used to seeing bird people eating dudes.

You may have noticed that this article talks a lot about eating. According to Chapter Approved in [[White Dwarf]], the Kroot physiology basically revolves around their mouth. They have multiple stomachs, no excretory organs (what they can't digest, they puke up), and females even breed by transforming a stomach into a womb and then vomiting up the baby/babies when it's/they're full grown. [[Take a wild guess how they conceive|PROMOTIONS]].

...The answer is back rubs. Male Kroot have specialized pores that secrete a gene-bearing bio-fluid (what experts refer to as "alien bird-jizz") on their palms, whilst female Kroot have "receptor pores" for this fluid on the smalls of their back. So when two Kroot make babies, the male has to give the female a back rub. Yeah, we thought it would be [[Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position|kinkier]], too. The main question though is why would they need sexual reproduction in the first place, since it's goal is intermixing genomes to spread useful genes, and they already have controlled horizontal gene transfer on par with fucking Tyranids, which is orders of magnitude more efficient. Guess, noone in GeeDubs attended Genetics 101.

Fun Fact: they are the only nonhuman species that can have [[Blank]]s, likely because they ate one at some point.

==Culture==

Kroot also moonlight as [[Codex - Kroots: /tg/'s 9th Edition|mercenaries]] for races other than the Tau, though about the only sapient beings whose flesh they won't eat are the Tau, since the Tau saved them from extinction. Mercenary bands eat lots of different stuff, and so [[Kroot_Kindreds|can have various genetic traits]]. Thus, Kroot can use [[Eldar|Weeaboo Fightan Magiks]], be [[Orks|cunnin' but fighty]], or have [[Space Marines|balls of steel]], depending on who they've eaten, but not as well as the originals. Eating [[Chaos]]-types causes Bad Things™ to happen. They also refuse to eat the 'Nids, because the Shapers, the Kroot leaders, fear becoming slaves to the [[Hive Mind]] (though realistically there'd eventually come along one or two Kroot dumb enough to do it anyway). They also can't eat anyone infected by the [[Necron]]s' Nanites because Nanites will turn Kroot into another Necron/[[C'Tan]] zombie slave. They also get paid in weapons, allowing them to use Imperial and Tau special weapons together, and nearly their entire army can infiltrate, <strike>and get 1st turn assault if they're lucky</strike> (NOPE, 6th edition ended that shit). Kroot don't use tanks or much in the way of tech (aside from [[Kroot Rifle|long rifle-like guns with blades on both ends]]), instead using native animals derived from the Kroot genus. They have attack dogs, gorillas with elephant guns, riding beasts like allosaurs, and really big riding beasts like T. rexes. Think the Gungans from ''The Phantom Menace'', only <s>not totally lame</s> [[Awesome]]. There is no contention that Kroot are exponentially cooler than Gungans. <span style='color:red;font-size:115%'> More meat? Good! BWWAAAK! <span style='color:yellow;font-size:115%'>

They also have a rather dark sense of humor; for example, offering human meat to human diplomats because [[Troll|they think seeing their reactions are funny.]] This is also shown in the second Last Chancers book "Kill Team", where Kage is forced to eat a human brain (while he goes into horrific detail about the taste and texture). After this, the Kroot reveals that this was a secret test of character, but also that it was good for shits and giggles. In general, the Kroot sense of humor revolves around making other people profoundly uncomfortable. For example, a Kroot might walk into the same elevator as a Water Caste diplomat, turn up her pungent pheromones to full blast, and silently laugh her bird-woman ass off as the increasingly-uncomfortable fellow passenger tries to ignore it with less and less success.

Kroot also have shamans (psykers). They pilot warp ships called [[Warspheres]]; ''very'' large, spherical vessels of dubious quality but nonetheless capable of warp travel. Warspheres also double as mobile communities for the Kroot when they are away from Pech.

In the short story "Warsphere", which all of ten people have read, where Dahyak Grekh of Blackstone Fortress fame tricks a dark eldar Archon into giving up the location of said Blackstone Fortress, we gain a little bit of insight into the technology and culture of the Kroot on their eponymous space-cities. On a spiritual level, the Kroot believe in a warrior-spirit named Vawk the Huntress, who assumedly blessed the Warsphere of the story, and that vast chambers and halls of their ships are carved with the histories of the Kindred who made them. We also learn that the Kroot are incredibly proud of their heritage, and even think its funny that someone would try to repair a warsphere, thinking that no one but the Kroot could understand its technology. Oh, and that the Kroot can learn the memories of the things they eat, such as the location of a Blackstone Fortress. On a technological level, they are riddled with traps that are impossible to disarm without the aid of a Kroot, as their user manuals consist of memory-imbued scraps of flesh and totemic symbols. Oh, also, Warspheres have mechanical birds that defend the insides.

The book Liber Xenologicus gives more details on the Kroot religion. In their origin myth, Vawk the Huntress flew across the primordial chaos of the Nothingsea until she encountered the rival god Gmork. This battle was so intense that it created the stars and planets of the galaxy. Vawk gained Gmork's strength by drinking his blood and so was able to defeat him, but it was a short lived victory as his blood was poisonous. Her last act before perishing was to descend to the planet Pech, where her feathers became the forest and bones became the mountains, and vomit a great flock of eagles into the sky. This is likely a crude genetic memory of the Kroot's original evolution into sapience by eating Orks.

==Known Kroot Forms==
As mentioned above, the downside of Kroot consumptive evolution is that it's really easy for them to get "stuck" on the wrong path and devolve permanently into an atavistic form. As a consequence, every animal-filled ecological niche on Pech is now filled by some form of degenerated kroot. But, so far, only a select handful of Kroot offshoots have been explicitly called out...

*'''[[Kroot Hound]]s''' are one of the most iconic of these strains, having been around since the Kroot were released. These Kroot degenerated into small, sleek, pack-hunting quadrupeds, easily tamed by their still-sapient cousins.
* '''[[Krootox]]es''' are the second-most iconic Kroot strains; degenerated into hulking, ape-like herbivores, they're mostly used as beasts of burden and as mobile mounts for heavy artillery.
*'''[[Lesser Knarloc]]s''' are sort of a step-up from the Kroot Hounds, being analogous to either a pack-hunting terror-bird or a more avian pack of velociraptors. Kroot like to ride them as cavalry.
*'''[[Great Knarloc]]s''' are much, ''much'' bigger, solo-hunter variants of the standard Knarlocs. If a lesser Knarloc is a Velociraptor, the great one is a beaky T-Rex.
*'''Krootors''' are swamp-dwelling, amphibious predators, essentially a Krootified alligator. Their only known appearance in the canon so far is in [[Black Crusade (RPG)|The Screaming Vortex]], on the planet Asphodel.
*'''Kroothawks''' are either another offshoot of the kroot species, like the hounds, or the ancestral grandaddy of the whole shebang, as supposedly when their creator-goddess Vawk was dying she vomited a crap ton of them into Pech's sky. Whichever is the case, the kroot venerate the hawks and use their likeness in their totems and rituals. Unfortunately, we've never seen a kroothawk model or image, so how big they are or what they exactly look like is up to debate, but they're basically pterodactyls.
**'''Pech'ra''' is likely some offshoot of the Kroothawk that was introduced in a 2022 Kill Team box. While (probably) nowhere nearly as dangerous, these birds are just as good at tracking targets, enabling their Kroot handlers to spot targets from far away.

==TL;DR==

Kroot: Shoot like Tau with bolters. Move and hit like Eldar. Die like Guardsmen. (And have an amour save that will save them from [[lasgun|lasguns]] and nothing else—16% of the time) As of 8th, Kroot lost infiltrate for a Scout move, and hit like Space Marines in close combat. As of 9th, Kroot have a slight buff (but still awful) to their save in cover but their strength, attacks, and armor penetration was buffed, with the Shaper even being given the option to throw a once in a battle grenade belt.

==Building list==
Do you like to win more than you like to have fun? No? Good, you might enjoy a full Kroot list in the 9th ed. version of the Kroot Mercenaries / T'au Empire. With the welcome promotion of the shaper to an HQ unit, coupled with their own relics and warlord traits, you're free to run wild and eat your enemies to your heart's content.
*A small note, however, is that including but a single ethereal, despite being counter to a pure kroot army, goes a long way in the effectiveness of your kindred. With a single floating hippy, you gain access to a <Sept> for the detachment, which should always be Dal'yth, so then your Kroot (and your vespids if you're feeling saucy) can benefit from Tactical Philosophies. On top of that, Ethereals can chant a prayer explicitly for upgrading Auxiliaries. It might be worth kitbashing an ethereal to look like a kroot shaman, but all-in-all, it should be a serious consideration, unless you're a die-hard fan of Predator and Halo's jackals.
*Secondly, unless you're willing to dip into Legends or used Unaligned units, your army won't end up being very diverse. While its very possible to get over 1k of mainline bords, your liable to field up to 80-100 models in carnivores alone, which is just. . . a lot to manage. But! If your gaming group is chill with it (and they should be because fighting an army of pure kroot seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity), the inclusion of the Legends units really helps make the list more well-rounded.
**Unfortunately, with the transition into 9th, Dahyak Grekh got the axe as a unit, but not before leaving a lasting impression. His model can be used to represent a shaper with an alternative set of wargear, giving them them a pistol and grenade belt in exchange for their ritual blade. The kroot may have lost their Sly Marbo, but he shall never be forgotten.

In terms of list-building, the kroot benefit from the fact that no units are competing for slots. Shapers are your only options for HQs (unless you're taking an ethereal, but we'll circle back to that), carnivores are your only troops, so on and so forth. This is because of the '''Kroot Pack''' rule that carnivores have, which means that for every squad of them you take, up to one unit each of shapers/krootoxen/hounds can be taken without filling a slot. Meaning that hounds and knarloc riders will never compete for fast attack slots (because you should just run the hounds as NOFOS), and if you're feeling adventurous, you can spam three ethereals for your obligatory HQ slots, and still take up to three shapers (for the same reason). Round out the list with some Great Knarlocs in your heavy support, and you have something that actually resembles an army.

Gameplay wise, the Kroot benefit from being fast and having ok melee. Shapers, carnivores, and hounds all get a pre-game move before the game begins, while both types of knarlocs can auto-advance 6", and hounds can re-roll advances and charges. Coupled with one of your warlord traits, you can even still keep up all the shooting while they're all advancing up the board. At the same time, while they are realistically a horde army, the sheer volume of their melee should be enough to surpass some of the low-tier armies on the assault, but naturally you'll crumple against every army that's better at melee, as Kroot universally have shitty armor saves and no invulns, with your only durability boost coming from a stratagem.
*Ironically, however, a somewhat competent gunline can be made from massed krootoxes, your best shooting unit, an attending shaper for re-roll 1s to hit, and at least one baggage harness Great Knarloc for exploding 6s to hit. With a potential 18 auto-cannon shots (plus more if you're adding Great Knarlocs with their own guns to the mix) you've got some pretty scary fire coming down wind.

You're not likely to win anything with this army, but you are basically free to goof around. You aren't strong or competitive in any way, but part of this hobby is fun, so shut up and have fun. [[Kroot Conga Line|And on the occasion you do win, the loser will seethe even more.]]

== Modelling ==
A slight issue with the Kroot range is that it's incredibly small and unsupported. In that, GW has only ever made a handful of kits for them, the majority being metal or resin. The only plastic Kroot kit is the carnivores, while knarlocs and great knarlocs, their most badass kits, haven't been supported in years.

However, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, my fellow bird-lovers! If you don't mind 3rd party, there's a seller on Etsy that makes off-brand Kroot models that are honestly pretty fucking fire. He's made remodels of the long-lost knarlocs, resin prints of hounds, alternative bits to make regular Kroot look sci-fi, and even has some GSC/Kroot prints. Honestly he does a good job, nuff said.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MasterShaperFelix?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=1051976211

== Gallery ==

<gallery>
Image:YesIagree.png|They also have quite a way with words.
Image:Kroot_Maw-Krusha.jpg|They would do well in the Mortal Realms, as this Kroot Maw-Krusha conversion shows.
Image:KrootKindreds.jpg
</gallery>

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000]]

[[Category: Xenos]]

[[Category: Tau]]

[[Category: Kroot]]

[[Category:Minor Xenos Species]]

{{Template:Tau}}

{{Template:Important Species in 40k}}

The Lord of the Rings

2022-10-23T08:23:55Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Video Games */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it, the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien's own socio-political views (a left-wing anarchist viewpoint disdainful of hierarchies) would be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero, despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/tolkien-cliches/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in some of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. That quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. The first major warning sign was that, shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate who was still protective of his father's work - Amazon fired their resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey, (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work) and replaced him with someone with far fewer qualifications and much less experience who is also invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Much worse, it soon came to light that Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights to any of the Legendarium works'''; rather, they had spent several hundreds of millions of dollars buying the rights to the Appendices from ''Return of the King.'' Effectively, Amazon had bought the rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices and was restricted from referencing anything else/given free reign to adapt the Appendices however they saw fit.

Worse, it was revealed that the showrunners had not a single screenwriting or directing credit to their name, having been hired only after J.J. Abrams had vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was still seen as a bizarre move on Amazon's part to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically-acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual, in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst.

When it was revealed that Amazon wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day, it was clear that the ''Rings of Power'' was going to be a prestige product for some studio suits and college grade writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and [[What|multicultural, multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' would launch in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-recieved films.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see. After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy, while the second deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books. The studio that made these was, together with their engine, subsumed by Westwood to assist in developing the awesome-as-heck Command & Conquer 3 later down the road.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| How the heck did a little hobbit beat this?
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

The Lord of the Rings

2022-10-22T02:08:24Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power */

{{british}}
{{Awesome}}
[[Image:LotR.jpg|right|400px|thumb|Daddy's home]]
{{Topquote | There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: ''The Lord of the Rings'' and ''Atlas Shrugged''. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. | John Rogers}}

{{Topquote | It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.| Samwise "Sam" Gamgee, The Two Towers}}

'''''The Lord of the Rings''''', sometimes shortened to LotR, is the sequel to [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Hobbit]]''. He found that the setting he had built was far too interesting to abandon after a simplistic quest storyline, an experience common to modern [[GM]]s, and his publisher thought a new story in Middle-earth would be just as popular as ''The Hobbit'' (he was wrong; it proved ''more'' popular).

=The Books=
Because of its original publication scheme (the whole thing was too big for '50s era bookbinding techniques), LOTR is commonly, though erroneously, called a trilogy - it's technically ''six'' books, just bundled into three. Tolkien had wanted the whole thing to be one single, giant doorstopper, but he was talked out of that. Thus, we got three books:

*The Fellowship of the Ring
*The Two Towers
*The Return of the King

You have, of course, read them. If you haven't, gtfo and read them. And don't you even dare ''just'' watch the movies. Although amazing films, they aren't the same experience.

==The Story==
[[Image:LotR 1e.png|right|300px|thumb|The original [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|First Edition]] nerd book]]
If you're a filthy normie or you've been living on a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, here's a brief refresher:

Check [[The Silmarillion]] and [[The Hobbit]] to go in chronological order.

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of ''[[The Hobbit]]'', decides upon his 111th birthday to leave home and entrusts his magic ring to his nephew Frodo. Problem is, Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo's wizard friend, has figured out that something's off about the magic ring once he sees how Bilbo can barely bring himself to give it up; it is in fact the One Ring, an artifact created by Sauron, Lord of [[Mordor]] (and also Of The Rings), and contains a vast amount of his power. Its continued existence is a threat to the free peoples of Middle-earth and Gandalf exhorts Frodo to come to a meeting in Rivendell, house of the great elven lord Elrond, where a council of all the finest minds that can be brought together will determine what to do with it. Joined by his gardener Samwise and two fellow hobbits, Merry and Pippin, Frodo makes his way to Rivendell but not before running afoul of barrow-wights and Sauron's chief minions, the Nazgul, leading to him getting stabbed with a cursed sword by the lead Nazgul that would make him their wraith minion. Fortunately Elrond is also skilled in healing arts and magic and saves Frodo from the fate worse than death.

At the meeting, it is revealed that no mortal artifice can destroy the One Ring (demonstrated in the movie when Gimli shatters a weapon on the unassuming golden band). The only way to unmake it is to return it to the fires of Mount Doom where Sauron originally forged it. Unfortunately, Mount Doom is smack dab in the middle of Mordor and Gandalf can't ask his great eagle buddies to risk death by arrows, Fellbeasts (seriously, why does everyone forget that the bad guys could fly too?) or deadly volcanic gases to fly the ring to Mount Doom for him. Really though, stealth was the only realistic option, even if that meant hoofing it for months on end. And to make things more complicated, the ring itself is actively trying to get back into Sauron's hands, whether by alerting Sauron to its presence every time someone puts it on, outright manipulating people with promises of power, or just trying to GTFO the Bearer's person at every vaguely-plausible opportunity. Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring on its journey and a group is formed to escort him there. The party for this quest is called the Fellowship of the Ring and consists of:

*Frodo Baggins, the Ringbearer, hobbit;
*Samwise Gamgee, Paladin/gardener/Frodo's [[Gay|"best friend"]], hobbit;
*Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, rogue, hobbit;
*Peregrin "Pippin" Took, bard, hobbit;
*Gandalf the Grey, wizard (one of the Istari, essentially an Angel in human guise, and on the same tier as Saruman, Sauron, and the Balrog);
*Aragorn, son of Arathorn, ranger, human of Númenorean descent and heir to the thrones of Arnor and Gondor;
*Boromir, son of Denethor, fighter, human;
*Legolas Greenleaf, son of Thranduil, archer, elf;
*Gimli, son of Glóin, fighter, dwarf;
[[file:Legolas.jpg|right|400px]]
So, off they go. After a few detours and sidetracks, the Fellowship is split into three (even though you should never split the party): Frodo and Sam go off directly to Mordor, as Frodo's the only one who really needs to go and Sam is too much of a bro to abandon him; Gandalf duels a primordial demon to the death (both their deaths, really) since he's the only one there powerful enough to stop it, but since he's a demigod on a divine mission [[skub|he gets to come back]]; Pippin and Merry are kidnapped by orcs but escape and wind up in Gondor, a formerly prosperous kingdom, and Rohan, a nation of Anglo-Saxons on horseback, respectively, after having adventures with Ents; Boromir dies in an ambush but has a pile of corpses to show for his troubles and gets a river funeral; Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli form a Human-Elf-Dwarf triple threat team, ostensibly to find and rescue Merry and Pippin, but end up travelling across two different kingdoms and fucking evil's shit up for the rest of the story, with Gimli as Dennis Rodman.

Despite having their own problems to contend with, somehow the members of the divided Fellowship seem to get involved with everyone else's mess and need to sort shit out. Their list of game achievements include, but are not limited to: surviving a ruined [[Dwarf Fortress|dwarf city]] filled with an insane number of goblins and a big motherfucking demon lord with weapons made of fire (the backstory behind this inspired the aforementioned game); foiling the plans of Gandalf's wicked wizard counterpart and his orc army; saving not one but two human nations (and the entire world for that matter); winning a whole campaign's worth of scenarios and battles; and defeating the big bad evil guy of the setting (that is currently not imprisoned off the edge of the world, his old boss had a bigger resume) with enough time to go home for tea and crumpets.

Finally, after going around the most fuck-me way possible to get into Mordor (partially due to bad directions from Gollum, who was conflicted with his addictive desire for the Ring, and an encounter with the [[Arachnarok Spiders|giant spider]]/spider-demon hybrid Shelob), Frodo reaches Mount Doom and is about to drop the ring into the lava when he can no longer resist the ring's allure. Just as it had done at the end of the Second Age when it stopped Isildur from destroying it, the ring saved its existence from certain doom. But in an ironic twist, the ring's former owner Gollum attacks Frodo for it and bites it off of his finger, dances about happily, and falls into the lava, just as both Frodo and the ring itself had warned what would happen if Gollum betrayed him and tried to take the ring. With the ring destroyed, Sauron's power is all but gone forevermore and his armies scatter. The eagles can swoop in for MEDEVAC, getting Frodo and Sam back to civilization to rest and recover before the hobbits return to the Shire.

But wait! The Shire's under new management, Chief Sharkey. Frodo and company help the hobbits rise up against Sharkey, who turns out to be Saruman, who has committed his greatest evil yet by trying to industrialize The Shire out of spiteful revenge. Frodo allows Saruman to leave the Shire, but his put-upon minion Gríma Wormtongue slits his throat (and is then riddled with arrows, nicely tying up that loose end). After compiling his memoirs and still feeling pain from the Nazgul attack all the way at the beginning of his journey, Frodo travels to the Grey Havens and is allowed to sail into the West, where he may find relief from his pain. The story ends on a bittersweet note as Sam (arguably the story's true protagonist and MVP of the closing chapters) finally settles back home with his family, writing the final pages to the Baggins' family saga.

Final apocrypha detail the fates of the characters, notably Sam goes west following his wife's death as he was a brief ringbearer (leaving the Red Book to his daughter and son-in-law), Merry and Pippin retire after lengthy political careers and witnessing Eomer's death before dying in Gondor, Aragorn cleans up the remaining orcs and makes peace with human servants of Sauron, has a son and some daughters with Arwen and dies of old age, followed by Arwen a year later. Gimli and Legolas go west after Aragorn's death, presumably along with the final few Elves who were getting their affairs in order before leaving Middle Earth, leaving humans as the dominant power of the Fourth Age and the Dwarves apparently peacefully dying out after reclaiming lost homes.

==The Expanded Canon==

Besides the LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit, there are a few other books about Middle Earth. Many of them were published after Tolkien's death, but were personally edited by his son to make them available to the public. While none of these books are strictly need-to-know material, they can be thought of as great fluff books full of additional stories that flesh out the setting.

*[[The Silmarillion]] - This was an abridged history of Middle Earth, from its creation to the War of the Ring. Here you'll find more information about Sauron and the creation of the One Ring, as well as epic tales of both elvish and human heroes from the First Age, the sociopathic Elf King Fëanor who played right into Melkor's (Middle-Earth's Satan and Sauron's boss) schemes, the rise and fall of <s>Atlantis</s> Numenor, the War of the Last Alliance, and other things. Many people complain about the Silmarillion being too dry and reading like a history book (which is what it is, to be fair); if you’re looking for a ''novel'' - read on.
*Unfinished Tales - As the name implies, these are narrative scraps which Tolkien hadn't completed before his death. Christopher Tolkien published this mess of notes on his way to completing two of the Tales (which he hadn't dared, himself, at the time). This book includes longer versions of lore mentioned in the trilogy, such as Isildur's death, the origin of the Wizards, and the founding of Rohan. And draughts of those ''Hurin'' and ''Gondolin'' stories which Chris would fill in, and publish, (much) later. But not ''Beren''.
*The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - Poetry centered around Tom Bombadil, who is best described as Middle Earth's equivalent of a Monty Python sketch. He's actually in the first LOTR book but is so carefree and oblivious to the War of the Ring that he's not terribly important despite being implied to be powerful enough to kick Sauron in the balls an walk away without a scratch.
*The History of Middle Earth - A 13 volume series detailing the creation of Tolkien's mythology, includes early drafts and unused stories. Here's where ''Beren'' is first floated, as a poem; and the first (maybe best) ''Fall of Gondolin''. While the early material here isn't considered canon, some very interesting revelations appear here:
:*Originally, Tolkien wanted to claim that he only "discovered" the stories about Middle Earth from a book he translated.
:*Which book, you may ask? Why, just a copy of the [[wikipedia:Red Book of Westmarch|Red Book of Westmarch]]. Also known as that book Frodo and Bilbo were writing as the story progresses. This is because...
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Lost_Road Middle Earth is actually our Earth.] [[wat|From before the Ice Age]] (hey, if Robert Howard could do the "lost era of history" story for [[Kull]] and [[Conan the Barbarian]], then so can Tolkien).
:*[http://www.tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Athrabeth_Finrod_ah_Andreth And that First Age humans predicted the birth of Jesus Christ] (though not in explicit terms). Did we mention Tolkien was Catholic?

==The Cancelled Sequel==
Yes, you're reading that right. After the Lord of the Rings was all wrapped up, Tolkien did at one point feel the "sequel itch" and considered doing a follow-up set in the Fourth Age that would have included the son of Faramir, and with the villains being a cult of Sauron fanboys. But, recognizing that following up the epicness of Lord of the Rings with a much more minor threat was almost certainly not going to work, his heart just wasn't in it and he quickly gave up on the idea. Tellingly, despite how much subsequent creators have wanted to tell their own stories in Middle-Earth, none have yet to try and take Tolkien's discarded 4th Age story ideas and run with them (probably because they've come to the same conclusions about it that he did).

=A Mythology for England?=
Now, you might be wondering why Tolkien bothered to do all of this in the first place. What motivated him? The answer is generally held to be, that he wanted to give England its own mythology. Tolkien had noticed that almost all other civilizations had them: Greek Mythology, Egyptian Mythology, Norse Mythology, Native American Mythologies, etc. But England seemed to be the exception. So Tolkien took the Thanos approach and decided "Fine, I'll do it myself". And the rest is history.

What this means though, is that Middle-Earth is technically not a fantasy setting totally separate from real life in the way that something like [[Warcraft|Azeroth]] or [[Pathfinder|Golarion]] is. It ''is'' our world, but in a distant past that's details were ultimately lost to time, causing it to become legend. This is an aspect of the franchise that's often overlooked, but it is there when you remember what Middle-Earth was intended to be for Jolly Old England. Tolkien intended to run with the idea even further, tying Middle Earth to Dark Ages Europe where a 5th century Welsh mariner discovers Tol Eressia and learns of the ancient shared history of the elves and men, as well as tying in existing legends like Saint Brendan's voyage. The novels that we have today (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) were to be surviving stories from this forgotten age, either being retold by ancient Welsh explorers or directly copied from the Red Book of Westmarch. He also considered having Eru (the God of the setting), pulling a Jesus and appearing on Middle-Earth in mortal form, but discarded this idea for being a little too on the nose. Instead this is merely implied in a conversation between Elves and Men as being the reason behind the strange gifts and fate Eru assigned to men.

This ''also'' makes the Tolkien Purist's insistence on absolute, 100% fidelity to the source material at all times somewhat ironic, since that isn't how mythologies work: they change with each subsequent retelling. So we should really be a lot more accepting of changes to lo--{{BLAM|HERESY!}}

Do note that in modern scholarship, the question of Tolkien's purpose in writing the ''Lord of the Rings'' and the wider ''Silmarillion'' is up for debate. Many believe that Tolkien's work evolved away from the "mythology for England" origin after his failure to get ''The Silmarillion'' published, and that Tolkien's own socio-political views (a left-wing anarchist viewpoint disdainful of hierarchies) would be anathema to the modern fanbase that glorifies monarchism, racism, and Eurocentrism. Fans generally argue that such people are full of shit and only making these radical claims in the interests of getting published and securing tenure.

=Legacy=
[[Image:Tolkien with pipe.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The man himself]]
It's commonly accepted that the Lord of the Rings invented modern fantasy fiction, as everybody basically used it as a template for most, if not all, future stories that involved anything more than Knights, princesses, and dragons. That being said, most people tend to only pick up the surface elements of the stories without the nuances they originally came with, either to fit their own stories or because they just thought, "hey, orcs are cool, imma add them to my campaign." One example is that despite everyone basing [[elves]] on Tolkien's interpretation rather than the more pixie-like versions of previous generations, most stories' elves are universally depicted as arrogant and smug racists who were almost as commonplace as humans, whereas Tolkien hewed closer to the original mythological version of an alien, isolationist, though not outright hostile people, who seldom interacted with mortals (it helped that any racial supremacist tendencies they once had were basically stomped out of them after getting their asses kicked in the First Age, with humans giving them most of their support). On top of that, the books are pretty clear that Elven immortality isn't all sunshine and rainbows, as they are doomed to fade into wraiths unless they travel to the Undying Lands.

Even in his time, while Tolkien maintained a strong correspondence with his fans (he wrote enough letters that they essentially became a supplement on the Lord of the Rings stories), he felt that a lot of people simply didn't ''get'' his stories. Hippies declared Frodo to be an anti-establishment hero, despite Tolkien himself being strongly conservative and the story containing an explicitly pro-monarchy plot point in Aragorn's ascension. On the other end of the spectrum, Tolkien has also been a sadly popular target for accusations of racism even though his letters made his utter hatred for Hitler and Nazism pretty clear and he also explicitly rejected "race doctrine", to say nothing for things in the books themselves that contradict the charge, such as the Haradrim being respected by Gondor and Rohan, who make peace with them after the War of the Ring, Númenor's society going to shit the more oppressive of other men they became, and a dead Haradrim being shown sympathy by Sam (Faramir in the movie). People would claim it to be an allegory of WWII and nuclear war, despite being based on his own personal experiences during WWI (he also hated allegories in general). And if he were alive today, he'd probably call the travesty that was the Hobbit trilogy (see below) the very "disneyfied" crap that he sought to avoid. [https://curiosityquills.com/limyaael/tolkien-cliches/ Here's a list] of fantasy cliches attributed to Tolkien that are actually misrepresentations of what he wrote because the authors would miss the point.

All that being said, the influence of his books can't be denied. The funny thing though, is that despite being a source of inspiration for Dungeons and Dragons (one could argue that DnD codified fantasy tropes moreso than LOTR, but that's for another time), the actual story of the Lord of the Rings wouldn't make for a great roleplaying campaign; rewards for battles are scant, the vast majority of enemies are orcs, orcs, and more orcs <s>with a dash of goblins</s> that's just another term for orcs, the actual fighting done by Aragorn's team is of secondary importance to Frodo's mission to destroy the ring, Sauron never appears in the flesh so there's no final boss, etc. A webcomic called "[http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 DM of the Rings]" explores this concept quite humorously, as the tension between the player characters (as Aragorn's party) and the DM shows how frustrated they get when the story doesn't meet their hack-and-slash expectations.

To give a short list, Tolkien basically gave us:
*[[Orcs]]
*[[Halfling]]s
*[[Treeman|Ents]]
*[[BBEG|Dark Lords]]
*[[Half-elves]], though they weren't considered a distinct species. There's only a handful of them, and they have to decide whether to have the fate of the elves (immortality, but you have to go to the Undying Lands or become a wraith) or the fate of men (mortality, but you get a super-secret afterlife that not even the Valar know about, and in the meanwhile are free from Fate and able to do what you like with the time you have). This part never seemed to catch on.
*[[Elves]] as beautiful pointy-eared superhumans; while not explicitly codified as of yet, we also got High Elves in the Noldor and Wood Elves in the Sindar. No Dark elves yet though (unless you count those Avari guys who sat by a lake); that would be the [[Drow]].
*[[Dwarves]] as a proud warrior race rather than just short greedy bastards. <s>Note that the Scottish accent wasn't tacked on until the New Line films.</s> Not even then; the most prominent Dwarves in all six films are Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies, and Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, who speak with their actors' native Welsh and Yorkshire accents respectively. Scottish Dwarves do exist in the franchise, but it's not mainstream - the Dwarven accents are drawn from a wide UK spectrum. Scottish Dwarves are popular in fantasy games, World of Warcraft being perhaps the most prominent example, but even the Tolkien-esque Warhammer Fantasy has Yorkshire Dwarfs (with some exceptions).
*The [[Ranger]] archetype (historical note: actual rangers were just guys hired to keep poachers off a nobleman's land, the idea of an outdoorsy type of tracker/scout/soldier didn't exist until the 17th century.)
*Mixed race, mixed class adventuring parties.
*A "Three Age" structure to history, with the earlier ages being more legendary and mythological than the more mundane later ages. (Though Greek mythology had similar ideas).
*[[Mithril]] {NOT Mythril, a name used in various other books and games to avoid copyright infringement}, a super-strong, super-light metal. Like aluminum, if aluminum were also indestructible.
* Balors and Bloodthirsters...sort of. See, Balrogs are pretty clearly where the latter came from as "super powerful demonic monsters with horns, bat wings on the back, and wielding a weapon in each hand". Since Tolkien owned the rights to the name "Balrog", the folks at TSR, Wizards, GW, and elsewhere needed to get creative, thus giving us those other super-demons.

==The Radio Drama==
Long before there was ever any real chance of getting movie adaptations, the Lord of the Rings was adapted for radio by (naturally) the BBC. Largely forgotten nowadays, but before the PJ movies came out, this was basically as good as it got as far as adaptations went (as well as being the only one made during Tolkien's lifetime, which allowed him to give feedback).

==The Movies (and one TV show)==
===Old School===
There had been some talk about a film adaptation through the 50s through the early 70s (including with ''The Beatles'' trying to be the Hobbit quartet!), but it largely did not go anywhere. Mostly because doing it justice in live action was waaay beyond what could be reasonably done in 1960 (large-scale Medieval battles were one thing, but unless you fancy the thought of a claymation Balrog, the more fantastical elements would have never looked good).

[[Ralph Bakshi]] made an animated film based off the Fellowship of The Ring and the first half of The Two Towers, which was released in 1978. The resulting film was trippy, to say the least. It has a lot of weird animation with massive amounts of [[wikipedia:Rotoscoping|rotoscoping]], although it does work from time to time. It also decided to make adjustments and stay faithful to the text in the oddest ways. Many lines of dialogue were taken from the books word for word, with enough cut out so that you don't know what they are talking about and it does not come across as natural conversation; for example, Saruman declares himself Saruman of Many Colors without explaining the name change, but they decide to make a prince of Gondor (the largest and greatest civilization in Middle-earth at the time) dress like a Wagner opera viking. While it does have some good points here and there the end result both leaves you both weirded out and bored unless you are really into that era of animation.

It's worth noting that, despite his reputation, some of the weirdness of the movie is not actually due to Bakshi. Executive meddling was ''rampant'' during the production, one of the most infamous examples of which is with Saruman. Midway through, execs decided that Saruman sounded too much like Sauron and would confuse audiences, so they went behind Bakshi's back and had the VAs start referring to him as "Aruman" instead. [[derp|Without redubbing the lines that had already been recorded up to that point]]. Bakshi didn't find out until it was too late to fix, and as a result characters throughout the movie alternate between Saruman and Aruman. In spite of it's shortcomings it did do reasonably well at the box office ($33.7 Million at the box office for the US, UK and Canada against it's $4.5 million budget) which if nothing else got some film and tv execs to think "okay, maybe there is some money in these fairy-tales-for-grown-ups".

Rankin Bass produced a Return of the King animated film in 1980, a made for TV movie which didn't have near the budget. It traded in some of the trippiness (even if it does have Orcs transforming into Coutimundis) for being more mundanely bad and getting pushed into the animation age ghetto, since again, it was made for TV not theaters in an age when censorship ran strong. They couldn't even allow for people getting hit with swords onscreen. That's not even mentioning how much they cut, up to and including ''entire characters'' (like Legolas and Gimli), and giving Theoden one of the lamest deaths in animation movie history.

However, even though it's hard to deny the movie as a whole is objectively bad, there are a few gems in Rankin Bass's Return of the King that rival, or are arguably even ''better'' than the Jackson movies. Sam's portrayal in particular is very good (certainly ''leagues'' better than in the Bakshi version, as low a bar as that might be), showing him as a strong and fearless friend, and one of the only people in all Middle Earth ''ever'' to hold an awakened One Ring in his hand, in Morder where it's at its most powerful, took the best shot it could hit him with, [[awesome|and told the Ring to fuck off]]. The portrayal of the Ring itself is also quite good, with it having a much more active malign influence than it does in the Jackson films. The Ring doesn't just passively corrupt people, it ''tempts'' them, feeding those who hold it visions of all the things they could do with it, all the power they could have, and it even delivers a taste of that power, with a weakened and exhausted Frodo able to stand strong and confident just by holding the Ring, enough to even scare the shit out of Gollum.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr_rb_pitHk If you are curious about the Bakshi film and have an hour to kill, Dan Olson has a pretty good video essay on the subject]

===The Peter Jackson Trilogy===
But those two movies are footnotes compared to the ones that you have most likely seen, those being Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. By far the most financially successful and critically acclaimed fantasy films of all time, including winning Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which generally go for historical pieces and similar, not fantasy or sci-fi. It helped bring fantasy to mainstream audiences and probably why many of you are you are here now. It has massive battles made possible by groundbreaking special effects technology. The films also have incredible amounts of attention to detail to bring the world of Middle-earth to life. While some changes were made (as was inevitable in adaptation), many of them were for the better such as developing Aragorn as a character rather than just a mythic archetype, making Arwen an actual character, and having Gollum being accidentally thrown into Mount Doom fighting with Frodo over the One Ring. [[This Guy|In short what happens when you get a lot of skilled passionate people together to make something they love come to life.]] [[Skub|Though apparently Tolkien's son really hated the movies for some reason (Probably for personal reasons as the original books were written in part for him. Ostensibly it was because of the films emphasis on action setpieces etc. as opposed to the more “low-key” elements of world-building etc.)]]. Nowadays the films continue to enjoy a great reputation apart from the folks who refuse to abide even the tiniest changes made to the source material.

PJ followed this up with a series on ''[[The Hobbit]]'', which we handle in its own [[skub|totally unbiased and sober]] page [[The Hobbit|here]].

===Amazon's Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power===
{{Fail}}{{HurfDurf}}

{{Topquote|There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of man for this treachery.|Tolkien fans}}

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{{Topquote|There can be no trust between hammer and rock. Eventually, one or the other must surely break.|Durin, accurately describing the relationship between Amazon and the fans}}
{{Topquote|Give me the meat, and give it to me raw!|Durin, speaking to Elrond once he got away from his wife}}

'''TL;DR:''' Amazon's made a new show that, due to their own actions and statements, basically killed any goodwill long-time fans may have had towards it before before the first episode aired. It's been to ''Lord of the Rings'' what ''Netflix's Cowboy Bebop'' was to ''Cowboy Bebop.''

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Half a decade after ''The Hobbit'' trilogy's derpy conclusion, Amazon announced, with much fanfare, that they were going to make a streaming series based on Tolkien's Legendarium. Given the unreadable and generally obscure nature of the subject to mainstream audiences (moviegoers), fans reacted with wary interest and curiosity. That quickly devolved into seething irritation and [[Rage|rage]]. The first major warning sign was that, shortly after the death of Christopher Tolkien - the one person in the Tolkien estate who was still protective of his father's work - Amazon fired their resident Tolkien consultant Tom Shippey, (a British medievalist who has written six books and several academic papers on Tolkien's work) and replaced him with someone with far fewer qualifications and much less experience who is also invested in [[SJW|modern identity politics]]. Much worse, it soon came to light that Amazon '''didn't actually have the rights''' to any of the Legendarium works; rather, they had spent several hundreds of millions of dollars buying the rights to the Appendices from ''Return of the King.'' Effectively, Amazon had bought the rights to the names, people, and events named in the Appendices and was restricted from referencing anything else/given free reign to adapt the Appendices however they saw fit.

Worse, it was revealed that the showrunners had not a single screenwriting or directing credit to their name, having been hired only after J.J. Abrams had vouched for them. Their most famous work was uncredited rewrites to "punch up" the script of ''[[Star Trek|Star Trek: Into Darkness]]''. Even if they were willing to write whatever Amazon demanded of them, it was still seen as a bizarre move on Amazon's part to risk their literally billion-dollar investment on completely amateur leaders. One can only assume it was done to spite the showrunners originally attached to the project, who had been fired by Amazon Studio head Jennifer Salke and went on to produce the critically-acclaimed ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire|House of the Dragon]]''. Supposedly, ''The Rings of Power'' was the product of Jeff Bezos wanting to have his own ''Game of Thrones'' for Prime Streaming. There were rumors that the show would be incredibly violent and gratuitously sexual, in stark contrast to Tolkien's works, and many expected the worst.

When it was revealed that Amazon wanted to "adapt" and [[SJW|˝modernize˝]] Tolkien's work for the present-day, it was clear that the ''Rings of Power'' was going to be a prestige product for some studio suits and college grade writers rather than a passionate or faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work. [[Skub|They revealed black elves, black/brown Numenoreans]], black and [[Derp|'''beardless''']] dwarf women, and [[What|multicultural, multi-hued hobbits]] that weren't even supposed to exist in the Second Age. Worse, it all looked cheap and lazy and was promoted by paid actors pretending to be "superfans" of Tolkien who could only speak diversity, equity, and inclusion catchphrases. The backlash to the "superfans" trailers (they made multiple trailers for multiple regions in different languages with different actors all speaking from the same general script) was so bad that Amazon chose to unlist the videos from Youtube and Prime.

''Rings of Power'' would launch in direct competition with ''House of the Dragon'' and initial audience reception was not good. Despite '''literally paying''' for millions of premiere viewers by virtue of paying movie theaters to play episodes 1 and 2 for free, viewer numbers entered freefall with subsequent episodes and reviews were consistently, though not universally, negative among the audience. Critics were more favorably disposed to it, though even they were not particularly flattering unless they were reviewing for dedicated entertainment sites like IGN, in which case the show could do no wrong. Many of the initial reviews focused on the leaden acting and terrible writing, grave sins for anyone who'd watched Peter Jackson's trilogy or the original books (though perhaps it suited material allegedly based on ''The Silmarillion'') and the show's absolutely obvious cheapness; despite spending a rumored $60 million per episode, sets were often empty of crowds, costumes were noticeably bad, and CGI was glaringly obvious.

The most significant fan complaints were:
* The show is as full of "memberberries" as a plum pudding is full of figs. Despite being enjoined from referencing Peter Jackson's films because they don't have the rights to them, Amazon lifted a surprising amount of content directly from those films rather than from anything Tolkien wrote. Galadriel's monologue when confronted with the One Ring, Gandalf being thrown around by an evil wizard using their staff, and the injection of the <s>hobbits</s> HARFOOTS were all largely seen as callbacks to the far more well-recieved films.
* Any character actually named after one of Tolkien's characters is unrecognizable in the show. The most prominent example is Galadriel, transformed from a wise and regal queen of unearthly power to a bloodthirsty warrior maiden who only cares about hunting down Sauron, only to be seduced by his comely human disguise instead. Elendil the Tall and his sons are not spared, being depicted as incompetent and cowardly men who only succeed through the intervention of powerful women. And so on.
** Some see Galadriel as emblematic of the problems with ''Rings of Power'', especially after a finale where she is arguably to blame for Sauron falling BACK into evil and allowing him to flee to Mordor to forge the One Ring; a finale where Galadriel comes up with the idea of Three Elven Rings (and only Elven, the lesser races don't deserve them); and a finale where Galadriel nearly kills Celebrimbor rather than Sauron because she cannot stand to have her mistakes thrown in her face. None of the majesty or wisdom supposedly held by Galadriel as the greatest of the Noldor in Middle-Earth is evident.
* Amazon's pre-release media blitz had also contained the uncomfortable reveal that, rather than attempt to adapt centuries of conflict between the corruption and fall of Numenor and the Last Alliance, Amazon had decided to create a story that would encompass the broad themes of the Second Age while taking place over a recognizably human lifespan so that they wouldn't need to cast new actors every season. This Amazon-original plot, being led by inexperienced and bottom-barrel showrunners, would bastardize Tolkien's stories in stupendously stupid ways.
** The elves of Middle-Earth, or at least the Noldor, and all their works are being corrupted and worn down by a dark entropy, the product of "light of Valar" deficiency. Without the "light," the elves are no longer immortal, immune to disease and the ravages of age, and all they have touched can be worn away by time and biology. There is only one cure: Mithril, the fossilized fallout of a battle between an Elflord and Durin's Bane where the Elf channeled all the "light" within his being into one of the Silmarils that was hidden in a tree that Durin's Bane really wanted to burn down with the flame of Udun. As they poured their energies into the tree, a lightning bolt struck and caused the Silmaril to explode. That explosion turned the tree's roots into mithril; a substance "[[Derp|as pure and light as good and as strong and unyielding as evil]]." Somehow, Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor not only know that the dwarves of Moria have discovered and started mining mithril, they also know it's the only thing that can give the elves their immortality back if they don't want to go back to Valinor. And they better get the dwarves to mine it as quick as they can; without it, they'll all be consumed by the darkness.
** In the finale, Celebrimbor is incapable of doing anything with the mithril (about a fistfuls-worth) until Sauron tells him to "seduce" the ore with lesser, gentler metals and alloys. Once Sauron's love confession is rejected by Galadriel, she comes up with the brilliant idea to forge 3 rings so that all elves could partake of mithril's effects without falling under their dominion.
* Albino, white-robed orcs enslaving and oppressing a black elf and black/brown humans, though they also enslave white elves and humans, but unlike elves and humans there are no black/brown orcs.
* Writing-related complaints range from the very recognizable Bad Robot disregard for realistic timetables (remember how people seemed to just teleport everywhere at will in ''Into Darkness'' or in ''The Last Jedi''?) to bad pacing and completely incongruous scene length (the forging of the rings is less than a minute long, while hobbits get an entire quarter of the episode for a single scene) to audience whiplash as characters shift and change personalities and motivations multiple times within the same episode.
** Even worse, the dialogue lacks any of the poetry of Tolkien's prose unless it's plagiarizing his work. When left to the writer's room, it ranges from clunky and serviceable to laughably bad. The worst offender in this regard is the very un-subtle moment where some Numenorean men complain that, thanks to the <s>Elves</s> '''knife-ears''' being immortal, [[/pol/|"they took our darn jobs!"]]
* Production-related complaints largely focus on the cheapness of the show despite its astonishing budget. It seemed that there was little effort in reshooting or editing anything that should have otherwise gone in a blooper reel (chainmail t-shirts were the cause of several wardrobe malfunctions in the last half of the show) or that looked incredibly awkward once CGI backgrounds and lighting were applied. Cast sizes in scenes was noticeably small, and battles were never well-done or lasted long. It doesn't help that ''House of the Dragon'' manages to feel greater in scope and scale but with a third of Amazon's reported budget and that the costume lead-designer reportedly designed the armour around wanting to challenge cosplayers (as if to make his own incompetency any less obvious).

If you aren't a complete hater on the show, you may consider the CGI landscapes [[Skub|beautiful, and enjoy the score that apes and imitates but never reaches the level of the score of Peter Jackson's film trilogy, and believe that the references and callbacks to actual Tolkien lore are fun to see. After all, when else will you hear the word Silmaril being spoken on-screen?]] Alternatively, you could also [[SJW|call anyone that dislikes the show "patently evil"]] and argue they should be disregarded. ''Rings of Power'' is contracted for multiple seasons, so it's likely to be with us for a long, long time.
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==MERP(S)==
Over the 1980s <strike>immigration-control</strike> Iron Crown Enterprises put out the [[Middle-Earth Role Playing]] (System). Lots of sourcebooks for the setting. Generally considered good if quite crunchy (unsurprising, since it was based off [[Rolemaster]]). Sadly enough no longer in print.

Unwin did a massive map extending Middle-Earth east and south. Here we got the Stormshadow Mountain Kingdoms, Lands of the Broken Moon, Kingdoms of the Cloud Forests and other hippie bullshit that northern Californians think up after huffing the bong. Nobody considers this map to be canon.

==Of course GW couldn't let such a profitable venture pass them by...==
Back in the early 2000s, [[GW]] made a tabletop game based around this premise and called it [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]]. Because they ran out of short titles.

In a peculiar way, this was GW coming full circle. They began by making miniatures for D&D (which as stated above, heavily borrowed from LOTR) before morphing into Warhammer.

While it let you play out your favorite scenes from the movies (in the way YOU imagined them going), it failed to light the world on fire. Likely because it lacks any of the batshit awesome insanity of their own IPs. However, GeeDubs has kept on truckin' with this line regardless of cost, eventually offloading it onto [[Forge World]] to work on in between releases for [[Blood Bowl]] and [[Necromunda]].

==The Last Ringbearer ==
Of course, there is always some weird thing people will do with an original work of an author. If we're to believe the fan fiction authors, all the characters of the novel were fucking each other so hard it's a wonder they were able to waddle out of Rivendell.

Some of them, [[SJW|for various]] [[Edgy|reasons]], even flip the script by changing the villains to heroes and/or the heroes to villains. Such is the nature of The Last Ringbearer, a book written by this Russian named Kirill Eskov. Its supposed to be an alternate take on LOTR, and has plot points ranging from The One Ring being a red herring, the Nazgul being enlightened philosopher scientists, and Mordor being an industrialized society torn apart by unsophisticated luddites for no reason other than elf bigotry. We hear that pirate translations exist, including into English. But we could never condone reading such trash, especially when they suck as bad as this did. LotR copyright expires 2043 which may be just long enough for this abortion of a "book" to fall into the pages of obscurity.

The Last Ringbearer was officially published in the legal vacuum that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, which also allowed assorted other unauthorized revisions and sequels to be published. Making it either a cash-grab or an attempt to make LOTR-based Soviet propaganda. Among those are the Ring of Darkness by Nick Perumov (a Fourth Age story where the Big Bad Evil Guy collects the rings of the Nazgul to become a great conqueror, and a Hobbit fighter clad in mithril armor endeavors to stop him) and the Black Book of Arda by Natalia Vasilieva (an alternate take on the Silmarillion where the original evil Melkor is a nice guy).

... so. How about An Archive Of Our Own.

==Video Games==

While nowhere near what you see with Star Wars, Middle-Earth has still netted a fair number of video games for itself. A lot of this has to do with the aforementioned Peter Jackson movies, which also came out in an era when licensed movie video games were still common. Since the Lord of the Rings movies actually fit the video game format better than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Golden Compass, and Disney's Bolt (all of which also got video game tie-ins) they were some of the rare few licensed video games of the era that are actually playable. Eventually, the merchandise explosion generated by the movie's success died down, and with it way fewer video games came out, but there have still been a few. Some of the more notable video games are listed below:

* The Hobbit: This one is one of the very first notable Middle-Earth video games, coming out around the time the PJ Lord of the Rings movie trilogy was wrapping up, which was still many years off from the movie adaptation of the Hobbit. As such it's based off of the book and not those later, skubby films (for the best, most would say).
* The Two Towers and Return of the King: The main movie tie-in games, with the first really adapting Fellowship ''and'' The Two Towers despite the title. Easily among the top tier of licensed movie tie-in games (which admittedly isn't saying much). Mostly revolve around the Big 3 of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, but in Two Towers you could also unlock Isildur (who basically plays as a maxed out Aragorn), and in Return of the King Gandalf and Sam joined the main character roster, with Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Faramir all being unlockable (sadly, no playable Eowyn).
* The Third Age: Sort of based off of the Peter Jackson movie trilogy, but with a twist: you play as a team of [[Original character, do not steal|characters made for the game]]. Said characters are actually very, very stock overall, but the game boasts some solid customization for all of them, and Final Fantasy-esque turn based combat and some pretty good special effects and graphics for the time. So basically a Lord of the Rings game in the style of something like Final Fantasy VII, but with far less memorable characters. Either one of the best LotR games ever or a dumb idea, depending on who you ask.
** The Third Age (GBA): Gameboy version. Basically a totally different game from the above despite sharing a title. Here you go through the major (and minor) battles of the trilogy via turn-based gameplay, with Good and Evil each having their own campaigns that are actually just the same missions (meaning there are cases where a level that's easy for one side will be hard as hell for the other). Before starting the campaign, you pick a major hero who sticks with you the whole way through. Good can choose between Aragorn, Gandalf, and Elrond, and Evil can choose between the Witch-King, Saruman, and the Mouth of Sauron.
* Battle for Middle-Earth Duology: Some real-time strategy Lord of the Rings games, and easily one of the better things EA ever did. Really, given how perfectly suited to the genre Lord of the Rings is, one wonders why more of these haven't been made. First one follows the events of the main trilogy, while the second deals with the battles in the North only somewhat touched on in Tolkien's novels, making it a blend both aesthetically and story-wise of the movies and books.
** Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring: An RTS that was ''not'' affiliated with the Peter Jackson movies, and thus has its own aesthetic distinct from the movie's look. Not a terrible RTS, but definitely overshadowed heavily by the BFME games.
* Lord of the Rings: Conquest: An attempt to do the Star Wars Battlefront formula in a Lord of the Rings game. It didn't go well, being thrashed by the critics something fierce and not exactly most average gamer's favorite Middle-Earth game either (although it did later get a fan-remaster, so there is that).
* The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest: And here's one that makes the above entry look good. Basically, EA hadn't really gotten the message that by 2010, the media/cultural bonanza surrounding the Peter Jackson films had finally died down, and so trying to keep milking the franchise with more merchandise would no longer be profitable. The result was an Aragorn solo video game that is easily one of the worst LotR video games to date. There's basically nothing you're getting here you didn't get in The Two Towers and Return of the King games done much better.
* The Lord of the Rings: War in the North: An action-RPG where you play as three different characters, namely a Dwarf, a Ranger, and [[Critical Role|a hot Elf waifu voiced by Laura Bailey]]. Released to mediocre reviews overall.
* LEGO: The Lord of the Rings and LEGO: The Hobbit: Obligatory LEGO games by Traveler's Tales. You know what this entails. Moving on. (Although in all seriousness, they ''are'' some of the better LEGO games made by TT, and definitely far from the worst Middle-Earth games).
* Guardians of Middle-Earth: A MOBA / team-brawler. Released to capitalize on the then-ongoing Hobbit movie trilogy, you play as a team of either heroes or villains from Middle-Earth (a mix of pre-existing characters and OCs) and engage the other side in team-based battling. Definitely one of the weirder Middle-Earth games, but it does mark the one time where Aragorn's father Arathorn (among others) has shown up in a Middle-Earth video game.
* Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War: A duo of games that go Grimdark and [[Skub|made many, many lore changes along the way]]. Depending on who you ask, these are either the best of all Middle-Earth games with a cool protagonist, or "Murderhobo's Misadventures in Mordor" with a tone and protagonist that are anathema to Tolkien's writings. In all honesty, they're very well-made games with terrific gameplay, especially the novel Nemesis System that makes your Uruk enemies unique each playthrough and effectively creates stories with characters who the fiction usually relegates to being nameless fodder (ironically making the Nemesis Characters more interesting than most of the rest of the cast). But as adaptations of Tolkien's works, they ran afoul of many a purist not just for their lore changes, but also the idea that the dark tone and the protagonist's methods run counter to the values of Tolkien that he espoused in the original novels (even though both Talion and Celebrimbor pay heavily for the latter). Among the more significant changes are Minas Ithil falling way later than in canon, Helm Hammerhand and Isildur having become Nazgul, and Shelob being a shapeshifter who's more morally gray than straight-evil (and can also take on [[Rule 34|a super hot form]]). And yes, every single one of these got [[Rage|exactly the response you'd expect]].

=Gallery=
<gallery>
File:Height.jpg| How the heck did a little hobbit beat this?
File:Talion_and_orcs.jpg| Actually not a scene from the books. To be fair, though, [[/v/|Shadow of Mordor]] showed us what Mordor looks like in the daytime.
File:Sauron_My_Battle_Plan.jpg| Knowing is half the battle. The other half is [[Sonic the Hedgehog|rings]].
</gallery>

=See also=
*[[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game]] for the tabletop skirmish game.
*[[Mordor]]
*[[Middle Earth]]
*[[Middle Earth characters]]
*[[J. R. R. Tolkien]]
*[[The Last Ringbearer]]
*[[The Silmarillion]]
*[[Ainur]]

[[Category: Literature]][[Category:The Lord of the Rings]]

Harry Potter

2022-10-21T22:01:25Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Main Cast */

{{British}}
{{Topquote|You're a [[wizard]], Harry|Hagrid, to Harry Potter}}
[[File:Hogwarts.webp|thumbnail|right|400px|Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry: A+ in Magical Education, F on OSHA compliance (and this place is the safest)]]
'''Harry Potter''' is a series of seven fantasy books written by J.K. Rowling, whose plot can be summed up as:

An Evil Overlord that was thought to be long gone is coming back. The Chosen One must defeat him by embarking on a epic quest to destroy magical objects related to said Evil Overlord - objects that reveal ties between Our Hero and the antagonist. He has the assistance of a wise old Wizard with a long grey beard, that will leave him along the journey. [[The Lord of the Rings|Yes, you've seen it before]].

It's a much beloved young adult fantasy series that started as a story for kids and kinda grew in tone along with the age of the audience. [[C. S. Lewis|Yes, you've seen ''that'' before, too]]

[[Star Wars|Oh, did I mention that the boy is an orphan living with his uncles and that the BBEG killed his parents?]]

Harry Potter is basically the forefather of the current young adult Urban fantasy genre, and series like [[Percy Jackson|Percy Jackson and the Olympians]] owe more than a small intellectual debt to it. While things like Anne Rice's novels and Vampire the Masquerade may have brought the urban fantasy genre into being in a recognizable format (well, disregarding western comic books, which are either considered their own genre or a kind of urban fantasy depending on who you ask), it was Harry Potter that brought the genre to kids.

Essentially, any fictional series about a kid from the ordinary world being whisked away into a secretive mystical one to face mystical problems - as well as the issues of it being hard to be a kid growing up - made from the 90s onwards owes something to Harry Potter, even if it's a story about deconstructing the Harry Potter type narrative. It also showed that there was a '''huge''' amount of money to be made from writing for tweens and teenagers specifically instead of choosing to go for either young children or adults. We're talking "quite possibly the most [[profit|profitable]] demographic to market towards" here.

In spite of this, no book has gotten even close to as much popularity among kids as Harry Potter. The closest to recapturing that kind of magic was Percy Jackson which was hobbled by some amazingly poorly thought out movie adaptations, though the Percy Jackson fandom is still very much on the large side for a fandom. However you could also argue that this is because after Harry Potter, when the young adult urban fantasy genre took off with a bunch more writers getting into it the readership also fragmented into a bunch of other series. Much like how no other space fantasy series has ever really managed to get even close to Star Wars level popular, and no Gothic Space Fantasy series has even approached 40k's popularity. The first in the genre to really take off tends to get the benefit of having no real competition when it first grows, while everything following it will have to fight a bunch of other people who also want to ride that wave. It's reputation has been tarnished recently after Rowling made some public comments on transgender people and doubled down on them.

Has a [[Skub|sequel]] (considered canon by the author) in the form of a stage play (and later a published script) where an adult Harry Potter struggles to deal with his past while his second son is troubled with living up to his father's reputation, all these while a dark, sinister plot is abrewing.

It also involves lot of time travel. And alternate timelines. And that woman with the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express [[grimdark|having worked there so long she's forgotten her own name and family]].
==Would you like to know more?==
The story is about an orphaned boy living with awful relatives. [[The Earthsea Cycle|He soon finds out he has magical abilites and goes to a Wizard boarding school where he makes friends, learns magic and does magical sports]]. Soon enough, learns about his family and gets wrapped up in affairs involving a Dark Wizard version of Hitler called Lord Voldemort and his associated assholes (including a Dark Wizard version of the Klan called Death Eaters and Nazgul rip-offs called Dementors). So basically the pipe dream of every disaffected teenager; this more than anything probably explains the series' breakout popularity.

The books sold really well, got a series of very popular movies which grossed higher than any other series of movies in history, probably got a fair bit of people interested in fantasy literature (given that they were mainly targeted to young adult readers) and generated a moderate amount of [[skub]] back in its day before the haters moved onto [[Twilight|things which were more uniformly panned]]. Given the target audience, it was also inevitable that the fandom created an unholy amount of fanfiction, including what's universally recognized as [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/1/My-Immortal the worst fanfiction ever.] But it is also the source of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4 the best (and most batshit insane) fanfiction ever, as well].

Besides its reputation for producing an ungodly amount of [[NSFW]] fan fictions produced by horny and sometimes illiterate teens, the fandom (particularly the adults that most of the initial audience has aged into) also has a reputation for [[TVTropes|having their worldview constrained entirely by Harry Potter]], constantly comparing real world events to the fictional book series; any time you see a political tweet or protest sign reference Harry Potter, it’s inevitably met with dozens of people screaming “READ ANOTHER BOOK” in response. It can be truly embarrassing to witness.

In general the series has good characters, even though the main cast looks a bit lacklustre when you think about them, and the main antagonist has not much to him besides "I'm Hitler, but with a snake face and magic". Most of the supporting cast are reasonably fleshed out, engaging in their way with decent motivations which make sense and are part of the story both in the individual books and over the course of the series.

The lore and world-building is at best hit and miss, and sometimes you feel that the author is pulling ''deus ex machinas'' and lore out of her ass to railroad the story forward, but the series is not the worst gateway drug to the world of fantasy literature a young kid could have, even if traditionalists would favor [[Tolkien]], and of course many a writefag would argue that worldbuilding and lore are secondary at best to a consistent theme, plot, and good characterization. Similarly, as what is essentially the forefather of teenager oriented urban fantasy; it's obviously going to have the usual issues that plague other series that basically spawn a subgenre around them; other later series can learn from it and build on it. Much like how Seinfeld doesn't seem all that special today because its lessons have been so thoroughly disseminated throughout the genre that looking at Seinfeld now is like looking at a prototype of a line of products you're already familiar with. That being said despite quite a lot of competition (the most serious being Percy Jackson though the fandoms themselves are on good terms), Harry Potter still generally holds up as one of the better examples of young adult urban fantasy literature.

Eh, no reason you can't try both Tolkien and Rowling. Enjoy what you want, but the difference quality of both person and art is plain and obvious in this instance. Best not to bother and roll with it.

===Main Cast===
[[File:Harry-potter-characters-book-vs-movie.jpg|thumbnail|right|400px|Dramatis Personae]]
* '''Harry Potter''': The Boy Who Lived and main protagonist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic An unassuming English kid with glasses that obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight]. The Dark Lord tried to kill him when he was a toddler, but his parents loved him and the spell bounced and made the Dark Lord vanish instead (if that raises questions you've probably already put more thought into it than the author did). Went to stay with his abusive aunt and uncle and didn't notice he was a Wizard until a hobo came to his house and told him. Not the smartest knife in the drawer, and for much of the series he's actually more hated than loved by the wizardry world due to him being an angsty kid and the author catering to the needs of the angsty kid audience, in-universe much of that hate stems from Harry being a very normal teenager and people being very disappointed by that fact (even though it should be blatantly obvious). Also has a nasty habit to pull lucky deus ex machinas out of his own arse to save himself, but that part is at least self-acknowledged in the books.
* '''Hermione Granger''': Smart nerd girl and probably your first erection. When she gets a magical object that allows her to travel through time she uses it to study more instead of, for example, [[Old Man Henderson|solving every problem ever]]. Out of the blue she decided to bone the Comic Relief character at the end of the last book despite treating him as a dimwit for 7 years. The author has later admitted this was a mistake, even going as far as to say their relationship would be tumultuous.
* '''Ron Weasley''': Redhead comic relief. That's about it. Once he had a pet rat that was an old hairy man in disguise and slept with him. His brothers, due to the Marauder's Map (a magical object that shows the location of everybody in Hogwarts, [http://eggabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Easter_Eggs/Movies/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban/Naughty-Marauders-Map-MI-350x300.jpg with all the unfortunate implications]), probably knew about this and was totally ok with it. Bangs a chick way out of his league due to contrived plot reasons.
* '''Voldemort''': aka Magical Hitler but with the brush moustache swapped for complete hair loss and a snake face. No, really. He wants to eliminate everyone with muggle ancestry, wizard or not. Why? Because his mother date-raped his father with a love potion, said father abandoned them after getting off the potion and she died giving birth to him. That sucks, but no need to take out your issues on the rest of mankind. For half of the series he's in a ghostlike state until he gets himself a new body (he was noseless before, it was a side-effect of splitting his soul and putting the pieces in soul jars), thanks to the fact that he [[Lich|split his soul up into a bunch of different objects]]. Is finally killed for real when Harry destroys all the Horcruxes - himself included. WHAT A TWIST! But then Harry's still alive because he's the master of the Deathly Hallows! DOUBLE TWEEST!
* '''Albus Dumbledore:''' Headmaster of Hogwarts, most powerful wizard in the world and all around cool old coot. Initially considered a bit of an airheaded old codger who was none the less nice and supportive, but as the books progress, we learn he'd been playing 5D time travel diamond chess against the forces of Voldemort, secretly and clandestinely pulling the strings of all other characters in the series, like a noblebright [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]]/[[Lord of Change]]. Dies, but it’s okay, because he [[Just as Planned|planned around it]].
* '''Alan Rickman:''' As himself. Ron Weasley's actor was legit terrified of him for the first couple movies.

== Harry Potter stuff relating to tabletop games ==
*[[Harry Potter and the Tabletop RPG]]
*There are up to several [[GURPS]] modifications for a Harry Potter-themed setting.
*Kids on Brooms

[[category: Literature]]

Harry Potter

2022-10-21T21:58:44Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Main Cast */

{{British}}
{{Topquote|You're a [[wizard]], Harry|Hagrid, to Harry Potter}}
[[File:Hogwarts.webp|thumbnail|right|400px|Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry: A+ in Magical Education, F on OSHA compliance (and this place is the safest)]]
'''Harry Potter''' is a series of seven fantasy books written by J.K. Rowling, whose plot can be summed up as:

An Evil Overlord that was thought to be long gone is coming back. The Chosen One must defeat him by embarking on a epic quest to destroy magical objects related to said Evil Overlord - objects that reveal ties between Our Hero and the antagonist. He has the assistance of a wise old Wizard with a long grey beard, that will leave him along the journey. [[The Lord of the Rings|Yes, you've seen it before]].

It's a much beloved young adult fantasy series that started as a story for kids and kinda grew in tone along with the age of the audience. [[C. S. Lewis|Yes, you've seen ''that'' before, too]]

[[Star Wars|Oh, did I mention that the boy is an orphan living with his uncles and that the BBEG killed his parents?]]

Harry Potter is basically the forefather of the current young adult Urban fantasy genre, and series like [[Percy Jackson|Percy Jackson and the Olympians]] owe more than a small intellectual debt to it. While things like Anne Rice's novels and Vampire the Masquerade may have brought the urban fantasy genre into being in a recognizable format (well, disregarding western comic books, which are either considered their own genre or a kind of urban fantasy depending on who you ask), it was Harry Potter that brought the genre to kids.

Essentially, any fictional series about a kid from the ordinary world being whisked away into a secretive mystical one to face mystical problems - as well as the issues of it being hard to be a kid growing up - made from the 90s onwards owes something to Harry Potter, even if it's a story about deconstructing the Harry Potter type narrative. It also showed that there was a '''huge''' amount of money to be made from writing for tweens and teenagers specifically instead of choosing to go for either young children or adults. We're talking "quite possibly the most [[profit|profitable]] demographic to market towards" here.

In spite of this, no book has gotten even close to as much popularity among kids as Harry Potter. The closest to recapturing that kind of magic was Percy Jackson which was hobbled by some amazingly poorly thought out movie adaptations, though the Percy Jackson fandom is still very much on the large side for a fandom. However you could also argue that this is because after Harry Potter, when the young adult urban fantasy genre took off with a bunch more writers getting into it the readership also fragmented into a bunch of other series. Much like how no other space fantasy series has ever really managed to get even close to Star Wars level popular, and no Gothic Space Fantasy series has even approached 40k's popularity. The first in the genre to really take off tends to get the benefit of having no real competition when it first grows, while everything following it will have to fight a bunch of other people who also want to ride that wave. It's reputation has been tarnished recently after Rowling made some public comments on transgender people and doubled down on them.

Has a [[Skub|sequel]] (considered canon by the author) in the form of a stage play (and later a published script) where an adult Harry Potter struggles to deal with his past while his second son is troubled with living up to his father's reputation, all these while a dark, sinister plot is abrewing.

It also involves lot of time travel. And alternate timelines. And that woman with the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express [[grimdark|having worked there so long she's forgotten her own name and family]].
==Would you like to know more?==
The story is about an orphaned boy living with awful relatives. [[The Earthsea Cycle|He soon finds out he has magical abilites and goes to a Wizard boarding school where he makes friends, learns magic and does magical sports]]. Soon enough, learns about his family and gets wrapped up in affairs involving a Dark Wizard version of Hitler called Lord Voldemort and his associated assholes (including a Dark Wizard version of the Klan called Death Eaters and Nazgul rip-offs called Dementors). So basically the pipe dream of every disaffected teenager; this more than anything probably explains the series' breakout popularity.

The books sold really well, got a series of very popular movies which grossed higher than any other series of movies in history, probably got a fair bit of people interested in fantasy literature (given that they were mainly targeted to young adult readers) and generated a moderate amount of [[skub]] back in its day before the haters moved onto [[Twilight|things which were more uniformly panned]]. Given the target audience, it was also inevitable that the fandom created an unholy amount of fanfiction, including what's universally recognized as [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/1/My-Immortal the worst fanfiction ever.] But it is also the source of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4 the best (and most batshit insane) fanfiction ever, as well].

Besides its reputation for producing an ungodly amount of [[NSFW]] fan fictions produced by horny and sometimes illiterate teens, the fandom (particularly the adults that most of the initial audience has aged into) also has a reputation for [[TVTropes|having their worldview constrained entirely by Harry Potter]], constantly comparing real world events to the fictional book series; any time you see a political tweet or protest sign reference Harry Potter, it’s inevitably met with dozens of people screaming “READ ANOTHER BOOK” in response. It can be truly embarrassing to witness.

In general the series has good characters, even though the main cast looks a bit lacklustre when you think about them, and the main antagonist has not much to him besides "I'm Hitler, but with a snake face and magic". Most of the supporting cast are reasonably fleshed out, engaging in their way with decent motivations which make sense and are part of the story both in the individual books and over the course of the series.

The lore and world-building is at best hit and miss, and sometimes you feel that the author is pulling ''deus ex machinas'' and lore out of her ass to railroad the story forward, but the series is not the worst gateway drug to the world of fantasy literature a young kid could have, even if traditionalists would favor [[Tolkien]], and of course many a writefag would argue that worldbuilding and lore are secondary at best to a consistent theme, plot, and good characterization. Similarly, as what is essentially the forefather of teenager oriented urban fantasy; it's obviously going to have the usual issues that plague other series that basically spawn a subgenre around them; other later series can learn from it and build on it. Much like how Seinfeld doesn't seem all that special today because its lessons have been so thoroughly disseminated throughout the genre that looking at Seinfeld now is like looking at a prototype of a line of products you're already familiar with. That being said despite quite a lot of competition (the most serious being Percy Jackson though the fandoms themselves are on good terms), Harry Potter still generally holds up as one of the better examples of young adult urban fantasy literature.

Eh, no reason you can't try both Tolkien and Rowling. Enjoy what you want, but the difference quality of both person and art is plain and obvious in this instance. Best not to bother and roll with it.

===Main Cast===
[[File:Harry-potter-characters-book-vs-movie.jpg|thumbnail|right|400px|Dramatis Personae]]
* '''Harry Potter''': The Boy Who Lived and main protagonist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic An unassuming English kid with glasses that obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight]. The Dark Lord tried to kill him when he was a toddler, but his parents loved him and the spell bounced and made the Dark Lord vanish instead (if that raises questions you've probably already put more thought into it than the author did). Went to stay with his abusive aunt and uncle and didn't notice he was a Wizard until a hobo came to his house and told him. Not the smartest knife in the drawer, and for much of the series he's actually more hated than loved by the wizardry world due to him being an angsty kid and the author catering to the needs of the angsty kid audience. Also has a nasty habit to pull lucky deus ex machinas out of his own arse to save himself, but that part is at least self-acknowledged in the books.
* '''Hermione Granger''': Smart nerd girl and probably your first erection. When she gets a magical object that allows her to travel through time she uses it to study more instead of, for example, [[Old Man Henderson|solving every problem ever]]. Out of the blue she decided to bone the Comic Relief character at the end of the last book despite treating him as a dimwit for 7 years. The author has later admitted this was a mistake, even going as far as to say their relationship would be tumultuous.
* '''Ron Weasley''': Redhead comic relief. That's about it. Once he had a pet rat that was an old hairy man in disguise and slept with him. His brothers, due to the Marauder's Map (a magical object that shows the location of everybody in Hogwarts, [http://eggabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Easter_Eggs/Movies/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban/Naughty-Marauders-Map-MI-350x300.jpg with all the unfortunate implications]), probably knew about this and was totally ok with it. Bangs a chick way out of his league due to contrived plot reasons.
* '''Voldemort''': aka Magical Hitler but with the brush moustache swapped for complete hair loss and a snake face. No, really. He wants to eliminate everyone with muggle ancestry, wizard or not. Why? Because his mother date-raped his father with a love potion, said father abandoned them after getting off the potion and she died giving birth to him. That sucks, but no need to take out your issues on the rest of mankind. For half of the series he's in a ghostlike state until he gets himself a new body (he was noseless before, it was a side-effect of splitting his soul and putting the pieces in soul jars), thanks to the fact that he [[Lich|split his soul up into a bunch of different objects]]. Is finally killed for real when Harry destroys all the Horcruxes - himself included. WHAT A TWIST! But then Harry's still alive because he's the master of the Deathly Hallows! DOUBLE TWEEST!
* '''Albus Dumbledore:''' Headmaster of Hogwarts, most powerful wizard in the world and all around cool old coot. Initially considered a bit of an airheaded old codger who was none the less nice and supportive, but as the books progress, we learn he'd been playing 5D time travel diamond chess against the forces of Voldemort, secretly and clandestinely pulling the strings of all other characters in the series, like a noblebright [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]]/[[Lord of Change]]. Dies, but it’s okay, because he [[Just as Planned|planned around it]].
* '''Alan Rickman:''' As himself. Ron Weasley's actor was legit terrified of him for the first couple movies.

== Harry Potter stuff relating to tabletop games ==
*[[Harry Potter and the Tabletop RPG]]
*There are up to several [[GURPS]] modifications for a Harry Potter-themed setting.
*Kids on Brooms

[[category: Literature]]

Doctor Who

2022-10-16T22:27:49Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* The Show */

{{British}}

[[Image:tardis.gif||center]]

{{topquote|There was a saying, sir, in the time war. First thing you notice about the Doctor of War... is he's unarmed.|Gallifreyan Soldier}}

'''Doctor Who''' is a long-running (and we do mean ''long''; it predates [[Star Trek]]) British science-fiction television show. And it is ''fantastic''. The Doctor, an immortal/regenerating alien <strike>(''well'' originally he was a human scientist, but that was [[retcon]]ned)</strike> that has been portrayed by a variety of stellar actors since the show's inception, travels through space and time in a <s>1960s-era police box</s> super-advanced, living spaceship called the TARDIS. Joined by a variety of companions (mostly female <strike>and often young</strike>), they solve kinks in time and see the wonders of the universe. It's also famous for the various monsters it created, most notably the Daleks (cyborg [[Imperium of Man|space Nazis]]) and the Cybermen (cyborg [[Tau|space Communists]])... and especially, the Silence, Weeping Angels, and those fuck terrifying gas mask zombies.
'''Don't blink!'''

For its more [[Grimdark]] and [[Hard Science Fiction|Hard Sci-Fi]] counterpart, see the [[Xeelee Sequence]].
==The Show==
Doctor Who is the longest ongoing sci-fi series in the history of television. It started in 1963 and ran until 1989 where it was temporarily frozen. It attempted a restart with a 1996 movie, but the circumstances were not yet ripe. The show finally started again in 2005 and is currently still running. Throughout this history, the show has maintained the same canon-less continuity, thanks to the fact that the main protagonist Doctor Who (aka The Doctor) is an alien capable of "regeneration" upon the time of death or when they grow old. This rejuvenates and replaces all the cells in their body, effectively changing their appearance and somewhat their mannerisms and personality (because it also changes the brain). In this way, the series has been able to continue with different actors without resorting to "remakes" or "reimaginings" or "spinoffs" like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. There were a couple of unsuccessful attempts at making spinoffs (One during the original run and one more recently, both based on the rather twee K-9 the tin dog), and three more successful, the recent Torchwood (on indefinite hiatus despite massive popularity... come on BBC, give us Season 5...), Sarah Jane Adventures (cancelled during its fifth year due to the death of the lead actress), Class (ended after one season) <strike>and a bunch of independently produced movies that have a legal license to exist, so long as they don't mention the Doctor. They have ''The Chiropodist'' instead.</strike> The Sarah Jane Adventures depict the adventures and encounters with alien life that the ex-companion of the 3rd and 4th Doctor goes through with her alien-made son and his friends. Torchwood is Doctor Who with a large dose of GRIMDARK (if you're a horny 12-year-old and just comedy for those who aren't, Children of Earth is when Torchwood becomes worth watching), along with a literally immortal lead character with a Charisma score so high that Alpenhorn-mancers turn gay for him within a sixteen-mile radius. Everyone is gay for Captain Jack Harkness. He even has a [[Harkness_Test|sexuality test]] named after him. Class depicts what happens when the Doctor sets one of their long plans in motion, and then fucks off for a good while, letting all hell break loose in the meantime. The others? Well, there's a film about the "Cyberons", a Zygon porno, a bunch of films that aren't stupid, featuring many characters like the Brig, the Yeti, Sontarans, and more.

The main show is heavily episodic, with the Doctor travelling through time and space in their TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension(s) in Space) and landing in different historical periods on Earth and elsewhere in the universe, often when there is some sort of trouble or disturbance nearby. The Doctor protects the flow of history <strike>except when you piss the Doctor off</strike>, preventing paradoxes and manipulations and attempts to stop evil and violence everywhere. This gains them the enmity of their own race, the Gallifreyan Time Lords who have pledged to use their time-travelling technology only to observe but not interfere. Even so, they often ask the Doctor to act on their behalf. The Time Lords got a bit shit towards the end of the original run, and were unceremoniously killed off en masse during the gap between the original and new runs in an offscreen "Time War". As of the new revival series, there has been the theme of a season-long arc within the episodes, which usually takes the shape of a recurring phrase or item, which is resolved in the two-part finale at the end of the season.

The show has become iconic in British culture and science fiction fandom around the world for many reasons, amongst them:

*Having been around for fucking ever. Even if you were born during the window when Dr Who was not being made, the chances are you remember it from re-runs or carefully archived bootlegged copies made by [[Neckbeard|that one uncle you had]] (No, not that one). On the brighter side, there were hundreds of really good tie-in books and audio dramas (and a few films).
*Not only has it been around for fucking ever, but we also don't even have all the episodes. Of the 253 episodes of the first six seasons, 97 are lost for all time because the BBC didn't think the content was worth saving long term (also because the BBC archives had a nasty habit of bursting into flames before digital archiving became the norm). Of the missing content, only fan audio recordings remain as consumer VCRs didn't exist before the 1970s.
*Cheesy low budgeted effects and monsters which gave the show a special charm and made it rely on the story instead of flashy visuals.
*The TARDIS machine which has a "chameleon circuit" which allows it to change external appearance to fit into different environments where it "lands", its inside is much bigger than the outside, potentially infinite, thanks to the space-time technology it uses. The Doctor's TARDIS got its chameleon circuit busted and is permanently stuck in the iconic shape of a 60's British Police Box. And when we say iconic we mean ''the British police have to ask Doctor Who before they can use its likeness'', not the other way around.
*The character of The Doctor and their eccentric figure, with their alien traits like regeneration and a double heart.
*The show has been known to be aimed at a younger audience but scare them at the same time, so "hiding behind the sofa" has become a phrase connected to it.
*It also retains a big following amongst older fans because of its two-sided nature; it is largely easy-going, tongue-in-cheek and comical but often turns to darker and serious tones, with good storytelling.
*Writing for Doctor Who is something of a variety show of up and coming show writers. Terry Nation (creator of Blake's 7) wrote ten stories for Doctor Who. Douglas Adams was credited with writing one but actually wrote a couple more uncredited and contributed to MANY others during the 4th Doctor. More recent guest writers include Neil Cross (Luther), Neil Gaiman (Coraline), and Mark Gatiss (Sherlock).
*Comical yet fearsome enemies like the Daleks (Genocidal mutant squid [[Nazi]] pepper-pots with death rays and the best E-VIL VOI-CES E-VER while exterminating FUCKING EVERYTHING, think of the already-overpowered and omnicidal [[Necron]]s mixed with Nazis and turned up to 11 billion), Sontarans (Huge domed heads, eyebrows and foreheads of a 4e [[Tiefling]]-basically Mr Potato Head), Autons (Shop Dummies of Death), Weeping Angels (Scared the shit out of <s>children</s> everyone everywhere, don't ever blink) and memorable "supervillain" antagonists like The Master, a rival Time Lord, and the ever-wrinkly Davros, who's basically Palpatine, the Joker, Honsou, Abaddon, Trayzn the Infinite, Asdrubael Vect, & Kheradruakh the Decapitator all rolled into one.
*Hiding behind the sofa from the aforementioned Daleks was such a common event in the lives of several decades of children that the phrase "Hiding behind the sofa" has entered [[Britfag]] slang as a slightly tongue-in-cheek way of saying "Scared shitless".
*Various toys, gadgets and gags the Doctor uses, including a 'Sonic Screwdriver' (a lazy but cool plot device) and the use of Jelly Babies candy to distract or bribe people.
*The theme tune. You know it, you love it. Yes, you do, stop lying.
*Not being your average Science-Fiction story. While many normal Space Opera-style Sci-Fi stories are samey and bland, Doctor Who has practically every kind of adventure imaginable taking place. From dinosaurs on a spaceship to gas-masked zombies (who are creepy as all Hell) to literally going to hell, ''Doctor Who'' has it all. If not, then the spin-offs have done it.
**And its generally positive view of Non-Violence. The Doctor almost never solves problems by raw force, and is always willing to bury a hatchet against all but his most bitter enemies (the Daleks and the Master being the only beings he carries a true grudge against). [[Starship Troopers]] this ain't, the Doctor doesn't like solving problems with a laser cannon and a bag of jelly babies.
*For being a thorn in the side of Mary Whitehouse for the entirety of their parallel existence because of how scary it got in the mid-70s.
*Constantly being political, but in an accessible way. Ever since its inception it has had political overtones, be that support for the civil rights movement, hatred of Thatcher, or raising concerns about climate changes eventual effect on society and the world. It does this, however, in a medium that is accessible for children, which allows it to present the message of the week in very different creative formats - ''The Happiness Patrol'' being the best example of this.

==The Doctors==
[[Image:Doctor_Who_alignments.jpg|250px|thumb|right|But compared to anyone else besides themself they are irrevocably Chaotic Good]]
Originally the Doctor could only regenerate 12 times (well, originally it was implied it was infinite, but this was forgotten about), resulting in 13 different versions of themself (12 because David Tennant once managed to regenerate into themself) but during the 2013 Christmas special they managed to restart a new cycle (something that the Time Lords offered The Master in The Five Doctors all the way back in 1983.). They are currently in their God-Knows-Whateenth incarnation (We know of over '''100''' across every medium, counting John Hurt who doesn't get an official number for watch-the-damn-show reasons), of which at least 16 have taken up the mantel of 'The Doctor'. This means that they've had fifteen official actors so far. We really need to update that image.

*'''William Hartnell (1963-1966):''' A mysterious grumpy old professor. He didn't like to have humans tag along with him, but changed his mind after a while. Extremely intelligent (like all Doctors, duh), but also short-tempered. Speak a bit in [[Star Wars|Yoda]] manner. And a pretty good fighter, despite being old: Once beat up a big man in fisticuffs, while laughing. The Daleks and Cybermen were introduced during his time. (Evidently, one of the replacement actors for Hartnell is a fan of 40k. Duncan got a request to paint flayed wracks from Bradley, as Hartnell died in 1975, Hurndall in 1983, so it couldn't be them.) Some of these episodes are actually lost to the ages due to BBC at the time thinking that there was no reason to keep footage after it was broadcast. Notable episodes include The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs, and The Tenth Planet. "Have you no emotions, sir?"
* '''Patrick Troughton (1966-1969):''' A cosmic hobo. He liked music and played the recorder. He was more of an anti-authority figure than his predecessor. Looked like a total idiot, made his enemies underestimate him, and ran away quite a lot. It was also during his time that his race, the Time Lords, was first introduced. At the end of Troughton's run, they banished him from Gallifrey for breaking the [[Star Trek|Prime Directive]], and forced him to regenerate as punishment. The Great Intelligence was introduced along with the robotic yeti during this time period, as was UNIT (more on those guys later). He is also distinguished by the fact that he may just be the most influential Doctor ever - not only would the show have failed if he didn't succeed, but over half of the later actors have claimed inspiration from his performances when they first took the lead role. Most of these episodes are actually lost to the ages due to BBC at the time thinking that there was no reason to keep footage after it was broadcast, and having a policy of routinely wiping magnetic video tape - which was at the time quite expensive and bulky to store - so that it could be re-used. However, the BBC is now funnelling cash into animation studios to animate the lost episodes with the use of off-screen recordings, fan-created recordings, and anything that they can scrape together to resurrect them. Some of them are even animated in colour! Notable episodes include The Power of The Daleks, The Enemy of The World, and The Mind Robber. The "Oh, my giddy aunt!".
* '''Jon Pertwee (1970-1974):''' A gentleman and a dandy. Spend a lot of time stuck on Earth, thanks to his stupid race putting him into exile (and not at all because the BBC decided to save money in the cash-strapped 70s by not set-building any more alien worlds, which cost more to look good on 625-line colour TV - ushered in by Pertwee - than they did on 405-line black & white). Could do Venusian Aikido, liked vintage cars, and at the end of the day was very much a less-womanizing, more science fiction-based James Bond. The Master, his arch-nemesis and a fellow Time Lord, was introduced: He tried to conquer the world with plastic chairs! We're not kidding. Notable episodes include Spearhead from Space, The Sea Devils, and The Green Death. "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!"
* '''Tom Baker (1974-1981):''' The bohemian, a total weirdo, who liked candy (specifically Jelly Babies) and had a disarmingly devilish grin, [[Bag of Holding|bottomless pockets]] and an extremely long, very colourful scarf. Very good in playing a fool: to quote Count Scarlioni: "No one could be as stupid as he seemed". Could switch from manic to serious in a single moment. Oh, and they were written for by Douglas fucking Adams. Yes, that one. The most iconic Doctor from the old series, probably due to his long tenure. Davros, the creator of the Daleks and a total maniac, was introduced. Baker briefly married and then divorced Lalla Ward, who played his travelling companion; their marriage difficulties (On the question, which was the most terrible monster in Doctor Who, Ward quipped: "Tom Baker!"), alongside Baker's bad relationship with the incoming showrunner John Nathan-Turner, contributed to Baker's end in the role. While the maxim "Doctor Who is a barrel of pretty good serials mixed in with pure, refined emeralds" is true of all eras of the show, Baker's era probably epitomises this the most. Notable episodes include Genesis of the Daleks, The Seeds of Doom, and City of Death. "Just touch these two strands together, and the Daleks are finished... Have I that right?"
* '''Peter Davison (1981-1984):''' Created to be pretty much the complete opposite of his predecessor. Very much a human, very noble, liked cricket. Was also a complete sociopath. Davison was also the youngest actor in the role, until Matt Smith some 25 years later. Some people hated him just for replacing Tom Baker (seems like the Who fanbase never changes... unlike the lead). People died a ''lot'' during his time: Sometimes there was literally no one left but him and his companions - or, in the case of his last story, only his companion. Is the father-in-law of David Tennant (Tenth Doctor), which means that The Doctor's Daughter played The Doctor's Daughter, and then became the Doctor's wife, meaning that the Doctor is his own Father-in-law. God time travel is confusing... Notable episodes include Earthshock, Ressurection of the Daleks (this has the highest on-screen body count of all time in Who), and The Caves of Androzani (an episode consistently voted as the best story in Who ever, even including the revival series). "When did you last have the pleasure of smelling a flower, watching a sunset, eating a well-prepared meal? … For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about!"
* '''Colin Baker (1984-1986, 2002):''' An unstable maniac. More violent than the rest of his incarnations put together, shocking the audience by dumping executioners into acid baths, and having the genetic torture of his companion broadcast live on TV - and they both happened in the same episode! The whole show became bloodier during his time. Thought he was awesome, despite always wearing that awful coat. Generally regarded as being the worst Doctor, at least in the TV shows, but became much more awesome in the Big Finish audio. Had already played a minor character in the series before he was cast as the Doctor, making this the first instance of a casting choice of a Who veteran, as it were. Notable episodes include go and listen to the Big Finish audios now, no, seriously, and why are you still here, go listen to The Marian Conspiracy. "I shall beat it into submission... with my charm."
* '''Sylvester McCoy (1987-1989, 1996, 2002):''' Started like a goofy wacky fellow, but quickly became more serious later on. Seemed like a god walking among lesser people, quite literally destroyed a pantheon of gods, and could <strike>probably</strike> definitely out-manipulate Tzeentch. Often they had beaten the villain of the week before they even came onto the scene, because of some centuries-long plan concocted in a prior regeneration. During their time, they started to turn onto some big questions, like who the hell the Doctor actually ''is'', but then the show got cancelled even as ratings increased. Bummer. He could also seem to be a dick to his companion (even if his motives were good), taking her to a circus despite being told about her fear of clowns, taking her to a house that she burned to the ground even when she requested not to, and manipulating her into a sense of hopelessness/depression so that he could slightly weaken a cosmic entity. Had the first CGI intro; all previous intros were generated using some combination of optics and analogue electronics. Notable episodes include Remembrance of the Daleks (in which The Daleks finally conquered stairs), The Happiness Patrol, and the entirety of their last season. Seriously. You'll cry when you see that this is what they <strike>cancelled</strike> rested Dr Who on. "There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do."
* '''Paul McGann (1996, 2003, 2013):''' A romantic. Told people to make the best use of their limited time in this world and embrace their lives instead of being all emo and crying in a corner. But he also stated that he was half-human, which is a lie. The books and Big Finish fleshed him out a bit. Too bad his movie didn't do well enough in America to spawn a new series <s>(damn you America!). </s> There's an animated version of Shada with the Eighth Doctor that practically everybody has forgotten about, but it's an official animated story nonetheless, so there. </s> Also turned up unexpectedly, but to everyone's surprise, in a quick minisode in 2013 written by Steven Moffat, which, by a rare fan consensus, is considered superior to the movie in every fashion. It probably had something to do with the lack of that wig he had to wear in 1996... Notable stories are The Chimes of Midnight, The Silver Turk, and Neverland/Zagreus/Scherzo. "I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."
* '''John Hurt (''secret bonus Doctor'', 2013):''' The Doctor as he was fighting in the Time War, known by some as the "War Doctor". In setting chronology, this incarnation fits between McGann's and Eccleston's, but due to committing some horrible war crimes in order to end the Time War, he denied himself the title of "the Doctor" and later regenerations refused to acknowledge his existence; so much so that Matt Smith's version is still referred to in-universe as the Eleventh Doctor, even in mysterious prophecies, despite technically being the twelfth incarnation. He was a rather grim and serious character and quite put off by the perceived silliness and light-heartedness of his successors. He was seen only briefly in the finale of season 7 played a major role in the 50th anniversary special, and had a set of audio adventures, but probably won't be seen again (RIP, John). "Doctor no more."
* '''Christopher Eccleston (2005):''' The only survivor of the horrible Time War (which is a rip-off of the War in Heaven, a war that happened in the Eighth Doctor books which had horrible consequences for everybody involved), which will never be fully shown, but we have seen parts of. All the other Time Lords died in it ([[Just As Planned|or did they?]]). Dark and moody, probably because of the survivor's guilt, tended to hide it behind a horribly manic and happy outward appearance. Was pretty dependent on his friends and companions when it came to moral issues. Often found himself in a kind of fix where he couldn't do shit without blowing the hell out of the area around him (the guy dropped missiles on his own head to kill a damn alien threat near him for fucks sake). The first Doctor not to wear (particularly) weird clothes. Notable episodes include Dalek, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, and Bad Wolf/The Parting of Ways. "You were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I."
* '''David Tennant (2005-2010):''' Probably the outwardly happiest of all Doctors... or maybe the most Machiavellian. <strike>Nah, this award goes to the Seventh Doctor.</strike> A total crackpot. Talks a lot of [[Star Trek|technobabble]], at like 90mph, sometimes about something completely unrelated. If Time Lords could have ADHD, he probably does. Attracts a lot of women. For some reason, one of the last monsters featured was EAT. Yeah, that EAT. Oh and, when he'll offer you a chance of redemption and says that he can help you, you ''bloody well'' should take that offer! Because he doesn't believe in second chances, nor in letting someone walk away (Unless you're an arch-villain). "I've gotten too old, Wilf, and too clever; I don't kill people, but I get them to kill themselves." (you just read that entire paragraph in his voice, didn't you?) Alternatively a child on Christmas morning and the '''MASTER''' of the ''resting bitch face'' whilst he destroys you, or ''he watches you destroy yourself''. His performance was so good that BBC actually considered ending the series after his tenure because they thought that the show would fail without him. Notable episodes include Blink, Human Nature/Family of Blood, and Silence in the Library/Forest of The Dead (in which a future main character was introduced by being killed off, fuck you, Moffat). "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
* '''Matt Smith (2010-2013):''' The biggest nutjob since Tom Baker's Doctor. Acts like an awkward, hyperactive child most of the time, with a weird taste in clothes and an even weirder taste in food, but is also an old man, weary and reserved. Will deceive people for their own good, but this later backfires and makes him more cautious. Great with kids. Has one hell of a nasty streak: piss him off enough, and he ''will'' destroy you without so much as an offer of mercy. His stories tend to feature fuck-terrifying monsters and situations, including an army of quantum abominations who only move when you're not looking at them<s>, but logically should be of no threat to anyone who owns a time machine</s> and eat time, being trapped in a false awakening loop, a crack in the wall that ''eats reality,'' and an entire fucking race of Slendermen (whom you completely forget even exist when you aren't looking at one). Two of his assistants are insanely hot and another spends most of his time getting killed (and the rest of the time being awesome). Suffers a lot over the course of his tenure, but eventually achieves something of a happy ending before his regeneration into the Twelfth Doctor. Notable episodes include The Eleventh Hour, Vincent and The Doctor, and The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon. "I wear a bow-tie now; bow-ties are cool."
* '''Peter Capaldi (2013-2017):''' Something in between the Ninth and Fourth Doctors, making him an all-out sinister badass if you know anything about those Doctors. The actor has appeared twice in Doctor Who (well, once in Torchwood) in other roles before becoming the Doctor, which was explained as the Doctor trying to tell himself something. Thus far fans have imagined him in the role as the Doctor in the same style Peter Capaldi has appeared on the show The Thick of It, where he was exceptionally foul-mouthed. It turned out he's pretty damn hilarious. And Scottish. Quite eccentric, though. Apparently, a lot of the female fans were [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzWOlMif-Fw outraged] that an older guy got the role. It says a lot that the closest thing he had to a catchphrase was "Shut up!". Despite that charming catchphrase, his character eventually got his head out of his arse, and then decided to try and make everyone see that we should all be kind to each other. Probably also the most stubborn and loyal Doctor ever, spending roughly 7000 years in a sort of prison to save the life of his companion. He was also the absolute GOD of speeches, with arguably his best episode being a 45-minute long monologue over the idea of grief. On top of that, he is the only Doctor thus far to bring the Master round to the side of good, has stopped Zygon terrorists with nothing but words, and he became the Lord-President of Gallifrey... again. His tenure as The Doctor had ginormous levels of character development, for both him, his companions, and his own rogues gallery. Did we mention that the actor is a massive Whovian too? Notable episodes include literally all of his season finales and Christmas specials, The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion, Oxygen, and Heaven Sent (which Capaldi carries ''entirely by himself'' as the only living being other than the monster, more or less the final Doctor given those teleport replacement copies). "Hey! I'm going to be dead in a few hours, so before I go, let's have this out. You and me, once and for all. Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I'm not doing this because I want to beat someone — or because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it's easy. It’s not even because it works, because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it's right! Because it's decent! And above all, it's kind! It's just that. Just kind. If I run away today, good people will die. If I stand and fight, some of them might live — maybe not many, maybe not for long. Hey, maybe there’s no point in any of this at all, but it's the best I can do. So I'm going to do it, and I will stand here doing it until it kills me. You're going to die, too, someday. When will that be? Have you thought about it? What would you die for? Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall. Stand with me. These people are terrified. Maybe we can help a little. Why not, just at the end, just be kind?"
* '''Jodie Whittaker: (2017-2022):''' The first female Doctor in canon <strike>THERE IS NO CANON</strike>. The precedent for Time Lords changing gender was established earlier during the Fourth Doctor's era and reinforced during the Eleventh Doctor's era when they mention banging a Time Lord named The Corsair when they had a sex change. An actress from ''Broadchurch'' to go along with the producer of the same show. Her first season was pure unrefined powdered Dr Who, in that it ranged between mediocre viewing to absolute god-tier TV at times with a well-written season finale/New Year's special that made the Daleks the powerful threat they should have been during Eleven and Twelve's tenure, where a Scout [[BLAM|takes out a whole armoured British Platoon with no effort]]. However it seems that the BBC is trying to compete with [[Star Trek|Paramount, CBS]] and [[Star Wars|Disney]] on who can run a decades-old franchise into the ground first, as regardless of quality, the following season wasn’t out until (very) early 2020. Making Capaldi's comments about "The Beeb" neglecting the show prophetic. Season 12 was divisive, to say the least, although almost everyone agrees that it was miles better than the previous season. Oh, and the Master is back. Again. Series 13 is set to premiere later this year, but with a lower episode count because of our current situation regarding [[Nurgle|Covid-19]]. Notable episodes (so far) include Demons of the Punjab (the aforementioned god-tier TV), Spyfall, and The Haunting of Villa Diodati. <strike>Chibnall was such an awful showrunner & writer, that the BBC asked Russell T. Davies, the first showrunner of the post-2005 reboot, to return. Too bad Whittaker won't be able to act under a good writer.</strike> While this rumour will probably persist for a long while, it seems that Chibnall, 13's showrunner, was always planning on leaving at this time as a result of 2023 being a big year for him and his family - he even had a 'three seasons and out' pact with Jodie over this. It is also worth noting that several big names, including the creator of [[Babylon 5|Babylon frickin' 5]], were after the job once he stepped down. This means that Davies, one of the most critically acclaimed writers and producers in the UK at the time of this edit, simply managed the best pitch for the show. Again. "You want the whole universe. Someone who has seen it all, and that's me. I've lived longer, seen more, loved more, and lost more. I can share it all with you, anything you want to know about what you never had. Cause he's an idiot with a daughter who needs him. So let him go, and I will give you everything."
* '''"Doctor Ruth":''' Another "missing" Doctor played by Jo Martin who debuted in Series 12 of the modern era. It's unknown where she fits in the timeline but she is confirmed to be a pre Hartnell Doctor. As it's now revealed The Doctor is "The Timeless Child" and isn't a Time Lord or from Gallifrey <strike>this was done first in the 1990s, but then [[retcon]]ned, and unretconned some more</strike>, but a being from a different universe [[grimdark|stolen and experimented on]] by the Time Lords, she is confirmed to be a real Doctor and not a trick or a misunderstanding. She is the result of trying to fix a plot hole created all the way back in the classic era episode ''The Brain of Morbius''. Where the battle between Four and the Time Lord war criminal Morbius revealed several Pre-Hartnell Doctors. Whether this was a plot hole worth fixing is a matter of [[Skub]] among fans. Something that other writers have tried to explain in side materials before now. An attempt to explain said plot hole was used earlier during the McCoy era to make him not just "an ordinary Time Lord" and restore mystery to the character with the incarnation called "The Other".
* '''"The Curator":''' An incarnation of the Doctor who retired and became curator of the Under Gallery. Eleventh Doctor met him in "The Day of the Doctor". Played again by Tom Baker.

===Other Doctors===
There have been a number of Doctors who were either the Doctor in strange circumstances, were later retconned or were never intended to be canon in the first place.

* Peter Cushing (1965-66): Yes, THAT Peter Cushing, the guy that played Grand Moff Tarkin in [[Star Wars]] and was so oldschool he once played alongside Laurel and Hardy. He played a human scientist called Dr. Who (yes, his last name is Who) in two movie-length remakes of early episodes featuring the Daleks. The movies were not very good, as one would expect when they [[wat|didn't use the iconic theme tune]], had [[HERESY|blaring jazz instead of electronic music]], were directed by someone who'd [[Extra Heresy|never actually watched Doctor Who]] and didn't even realise that the [[derp|Daleks' head lights are supposed to flash in modulation with their voices]], and rumours had it that Cushing was taking any work he could to keep his mind off the recent loss of his wife. He is easily the best thing about the movies, mind, and his sweet, grandfatherly Doctor is a flavour almost worth seeing if you don't mind wading through all the crap. It also featured a set of groovy-coloured Daleks (who had decorated their base with lava lamps!), which was considered silly because Daleks are supposed to be drab... at least until they returned in Matt Smith's run as a group of happy fascist murderous rainbows. This particular Doctor has the dubious honour of having successfully defeated the Daleks' latest world-domination plan by quite literally pointing at nothing and yelling "Look!"
* Rowan Atkinson, Richard E. Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Joanna Lumley (1999): The BBC has a tradition of making silly parodies of their shows for charity. Dr. Who got one called Doctor Who and the Curse of the Fatal Death, where the aforementioned actors played the Ninth through Twelfth Doctors in quick succession. Rowan Atkinson played the role magnificently as the Time Lord Blackadder. He announces to the Master that he is going to marry the only companion he ever ''had'', but the Master enlists the help of the Daleks to kill his archenemy once and for all. Belayed explanations, Zektronic energy, [[Nurgle|communication based on breaking wind]], a couple of [[Wat|Dalek chairs]], and LOTS of hijinks later, the Doctor burns through pretty much all of his regenerations in two minutes. It is a very funny short and should be watched, if only for the magnificent snark that only Rowan Atkinson can produce.
* Richard E. Grant (2003): Just a few years after playing the Tenth Doctor in Curse of the Fatal Death, Grant returned as the Ninth Doctor for the "webisode" Scream of the Shalka. This incarnation was angry, moody, looked like a [[vampire]], and compared to Sherlock Holmes by the actor himself (which is funny when you consider that Benedict Cumberbatch, of ''Sherlock'' fame, was in the running to be the Eleventh Doctor), but he was still a good man who left no monster rampaging (or at least unstudied) and no woman unsaved. He fought the exeptionally creepy Shalka, whom he defeated with... no, no spoilers, you wouldn't believe it anyway. He also traveled alongside none other than the Master, who was confined to an android body stuck in the TARDIS. They share homoerotic subtext to the level it becomes homoerotic SUPERtext; the author commented that this was intentional.
**As a side note, while they were making the special, some kid pretty much kicked down the door, ranted about how much he loved Doctor Who, and begged for a role in the short. The producers gave him one, causing the kid to all but explode. The kid's name? David Tennant.
* David Morrissey (2009): In the episode ''The next Doctor'', the 10th Doctor stumbles upon cybermen, cybermonkeys, and a man who calls himself the Doctor, played by David Morrissey, in 1851. He claims to be an incarnation of the gallifreyan time-traveler we have had for 50 years, but something is amiss; his memory is practically gone, his sonic screwdriver isn't sonic, and his TARDIS is a balloon. In the end, it turns out he was actually a regular person who absorbed all information the cybermen had about the Doctor and only thought he was him, altrough still hugely helps Tenth into defeating the Cybermen.

==Villains and Big Players==
Sufficed to say when you have hundreds of episodes of the week format over half a century of TV as well as tie in novels, comics, audio dramas and whanot with a a guy that can go anywhere and any when with an episode of the week mentality you'll build up quite a rogues gallery. Here are a few of the more notable groups and prominent non doctor characters.

* Daleks: Nazism distilled into octopus form riding around in pepper shakers. Each Dalek is a psychopathic genius riding around in what is basically it's own tank motivated by an unending hatred and desire to Exterminate every living thing that's not a Dalek. They're also notable for being as indestructible as the show needs them to be; that is to say they have been pushed out of a window one story up and exploded, died from baseball bat attack enhanced by a Macguffin of the week, and been spun around too much and died, but at the same time a single Dalek is capable of downloading the internet, and taking on a full platoon of highly trained soldiers. Yay for consistency! Notable episodes include Genesis of The Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, and Revolution of the Daleks (if there's one thing this era does well, it's classic villains. Probably helps that the current showrunner is a lifelong hardcore Whovian).
** Davros: Creator of the Daleks (at least twice), Davros is one of the Doctor’s worst enemies. Startlingly similar to the God-Emperor of Mankind, as both are geniuses in genetics who regard their creations as their children (or tools), but Davros is a twisted evil genius who would destroy all life - hell, all reality - if given the chance, basically just so he could say that he did. His relationship with the Daleks is complicated, as while they don’t view him as a Dalek, they also acknowledge him as their creator and that they wouldn’t exist without him. As such, they tend to spare him and sometimes follow his orders, on occasion even letting him be the emperor, but may just as easily turn on and kill him if the situation arises - or they feel like it. Covertly created a second generation of white-and-gold "Imperial" daleks that actually did revere him as their emperor, after the first generation of grey-and-black "renegade" Daleks rejected him. Needless to say, these two different Dalek factions (arguably subraces, since Davros genetically engineered the first batch from the last survivors of his own species, the Kaleds, and the second batch from human bodies he stole on Necros) did not get along very well. As of Capaldis era he seems to have a very love-hate relationship with the Doctor that stems from 12 saving his life as a child... watch this space, there could be a long story in this.
** The Supreme Dalek: Likes shouting orders and being on the cusp of victory before it all turns to shit. Notable for having one of the coolest designs for a Doctor Who monster EVER (seriously, Google it), and effectively being the Darth Vader to Davros's Emperor.
** The Cult of Skaro: Created by the Dalek Emperor (no, not Davros, the other one) to think like the enemy, act not as Daleks, and to experiment. The four members were specifically chosen for their incomprehensible ability to innovate, and were tasked with ensuring the survival of the Dalek race, no matter the cost. Evidently three of the members forgot this, because when their leader was one step away from recreating the Daleks race as a better species, they mutinied and killed him. The final member, Dalek Caan, later went on to save Davros's life and then went insane, betraying the Daleks and summoning the Doctor to stop Davros from using his reality bomb, which was the Infinity Gauntlet before the Infinity Gauntlet was a thing - in the MCU anyway.
** Rusty: The Good Dalek. The 12th Doctor got miniaturised, stuck himself inside of a malfunctioning Dalek, and fucked around enough with the circuits enough that the Dalek started hating the Daleks, and then left it to go do it's thing. A grand speech was also involved, but with 12 there's always a grand speech somewhere. Notable for having one of the most fucking metal lines ever in Doctor Who, when the Doctor said "good man!" to it, it replied "No - you are a good Daaaaaaaaaalek!".
* Cybermen: Borg before the Borg, an army of Cyborgs which seek to turn everyone else into a Cyborg. Absolutely fucking terrifying when done in the right way, and generic robots when not. There are some *amazing* audiobooks with them in, notably Spare Parts and The Silver Turk. Due to their faceless, "we are all alike" aesthetic, there are very few 'special' Cybermen, but there are a couple. Notable episodes include Earthshock, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, and the Haunting of Villa Diodati/Ascension of The Cybermen/The Timeless Children.
** John Lumic: In the parallel universe, John Lumic is the creator of the Cybermen as a way to prolong his own life due to a debilitating and terminal illness. As such he gives himself the flashiest suit of armour, and a massive silver throne as life support. Now where could we have seen that before...
** Bill Potts: The 12th Doctor's companion who has the dubious honour of being the first Cyberman. Ever. However due to some very strong willpower she keeps emotions, and eventually dies in a badass explosion, wiping out thousands of Cybermen at once.
** The Cyberking: Evil Victorian woman installed into a battleship class cyber-suit. Unfortunately for the Cybermen, she likes emotions, and starts stomping on London before the doctor can blow her up and throw her into the Time Vortex.
** Ashad/The Lone Cybermen: Arguably the coolest Cyberman EVER, he was a patchwork creation from various cyber-suits, but without an emotional inhibitor. Could time-travel, and actually singlehandedly defeats the Doctor without blinking an eye, and without repercussion later. Seems to have been a willing volunteer to become a Cyberman(?), as he slit his own kid's throats when they joined the resistance. Other Cybermen are so terrified of him that they actively scream upon seeing him. Unfortunately is no match for The Master, who yeets him out of existence without breaking a sweat.
* The Master: The arch-enemy of the Doctor. Once their childhood friend, the two have become bitter, flirtatious, and homoerotic enemies. The flirtatious part isn’t an exaggeration as when the Master regenerated into a woman she kissed the Doctor as soon as they met, though she was just messing with him - and didn’t take it kindly when the Doctor called Davros his greatest enemy. For what it's worth, the Doctor's confession dial, essentially the time lord equivalent of a last will, is addressed to the Master. The Master's motivation invariably boils down to infatuation with the Doctor, be it wanting his acknowledgement, or wanting to beat him at something, or wanting him to break his principles and be more like the Master. He is as intelligent and cunning as the Doctor, but unscrupulous, egomanical, and makes no effort to hide his contempt for lesser beings. Though there have been several moments where he seems to have died, the Master always manages to come back. This is what happens when you’re in a fifty-year old franchise and are one of its most iconic villains. Notable episodes include The Auton Invasion, Survival, and Spyfall. (Also World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls, but that's already been recommended above.)
** Delgado!Master: The original one on screen, just turned up one day and immediately set about causing a mess. If you think they come off as a bond villain at points, then well done, guess what was very popular while Delgado had the role! Had some of the wittiest conversations with The Doctor ever "Come now Doctor, you mut see sense." "No.", and frequently invaded Earth with another monster of the week to act as the supporting cast and meatshields. Was going to be revealed as The Doctor's brother but then the actor died in a car crash in Turkey, and so one day they just never came back on screen.
** Crispy Master: Played by two different actors because their appearances were like half a decade apart minimum, showed the Delgado!Master at the end of their life and literally just running on energy drinks and spite. Had a really dark ending, by literally possessing and killing the body of Five's companion's father. Also is anyone going to talk about the fact that the prior actor died in a car crash, and then the next time we see the Master, they look like a really bad burns victim?
** Ainley!Master: Ran around the show like a saturday morning cartoon villain, with a costume and goatee to match. Seemed to want power for the sake of having power, and was killed multiple times on-screen, only to turn up a few episodes later to the surprise of no one at all. Also admitted on-screen that they were unable to die ever, which explains recent developments.
** Roberts!Master: Appeared for the TV Movie and <strike>that's it</strike> SIKE, Big Finish have finally got the actor to make a series, and apparently it's pretty damn good, which is nice to hear. Hopped between being The Terminator, Hannibal Lector, and saturday-morning cartoon villain depending on the scene they're in. Notable for [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDKuGBYpP3Y this absolutely hilarious line] in what is otherwise a really serious scene.
** The War Master: A fairly tragic and callous figure, played by none other than Sir Derick Jacobi. This editor would love to add more about the character but made a really silly decision to only listen to Big Finish releases in order of release date, so they are going to have to wait a while before they can update this page.
** Simm!Master: An absolute nut-case who at one point gains superpowers? This iteration of The Master has trauma to spare, and a deep-seated hatred of The Doctor, to the point that they end up '''spoiler alert!''' killing themselves to stop themselves from aiding The Doctor. Their madness and batshit crazy shenanigans can be explained because it turns out that The Time Lords planted a whole-ass Doomsday weapon into their head, and then set an audible countdown noise inside it too. bang-bang-bang-bang. You just heard it didn't you? Managed to get kicked out of Gallifrey for being too annoying, and then proceeded to do some of the most fucked up shit to The Doctor and their current companion seen to date on screen. No, seriously.
** Missy: Missy is pure refined character development. She starts out trying to make The Doctor like her by giving them an army of cybermen with which to conquer the universe, but when that fails decides to change tactics and attempts to be good, with mixed consequences. Oh yeah she also created heaven. Notable for firmly impressing upon the modern audience that Time Lords could change sex, and also for continuing the New Who trend of making the Master's first appearance in a given incarnation an absolute surprise to everyone. Also fits the standard Steven Moffat trope of "horny bisexual flirtatious top" that he seems to fall into whenever writing powerful women. He matures out of this though, and not a moment too soon. Again a rare point of fan consensus in that the majority of fans consider her to be the best onscreen version of The Master, with only the Delgado!Master getting a similar level of appreciation.
** Dhawan!Master, or The Spymaster: So yeah, nobody saw this one coming! Out of the blue Chibnall hit the entire viewership in the nutsack with a new, maniacal Master who ''really'' has it out for The Doc. Continues the trend of using the Cybermen as background villains for some reason, and also uses a Tissue Compression Eliminator! No one quite knows when they'll turn up again, if they'll turn up again (though odds are on considering the largely positive audience reception to them), or where the fucking hell this incarnation fits in the timeline, considering the last one was apparently permakilled. Ah well, that's never stopped this big bad before, and probably won't ever.

* Time Lords: Ancient Civilisation who long ago mastered Time Travel. Insanely powerful scholarly types who are mostly True Neutral isolationists. Currently all dead. Again. For fuck's sake Chinball, give them a break! At times their assholes who are no better than the Daleks. Mostly because their Founding members were jerks too. The fact that these guys produced some of the Doctor's greatest enemies and their own is a testament to their assholery. Small wonder that the Doctor doesn't come home to visit very often. Notable episodes include The Deadly Assassin, Trial of a Timelord, and The Day of The Doctor.
** The Rani: John Nathan Turners's attempt to make a 'mad scientist' character that wasn't an homicidal manic in a space wheelchair. Appeared in stories that are universally considered shit, and then never appeared again. Notable for being far cleverer than both The Master and The Doctor - she was top of her science classes.
** The Valeyard: If the Doctor was a villain, he’d become the Valeyard. Literally. The Valeyard is an evil incarnation of the Doctor with none of his good qualities and all of his intelligence. Showed up for one story arc which encompassed an entire season where the Doctor was on trial but once revealed to be the Doctor, everything changed and went pear shaped. Notable for being capable of scaring the Master. Hasn’t shown up again after his one story arc, despite being either the Doctor’s darker nature given form or just the Doctor turning evil, but hey, you never know...
** Rassilon: Surprisingly not a ripoff of [[Star Wars|Shiv Palpatine]], if only because Doctor Who came first. Basically Time Lord Mussolini, an incompetent warmongering dick with a serious hateboner for the Doctor.
*[[Squats|Sontarans]]: Mr Potato Men who live to fight and die in glorious combat for the Sontaran Empire. So balls to the walls crazy for war that they genetically designed themselves so that they can never retreat; their only weak spot being a probic vent at the back of their neck. Susceptible to tennis balls, however. They plan like Tzeentch itself designed them, fight like Khorne himself had designed them, and look like Nurgle himself had designed them. Now all that's missing is Slannesh. I guess that probic vent is used for more than just food then... Notable episodes include The Time Warrior, The Sontaran Experiment, and The Sontaran Strategem/The Poison Sky.
*Silurians: "Homo Reptilia" who owned the planet before humankind had evolved, and will rule it again! They went to hibernation/into space when the Moon came near to the Earth, and their scientists predicted that it would collide with them. And then it didn't. And they stayed sleeping. Almost all of their stories are the same - mining operations woke up a small colony; they fuck up all humans in a ten kilometre radius; The Doctor shows up; a peace settlement that will change the planet forever is written; and then the armed forces fuck things up for everyone and lots of people die. Actually serve to show a very cynical attitude towards humanity if you look at the subtext of most plots, particularly The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and The Silurians. Modern depictions seems to revolve around the human face subspecies stemming from The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. Notable episodes are Doctor Who and the Silurians (should have just been called The Silurians, but a rookie forgot to remove the "Doctor Who and the" bit before the final production and so it stuck), The Sea Devils (please this technically counts), and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.
*Weeping Angels: Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink. In essence, the scariest damned things to be spawned from the revival. They aren't statues and they aren't angels, they just look like them. When someone sees one, they turn to stone, but if you so much as blink, they can snap your neck in a fraction of a second or send you back in time to die, while they feed off your energy from the life you could have lived. Worse, they don't have to appear solely as angels. They can be any kind of statue - though when one of them became the Statue of Liberty it kind of nullified the scare factor. Notable episodes are Blink, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, and The Angels Take Manhattan.
* Ice Warriors: Martians.
* Judoons: Lawful Neutral rhino alien thugs for hired usually act as a policing force. Austismally logic bunch.
* Zagreus: A Time Lord fairy tale that came to life and was some scary shit. (Listen to ''Neverland'', ''Zagreus'', and ''Scherzo'' for more details.)
* Sharaz Jek: Basically the Phantom of the Opera transplanted to [[Dune|Arrakis]], menacingly over-acted to hamtastic perfection. Single-handedly fighting a war of insurgency against corrupt corporate overlords, using an army of androids he built himself, for control of a life-extending substance known as <s>The Spice</s> Spectrox that may be found only one one highly inhospitable desert planet.

==Miniatures and Doctor Who==

Miniatures based on Doctor Who have been around since the Eighties. In fact, one of [[Citadel Miniatures|Citadel's]] earliest plastic kits was a Dalek and a Cyberman, and a few Who-inspired models were also manufactured and sold by [[Games Workshop]] itself. [[FASA]] also made a few models.

The license got picked up by Harlequin in the Eighties, who made a few minis as well as some skirmish rules. The game was a skirmish combat affair that didn't really fit the show. Harlequin went bust decades ago and the official license lapsed at some point, but BlackTree Miniatures "own a huge stock" of unsold models (or they own the moulds and simply claim they have a huge stock. No one really cares).

Character Options produced a version of Heroclix called Doctor Who Microuniverse. It wasn't really a game, and the minis were pretty awful pre-painted, 28mm-scale minis. It is now out of print, thankfully.

[[Warlord Games]] acquired the license for a Doctor Who miniatures game in 2016, which has yet to be released as of 2017. Gale Force Nine is also licensed to produce a card game based on the series.

==The Doctor Who Miniatures Game==

In part thanks to so many terribly produced games and models in the past, small firm Crooked Dice wrote a scenario based action adventure miniatures game and called it The Doctor Who Miniatures Game. Slick, clever, quick to play and simple to get in to, it went down very well amongst nerds.

Originally produced for fun, it found a great deal of popularity in the part of the UK wargames community who wore tweed and smoked pipes. Buoyed by this success, Crooked Dice approached the BBC for an official license. Auntie Beeb said it would cost ££££ for an official license, but then it was aluded that they could continue to produce the game provided no direct profit was made.

Crooked Dice gave the Doctor Who Miniatures Game away for free, and also produced a more generic action-adventure scenario based game called 7TV (Seventies TV, you see). So in a weird reversal of the way things are done, the generic rules cost money but the specific rules are free.

Unfortunately Crooked Dice, who already was producing "look alike" miniatures - started selling hard copies of the rules. This led to problems for them when Warlord Games acquired the Doctor Who license to produce a Miniatures Game and Miniatures - and not only was their Ruleset dropped, but also their range of unofficial Miniatures.

==The RPGs==
[[Image:DoctorWho_charsheet.jpg|250px|thumb|right|sample charsheet from the Cubicle 7 game]]
There have been three Doctor Who RPGs published to date. The first was produced by FASA, using the Star Trek RPG system . The FASA game was notable for its strange use Doctor Who continuity and official fluff. For example, it overused the Celestial Intervention Agency from the The Deadly Assassin episode. An odd choice.

The Time Lord RPG was closer to the series and sported a simpler system, along with mechanics that tried to emulate the show (macguffins, bench thumping etc). Published by Virgin and written by Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans, it can easily be found on the web. Legendary in the Australian con scene for one of the fastest Total Party Kills ever (GM: "You're in a moving TARDIS..."; Players: "We get out.")

A new game was made in 2010 (and remade in 2011) by Cubicle 7 Entertainment (SLA Industries, Victoriana, Starblazer Adventures), this time in conjunction with the BBC and based on the most recent series. It is rules lite, and biased against combat (much like the teevee show itself). For example: initiative depends on what you're doing, and goes in this order: Talkers, Movers, Doers and Fighters. It is a much better game than the last two, in the sense that it has modern mechanics and actually reflects the show.

===External Links===

*[http://drwhominiatures.co.uk/index.html Doctor Who Minatures Game] website with free downloads. Regularly updated.

*[http://www.torsononline.com/hobbies/timelord/main.htm Time Lord RPG by Marsh] Now out of print, but you can download this game for free.

*[http://shop.cubicle7store.com/Doctor-Who-Adventures-in-Time-and-Space-Core-Set Cubicle 7 RPG store (10th Doctor edition)] Cubicle7 doesn't have any promo material of it's own about the game. Odd.

*[http://shop.cubicle7store.com/epages/es113347.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es113347_shop/Products/CB71109 Cubicle 7 RPG store (11th Doctor edition)]

*http://tardis.wikia.com A wordy wiki if you want to read up on the series and lore.

[[category:Roleplaying]] [[category:Television]]

Harry Potter

2022-10-16T22:24:15Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Main Cast */

{{British}}
{{Topquote|You're a [[wizard]], Harry|Hagrid, to Harry Potter}}
[[File:Hogwarts.webp|thumbnail|right|400px|Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry: A+ in Magical Education, F on OSHA compliance (and this place is the safest)]]
'''Harry Potter''' is a series of seven fantasy books written by J.K. Rowling, whose plot can be summed up as:

An Evil Overlord that was thought to be long gone is coming back. The Chosen One must defeat him by embarking on a epic quest to destroy magical objects related to said Evil Overlord - objects that reveal ties between Our Hero and the antagonist. He has the assistance of a wise old Wizard with a long grey beard, that will leave him along the journey. [[The Lord of the Rings|Yes, you've seen it before]].

It's a much beloved young adult fantasy series that started as a story for kids and kinda grew in tone along with the age of the audience. [[C. S. Lewis|Yes, you've seen ''that'' before, too]]

[[Star Wars|Oh, did I mention that the boy is an orphan living with his uncles and that the BBEG killed his parents?]]

Harry Potter is basically the forefather of the current young adult Urban fantasy genre, and series like [[Percy Jackson|Percy Jackson and the Olympians]] owe more than a small intellectual debt to it. While things like Anne Rice's novels and Vampire the Masquerade may have brought the urban fantasy genre into being in a recognizable format (well, disregarding western comic books, which are either considered their own genre or a kind of urban fantasy depending on who you ask), it was Harry Potter that brought the genre to kids.

Essentially, any fictional series about a kid from the ordinary world being whisked away into a secretive mystical one to face mystical problems - as well as the issues of it being hard to be a kid growing up - made from the 90s onwards owes something to Harry Potter, even if it's a story about deconstructing the Harry Potter type narrative. It also showed that there was a '''huge''' amount of money to be made from writing for tweens and teenagers specifically instead of choosing to go for either young children or adults. We're talking "quite possibly the most [[profit|profitable]] demographic to market towards" here.

In spite of this, no book has gotten even close to as much popularity among kids as Harry Potter. The closest to recapturing that kind of magic was Percy Jackson which was hobbled by some amazingly poorly thought out movie adaptations, though the Percy Jackson fandom is still very much on the large side for a fandom. However you could also argue that this is because after Harry Potter, when the young adult urban fantasy genre took off with a bunch more writers getting into it the readership also fragmented into a bunch of other series. Much like how no other space fantasy series has ever really managed to get even close to Star Wars level popular, and no Gothic Space Fantasy series has even approached 40k's popularity. The first in the genre to really take off tends to get the benefit of having no real competition when it first grows, while everything following it will have to fight a bunch of other people who also want to ride that wave. It's reputation has been tarnished recently after Rowling made some public comments on transgender people and doubled down on them.

Has a [[Skub|sequel]] (considered canon by the author) in the form of a stage play (and later a published script) where an adult Harry Potter struggles to deal with his past while his second son is troubled with living up to his father's reputation, all these while a dark, sinister plot is abrewing.

It also involves lot of time travel. And alternate timelines. And that woman with the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express [[grimdark|having worked there so long she's forgotten her own name and family]].
==Would you like to know more?==
The story is about an orphaned boy living with awful relatives. [[The Earthsea Cycle|He soon finds out he has magical abilites and goes to a Wizard boarding school where he makes friends, learns magic and does magical sports]]. Soon enough, learns about his family and gets wrapped up in affairs involving a Dark Wizard version of Hitler called Lord Voldemort and his associated assholes (including a Dark Wizard version of the Klan called Death Eaters and Nazgul rip-offs called Dementors). So basically the pipe dream of every disaffected teenager; this more than anything probably explains the series' breakout popularity.

The books sold really well, got a series of very popular movies which grossed higher than any other series of movies in history, probably got a fair bit of people interested in fantasy literature (given that they were mainly targeted to young adult readers) and generated a moderate amount of [[skub]] back in its day before the haters moved onto [[Twilight|things which were more uniformly panned]]. Given the target audience, it was also inevitable that the fandom created an unholy amount of fanfiction, including what's universally recognized as [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/1/My-Immortal the worst fanfiction ever.] But it is also the source of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4 the best (and most batshit insane) fanfiction ever, as well].

Besides its reputation for producing an ungodly amount of [[NSFW]] fan fictions produced by horny and sometimes illiterate teens, the fandom (particularly the adults that most of the initial audience has aged into) also has a reputation for [[TVTropes|having their worldview constrained entirely by Harry Potter]], constantly comparing real world events to the fictional book series; any time you see a political tweet or protest sign reference Harry Potter, it’s inevitably met with dozens of people screaming “READ ANOTHER BOOK” in response. It can be truly embarrassing to witness.

In general the series has good characters, even though the main cast looks a bit lacklustre when you think about them, and the main antagonist has not much to him besides "I'm Hitler, but with a snake face and magic". Most of the supporting cast are reasonably fleshed out, engaging in their way with decent motivations which make sense and are part of the story both in the individual books and over the course of the series.

The lore and world-building is at best hit and miss, and sometimes you feel that the author is pulling ''deus ex machinas'' and lore out of her ass to railroad the story forward, but the series is not the worst gateway drug to the world of fantasy literature a young kid could have, even if traditionalists would favor [[Tolkien]], and of course many a writefag would argue that worldbuilding and lore are secondary at best to a consistent theme, plot, and good characterization. Similarly, as what is essentially the forefather of teenager oriented urban fantasy; it's obviously going to have the usual issues that plague other series that basically spawn a subgenre around them; other later series can learn from it and build on it. Much like how Seinfeld doesn't seem all that special today because its lessons have been so thoroughly disseminated throughout the genre that looking at Seinfeld now is like looking at a prototype of a line of products you're already familiar with. That being said despite quite a lot of competition (the most serious being Percy Jackson though the fandoms themselves are on good terms), Harry Potter still generally holds up as one of the better examples of young adult urban fantasy literature.

Eh, no reason you can't try both Tolkien and Rowling. Enjoy what you want, but the difference quality of both person and art is plain and obvious in this instance. Best not to bother and roll with it.

===Main Cast===
[[File:Harry-potter-characters-book-vs-movie.jpg|thumbnail|right|400px|Dramatis Personae]]
* '''Harry Potter''': The Boy Who Lived and main protagonist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic An unassuming English kid with glasses that obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight]. The Dark Lord tried to kill him when he was a toddler, but his parents loved him and the spell bounced and made the Dark Lord vanish instead (if that raises questions you've probably already put more thought into it than the author did). Went to stay with his abusive aunt and uncle and didn't notice he was a Wizard until a hobo came to his house and told him. Not the smartest knife in the drawer, and for much of the series he's actually more hated than loved by the wizardry world due to him being an angsty kid and the author catering to the needs of the angsty kid audience.
* '''Hermione Granger''': Smart nerd girl and probably your first erection. When she gets a magical object that allows her to travel through time she uses it to study more instead of, for example, [[Old Man Henderson|solving every problem ever]]. Out of the blue she decided to bone the Comic Relief character at the end of the last book despite treating him as a dimwit for 7 years. The author has later admitted this was a mistake, even going as far as to say their relationship would be tumultuous.
* '''Ron Weasley''': Redhead comic relief. That's about it. Once he had a pet rat that was an old hairy man in disguise and slept with him. His brothers, due to the Marauder's Map (a magical object that shows the location of everybody in Hogwarts, [http://eggabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Easter_Eggs/Movies/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban/Naughty-Marauders-Map-MI-350x300.jpg with all the unfortunate implications]), probably knew about this and was totally ok with it. Bangs a chick way out of his league due to contrived plot reasons.
* '''Voldemort''': aka Magical Hitler but with the brush moustache swapped for complete hair loss and a snake face. No, really. He wants to eliminate everyone with muggle ancestry, wizard or not. Why? Because his mother date-raped his father with a love potion, said father abandoned them after getting off the potion and she died giving birth to him. That sucks, but no need to take out your issues on the rest of mankind. For half of the series he's in a ghostlike state until he gets himself a new body (he was noseless before, it was a side-effect of splitting his soul and putting the pieces in soul jars), thanks to the fact that he [[Lich|split his soul up into a bunch of different objects]]. Is finally killed for real when Harry destroys all the Horcruxes - himself included. WHAT A TWIST! But then Harry's still alive because he's the master of the Deathly Hallows! DOUBLE TWEEST!
* '''Albus Dumbledore:''' Headmaster of Hogwarts, most powerful wizard in the world and all around cool old coot. Initially considered a bit of an airheaded old codger who was none the less nice and supportive, but as the books progress, we learn he'd been playing 5D time travel diamond chess against the forces of Voldemort, secretly and clandestinely pulling the strings of all other characters in the series, like a noblebright [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]]/[[Lord of Change]]. Dies, but it’s okay, because he [[Just as Planned|planned around it]].
* '''Alan Rickman:''' As himself. Ron Weasley's actor was legit terrified of him for the first couple movies.

== Harry Potter stuff relating to tabletop games ==
*[[Harry Potter and the Tabletop RPG]]
*There are up to several [[GURPS]] modifications for a Harry Potter-themed setting.
*Kids on Brooms

[[category: Literature]]

Harry Potter

2022-10-16T22:23:34Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Main Cast */

{{British}}
{{Topquote|You're a [[wizard]], Harry|Hagrid, to Harry Potter}}
[[File:Hogwarts.webp|thumbnail|right|400px|Hogwarts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry: A+ in Magical Education, F on OSHA compliance (and this place is the safest)]]
'''Harry Potter''' is a series of seven fantasy books written by J.K. Rowling, whose plot can be summed up as:

An Evil Overlord that was thought to be long gone is coming back. The Chosen One must defeat him by embarking on a epic quest to destroy magical objects related to said Evil Overlord - objects that reveal ties between Our Hero and the antagonist. He has the assistance of a wise old Wizard with a long grey beard, that will leave him along the journey. [[The Lord of the Rings|Yes, you've seen it before]].

It's a much beloved young adult fantasy series that started as a story for kids and kinda grew in tone along with the age of the audience. [[C. S. Lewis|Yes, you've seen ''that'' before, too]]

[[Star Wars|Oh, did I mention that the boy is an orphan living with his uncles and that the BBEG killed his parents?]]

Harry Potter is basically the forefather of the current young adult Urban fantasy genre, and series like [[Percy Jackson|Percy Jackson and the Olympians]] owe more than a small intellectual debt to it. While things like Anne Rice's novels and Vampire the Masquerade may have brought the urban fantasy genre into being in a recognizable format (well, disregarding western comic books, which are either considered their own genre or a kind of urban fantasy depending on who you ask), it was Harry Potter that brought the genre to kids.

Essentially, any fictional series about a kid from the ordinary world being whisked away into a secretive mystical one to face mystical problems - as well as the issues of it being hard to be a kid growing up - made from the 90s onwards owes something to Harry Potter, even if it's a story about deconstructing the Harry Potter type narrative. It also showed that there was a '''huge''' amount of money to be made from writing for tweens and teenagers specifically instead of choosing to go for either young children or adults. We're talking "quite possibly the most [[profit|profitable]] demographic to market towards" here.

In spite of this, no book has gotten even close to as much popularity among kids as Harry Potter. The closest to recapturing that kind of magic was Percy Jackson which was hobbled by some amazingly poorly thought out movie adaptations, though the Percy Jackson fandom is still very much on the large side for a fandom. However you could also argue that this is because after Harry Potter, when the young adult urban fantasy genre took off with a bunch more writers getting into it the readership also fragmented into a bunch of other series. Much like how no other space fantasy series has ever really managed to get even close to Star Wars level popular, and no Gothic Space Fantasy series has even approached 40k's popularity. The first in the genre to really take off tends to get the benefit of having no real competition when it first grows, while everything following it will have to fight a bunch of other people who also want to ride that wave. It's reputation has been tarnished recently after Rowling made some public comments on transgender people and doubled down on them.

Has a [[Skub|sequel]] (considered canon by the author) in the form of a stage play (and later a published script) where an adult Harry Potter struggles to deal with his past while his second son is troubled with living up to his father's reputation, all these while a dark, sinister plot is abrewing.

It also involves lot of time travel. And alternate timelines. And that woman with the food trolley on the Hogwarts Express [[grimdark|having worked there so long she's forgotten her own name and family]].
==Would you like to know more?==
The story is about an orphaned boy living with awful relatives. [[The Earthsea Cycle|He soon finds out he has magical abilites and goes to a Wizard boarding school where he makes friends, learns magic and does magical sports]]. Soon enough, learns about his family and gets wrapped up in affairs involving a Dark Wizard version of Hitler called Lord Voldemort and his associated assholes (including a Dark Wizard version of the Klan called Death Eaters and Nazgul rip-offs called Dementors). So basically the pipe dream of every disaffected teenager; this more than anything probably explains the series' breakout popularity.

The books sold really well, got a series of very popular movies which grossed higher than any other series of movies in history, probably got a fair bit of people interested in fantasy literature (given that they were mainly targeted to young adult readers) and generated a moderate amount of [[skub]] back in its day before the haters moved onto [[Twilight|things which were more uniformly panned]]. Given the target audience, it was also inevitable that the fandom created an unholy amount of fanfiction, including what's universally recognized as [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/1/My-Immortal the worst fanfiction ever.] But it is also the source of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V4VxlsMuQ4 the best (and most batshit insane) fanfiction ever, as well].

Besides its reputation for producing an ungodly amount of [[NSFW]] fan fictions produced by horny and sometimes illiterate teens, the fandom (particularly the adults that most of the initial audience has aged into) also has a reputation for [[TVTropes|having their worldview constrained entirely by Harry Potter]], constantly comparing real world events to the fictional book series; any time you see a political tweet or protest sign reference Harry Potter, it’s inevitably met with dozens of people screaming “READ ANOTHER BOOK” in response. It can be truly embarrassing to witness.

In general the series has good characters, even though the main cast looks a bit lacklustre when you think about them, and the main antagonist has not much to him besides "I'm Hitler, but with a snake face and magic". Most of the supporting cast are reasonably fleshed out, engaging in their way with decent motivations which make sense and are part of the story both in the individual books and over the course of the series.

The lore and world-building is at best hit and miss, and sometimes you feel that the author is pulling ''deus ex machinas'' and lore out of her ass to railroad the story forward, but the series is not the worst gateway drug to the world of fantasy literature a young kid could have, even if traditionalists would favor [[Tolkien]], and of course many a writefag would argue that worldbuilding and lore are secondary at best to a consistent theme, plot, and good characterization. Similarly, as what is essentially the forefather of teenager oriented urban fantasy; it's obviously going to have the usual issues that plague other series that basically spawn a subgenre around them; other later series can learn from it and build on it. Much like how Seinfeld doesn't seem all that special today because its lessons have been so thoroughly disseminated throughout the genre that looking at Seinfeld now is like looking at a prototype of a line of products you're already familiar with. That being said despite quite a lot of competition (the most serious being Percy Jackson though the fandoms themselves are on good terms), Harry Potter still generally holds up as one of the better examples of young adult urban fantasy literature.

Eh, no reason you can't try both Tolkien and Rowling. Enjoy what you want, but the difference quality of both person and art is plain and obvious in this instance. Best not to bother and roll with it.

===Main Cast===
[[File:Harry-potter-characters-book-vs-movie.jpg|thumbnail|right|400px|Dramatis Personae]]
* '''Harry Potter''': The Boy Who Lived and main protagonist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Books_of_Magic An unassuming English kid with glasses that obtains a pet owl, and takes up his preordained destiny to enter a secret world of magic hidden in plain sight]. The Dark Lord tried to kill him when he was a toddler, but his parents loved him and the spell bounced and made the Dark Lord vanish instead (if that raises questions you've probably already put more thought into it than the author did). Went to stay with his abusive aunt and uncle and didn't notice he was a Wizard until a hobo came to his house and told him. Not the smartest knife in the drawer, and for much of the series he's actually more hated than loved by the wizardry world due to him being an angsty kid and the author catering to the needs of the angsty kid audience.
* '''Hermione Granger''': Smart nerd girl and probably your first erection. When she gets a magical object that allows her to travel through time she uses it to study more instead of, for example, [[Old Man Henderson|solving every problem ever]]. Out of the blue she decided to bone the Comic Relief character at the end of the last book despite treating him as a dimwit for 7 years. The author has later admitted this was a mistake, even going as far as to say their relationship would be tumultuous.
* '''Ron Weasley''': Redhead comic relief. That's about it. Once he had a pet rat that was an old hairy man in disguise and slept with him. His brothers, due to the Marauder's Map (a magical object that shows the location of everybody in Hogwarts, [http://eggabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Easter_Eggs/Movies/Harry_Potter_and_the_Prisoner_of_Azkaban/Naughty-Marauders-Map-MI-350x300.jpg with all the unfortunate implications]), probably knew about this and was totally ok with it. Bangs a chick way out of his league due to contrived plot reasons.
* '''Voldemort''': aka Magical Hitler but with the brush moustache swapped for complete hair loss and a snake face. No, really. He wants to eliminate everyone with muggle ancestry, wizard or not. Why? Because his mother date-raped his father with a love potion, said father abandoned them after getting off the potion and she died giving birth to him. That sucks, but no need to take out your issues on the rest of mankind. For half of the series he's in a ghostlike state until he gets himself a new body (he was noseless before, it was a side-effect of splitting his soul and putting the pieces in soul jars), thanks to the fact that he [[Lich|split his soul up into a bunch of different objects]]. Is finally killed for real when Harry destroys all the Horcruxes - himself included. WHAT A TWIST! But then Harry's still alive because he's the master of the Deathly Hallows! DOUBLE TWEEST!
* '''Albus Dumbledore:''' Headmaster of Hogwarts, most powerful wizard in the world and all around cool old coot. Initially considered a bit of an airheaded old codger who was none the less nice and supportive, but as the books progress, we learn he'd been playing 5D time travel diamond chess against the forces of Voldemort, secretly and clandestinely pulling the strings of all other characters in the series, like a noblebright [[A song of ice and fire|Littlefinger]]/[[Lord of Change]]. Dies, but it’s okay, because he [[Just as Planned|planned around it]].
* '''Alan Rickman:''' As himself. Ron Weasley's actor was legit terrified of him for the first couple movies.

== Harry Potter stuff relating to tabletop games ==
*[[Harry Potter and the Tabletop RPG]]
*There are up to several [[GURPS]] modifications for a Harry Potter-themed setting.
*Kids on Brooms

[[category: Literature]]

Horus Heresy

2022-10-16T01:22:44Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* Books XI - XX */

[[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|I never wanted this. I never wanted to unleash my legions. Together, we banished the ignorance of old night. But you betrayed me. You betrayed us all. You stole power from the Gods, and lied to your sons! Mankind has only one chance to prosper. If you will not seize it...'''then I will!!''' So let it be war! From the skies of Terra, to the Galactic Rim. Let the seas boil! Let the stars fall! Though it takes, '''the last drop of my blood''', I will see the Galaxy freed once more! And if I cannot save it from your failure, father...then let the Galaxy '''BURN!'''|Horus, making his own feelings known and [[A Game of Pretend|totally not projecting ''at all''.]]}}

{{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''', '''Paradise Lost IN SPACE''', '''[[The God-Emperor of Mankind|Jimmy Space]] and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decade''' 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. [[Derp|Also notice how the Gothic Sector and Port Maw, canonically bordering the Eye of Terror, are positioned a quarter of the galaxy away from it.]] [[Forge World|For some reason.]]]]
The Horus Heresy screwed with almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course) and changed the flavor of the Imperium's Grimdark from Stalinist Soviet "if you breathe a positive word about religion, we rape you and your family 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' to make the problem go away". 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]]
*[[Battle of Trisolian]]
*The Titandeath at [[Beta Garmon]]
*[[Siege of Terra]]

Following the Siege of Terra, Horus was permakilled, Konrad allowed himself to be assassinated, Ferrus Manus had already died in the Drop Site Massacare, Sanguinius was KIA, Big-E was interred onto the Golden Throne, the surviving loyalist 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 stories [[Alpha Legion|The Serpent Beneath]] and [[The Last Church]].

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]]. And there a couple that are just objectively bad (Battle for the Abyss).

===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 virus 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 Imperium's most effective superweapons.
*'''''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 of the III Legion from the 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 sucker punch.
*'''''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 cannot 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 GW had decided what to do with the Lion's loyalty and personality, so its descriptions of the Lion are outdated and do not match 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"! This book is still 100% canon, but in later books GW seems to have changed their mind on the Alpha Legion so they abandoned most of the plots from this book.
*'''''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 the 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, it explores many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanicum. Techpriests 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 defenses. 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 they're 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 everyone above him in 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 realizing 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 shenanigans 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 cliché one liners out there.
*'''''The First Heretic:''''' [[Lorgar]]'s turn to get a backstory 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. Significant 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 archaeologist 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 Guilliman</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 just by 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 has 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 promethium 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 in the middle of nowhere might be bad press when he's going to Terra.
** '''''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, Curze 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 Curze 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) 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 Guard for the endgame: steal the genetech, kill some Raven Guard, 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 fuckup in the shipyards that leaves 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 the Underworld 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, as the main framing device is that of the official records of the Ultramarines Legion with a ticking clock, with T=0 marking the begin of the Assault on Calth and the massive confusion that ensues depsite every single Ultramarine being surrounded by more red flags than you could find at a Communist party meeting.
*'''''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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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. When not showing off the two traitor primarchs, the book 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. The guy also resurrects the Word Bearers' waifu, apparently turning her into a perpetual in the process, only for her to be <s>kidnapped</s> rescued by the Cabal soon after. She is never seen again in the rest of the series. Best known for containing Angron's dressing-down speech toward Guilliman 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 millennia, 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 atheist. Unmarked 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. John Grammaticus is up to no good (probably), looking for an artifact infused with the Emperor's groovy god juice and there is a Word Bearer who doesn't seem to be buying into the whole "Chaos is so epic and cool" schtick of his legion. 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 and complains about how all the primarchs that sided with him are [[Perturabo|dickheaded]] [[Mortarion|edgelords]] or [[Konrad Curze|batshit]] [[Angron|lunatics]], while the cool guys like Sanguinius and Guilliman are still loyal to the Emprah.
**'''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 realize 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 Hearthworld''' - 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 agents 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. He finally gives up 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 foresees 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 the 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 Mortarion 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 exterminatus grade phosphex to the face (he survives nonetheless, 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 defenses 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 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' defenses 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 VERY malleable, Daemons lie, and that this was written by a man whose hate-boner for Big-E exceeds that of The Four, themselves). 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 fears that he has now run out of cards to play and can't yet 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 ritualized 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 Hands 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 fatal 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 millennium, 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-aspirant 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 for 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 gets Zardu Layak to speak Fulgrim's true name and bind him into joining in a plot to depose the Warmaster, believing that his refusal to completely submit before the Chaos Gods will lead to the Traitor Legions' ultimate defeat at Terra. This turns out to be a massive mistake that leads Lorgar to be utterly curbstomped by the revived Horus and told that he will be killed if Horus ever sees him again. Witnessing this, Zardu Layak and the Word Bearers present all swear allegiance to the Warmaster before Lorgar leaves with his tail between his legs. Layak frees Fulgrim who finds it all hilarious. Magnus makes an appearance at the end, swearing himself to Horus's service. "Alpharius" makes a token appearance to hand over Terra's defense 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 Fists 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 the 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. The 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 acolyte 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 never-ending 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 ''Nightfall'' 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 deep-strikes 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 realizes 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 daemon w/ invasion on the side, then departs with his forces. The world gets covered in blood clouds and is infested by daemons. Argonis then repeats 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 and all the new Imperial Fists who were inducted during the 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, signaling 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. Big-E 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 Titans 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. As disease spreads through the fleet, Mortarion becomes increasingly horrified and outraged as he realizes what's happening to his legion and finally kills Typhon in retaliation, but the Destroyer Hive reanimates his corpse, officially 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. Unfortunately, it turns out "Keeler" was actually Samus manipulating Mersadie to get her onto the ''Phalanx'' and use her as a gateway to invade the station, so she winds up committing suicide in front of Garviel Loken. Samus rampages around the ''Phalanx'' for a few minutes and is killed '''again''', this time by Dorn. Abaddon bypasses the outer defenses via a warp rift opened up by Ahriman, captures Luna, and convinces the matriarch of the Selenar to start making more Astartes for the traitors. The book ends with Horus, Fulgrim, and Angron arriving in-system along with the main strength of their fleets, meaning shit is now officially real.
*'''''The Lost and the Damned''''': This is it, ladies and neckbeards. The Siege has begun in earnest. Dorn is using millions of conscripts and all the vast firepower he’s installed on the Palace walls to blunt Horus's initial attacks, holding the V, VII, and IX Legions in reserve. Unfortunately, this is all more or less playing into the traitors’ hands. They want to cause as much death as possible so that the walls between reality and the warp will be thin enough to let hordes of daemons onto the planet and the daemon primarchs themselves can safely set foot on Terra without being banished by the Emperor’s psychic mojo. To their credit, Dorn and his brothers are aware of this, but also recognize that they’re screwed either way, so they decide to just go ahead and kill as many traitors as possible. After a few months of traitor Army regiments, Chaos spawn, and beastmen being sent in to soften the defenses up while the Dark Mechanicum build siege guns and towers to punch through the walls, the Death Guard finally show up after their side trip to visit Grandpa Nurgle. Horus sends them in first, mightily pissing off Angron in the process, and they immediately set about turning the warzone into a large-scale recreation of Passchendaele circa 1917. Jaghatai goes out to gather intel on the siege engines and gets poked with a plague knife, but as soon as he crosses back into the Palace grounds the Emperor’s psychic aegis cures him. He then takes half the White Scars to go defend the citizens of Terra from rampaging traitors despite Dorn ordering him not to, and promises to return when needed. Sanguinius rallies the defenders and leads his sons from the front even though Azkaellon and Raldoron would really rather he didn’t. The book ends with the World Eaters and Night Lords launching their first full-scale attack on the Palace walls; Angron challenges Sanguinius to battle while Raldoron beats Gendor Skraivok hollow and tosses him off the wall. The book reveals that despite their numerical superiority and the aid of the Chaos gods, Horus is maintaining control over his war effort and the other traitor primarchs only by sheer force of will: Lorgar, Curze, and Alpharius are out of the picture, Magnus is doing his own thing, Fulgrim is being a prissy dick, Perturabo is as much a whiny bitch as ever, and Angron is so uncontrollable that Kharn and [[Lotara Sarrin]] are forced to teleport him into the labyrinth Perturabo built to contain Vulkan until he can be set loose on Terra. Only Mortarion still seems relatively normal despite the fact he’s now a daemon primarch. Moreover Abaddon is getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. It turns out that the wound Russ inflicted on him at Trisolian has resulted in his soul slowly being drained. As a result, the Chaos Gods have to keep juicing Horus up, with the downsides of time-wasting sojourns into the warp and the gradual destruction of Horus's body. What's more, there are implications that Abaddon is being groomed to take over when Horus falls, all but confirming that the Chaos Gods expected Horus to lose his duel with the Emperor.
*'''''The First Wall''''': This book focuses on the battle for the Lion’s Gate spaceport, which is the tallest structure on Terra and the only place that void-going ships can dock on the entire planet, meaning that the traitors will be able to shuttle in reinforcements and materiel more easily if they can capture it. Perturabo details Warsmith Kroeger to command the Iron Warriors’ assault on the spaceport under the logic that Dorn will be expecting Pert to command the attack personally and won’t be expecting whatever battle plans Kroeger comes up with. Warsmith Forrix isn’t happy with this or with anything else that’s going on, since he’s realized that Horus is using the Iron Warriors in the same way the Emperor did and he's become increasingly disillusioned with Perturabo himself. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum sets a technophagic virus loose inside the spaceport and Zardu Layak, [[Abaddon]], and [[Typhus]] perform a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate Cor’bax Utterblight inside the Emperor’s wards. The Fists hold out as long as they can and inflict heavy casualties, but Dorn finally gives the order to withdraw and abandon the Gate as Perturabo lands his flagship atop the port and joins an assault led by Abaddon and Kharn. Sigismund duels Kharn and nearly loses while Dorn kills Zardu Layak, which allows daemons to manifest on Terra for the first time. He then has a brief exchange of taunts with Perturabo and the first Chaos Titans set foot on Terra, spelling a new stage of the battle. In the midst of all this is a little passage detailing just how many artillery pieces the Iron Warriors have landed on the planet, including two thousand [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisks]], fifteen hundred [[Manticore Launcher Tank|Manticores]], five hundred [[Medusa Siege Gun|Medusas]], sixteen hundred Siege Dreadnoughts, seven thousand Thunderburst guns, five hundred [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher|Deathstrike]] launchers and eighty-four [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank|Typhon siege guns]], plus uncounted thousands of Rhinos, Land Raiders, Vindicators, Predators, Sicarans, and [[Baneblade|assorted]] [[Fellblade|superheavy]] [[Spartan Assault Tank|tanks]]. [[Awesome|That sound you just heard was Josef Stalin and the entire Red Army popping a boner from beyond the grave.]] Meanwhile, to stop Cor’bax’s taint from spreading inside the Imperial Palace, Malcador recruits Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian to hunt down and eliminate any corrupted cults of the Emperor, giving us the weirdest buddy-cop pairing of all time. Malcador wants to see if he can weaponize the cult’s belief in the Emperor against the Chaos gods and sees Keeler as the key to doing so, while Amon would rather just stamp it out. They eventually find a cult that has been corrupted by Cor’bax. When the daemon uses their bodies to manifest inside the walls, Keeler, Malcador, and Amon team up to kill him. Malcador tells Dorn, Valdor, and the other Imperial commanders that he will allow the cult of the Emperor to exist until the Emperor himself says otherwise. While all this is going on, we get to see more of the siege from a mortal perspective. Katsuhiro, a veteran of the initial fighting outside the walls, is detailed to a section of the outer walls under attack by the Death Guard and eventually has to aid in putting down an outbreak of plague zombies. We also follow Zenobi, a seventeen-year-old line worker from the Afrik hive of Addaba who volunteered to serve in the Imperial Army, only it turns out that she and her entire regiment are pledged to Horus, though this ultimately results their city getting bombed to shit. (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, and could '''at best''' be described as misguided, inexplicable filler; sounds like a fun read, huh?) The novel ends with John Grammaticus arriving on Terra, mission unknown.
*'''''Saturnine''''': Dan Abnett's first HH book in seven years. Dorn is trying to decide which parts of the Palace need to be defended and which can be allowed to fall, as the Imperial forces are outnumbered, outgunned, and running low on supplies. He identifies four key parts of the defense that cannot be allowed to fall to the enemy, then decides which one he can afford to lose anyway: the Eternity Wall spaceport. The Saturnine Wall, one of the other key elements, has developed a subtle fault thanks to the relentless traitor bombardment. Dorn suspects that Perturabo will try to exploit it, so he lays a trap for the traitor assault force and calls in Arkhan Land to help fix it. While this is going on, Sanguinius kills an Iron Warriors Warsmith at the Gorgon Bar, then [[Awesome|solos a Warlord Titan]] and stares down three Warhounds until they turn tail and run for it. Jaghatai and the White Scars lead a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard and really ruin their day, further pissing off Mortarion. [[Abaddon]] enlists the entire [[Emperor's Children]] Legion and three companies of the Sons of Horus, led by the entire Mournival, to attack the Saturnine Wall with Perturabo's help; however, Perturabo anticipates that Dorn will expect them to do so and refuses to lend his aid. The III Legion attacks from the front, using three ancient and irreplaceable siege engines, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrow up from beneath with Termite assault drills. When the Sons of Horus emerge from their assault drills, they're ambushed by kill teams led by [[Garviel Loken]] and [[Nathaniel Garro]]. All three companies, including the famed [[Justaerin]] and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, are wiped out to a single (armless) man. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand ([[Blood Ravens|and takes his sword]]) and Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead except for Loken and Abaddon. Abaddon goes on a killing spree, but eventually gets beaten up by a nobody [[Blood Angel]], Endryd Haar, and Garro. Abaddon manages to kill the Blood Angel and Haar, but is almost killed by Garro, only to be [[Plot Armor|teleported to safety at the last moment]] (presumably losing his arms in the transfer) despite his own wish for death, as the Chaos Gods already have him in mind as their new Warmaster. Arkhan Land floods the fault line with thousands of tons of quick-setting rockcrete, [[Grimdark|entombing a bunch of the Sons of Horus beneath the palace forever.]] Fulgrim hurls his legion at the Saturnine Wall ''en masse'', which accomplishes nothing but getting 18,000 of them killed and destroying the siege platforms. Dorn and Sigismund fight Fulgrim; Sigismund manages to injure Fulgrim despite being hilariously outclassed, but before Fulgrim can finish the job, Dorn appears. He holds his own against his psychotic bishonen brother, inflicting so much damage that Fulgrim throws a tantrum and takes his legion and goes home, abandoning the Siege entirely. The two then fight a bunch of III Legion champions and defeat them all. In one particularly awesome moment, Sigismund feeds Eidolon his own sword and just straight-up kicks him off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on Team Horus who still gives a shit about winning the siege. The rest of traitor primarchs are all too indignant to focus on their alleged objective, too busy conspiring against each other, or too insane to care.
**Crucially to the ongoing progress of the Siege, the loyalists lose the Eternity Wall spaceport, but this was part of the plan. As noted above, Dorn identified four key points in the defense that he couldn't afford to lose, then chose the one that he couldn't afford to lose the least, personally took command at the Saturnine Wall, and sent Sanguinius and Jaghatai to hold the other two spots. Angron and the World Eaters assault the spaceport, and pretty much every named Imperial Army character in the book dies at this point, along with Jenetia Krole, the leader of the [[Sisters of Silence]], who gets killed by Kharn, and Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists, who literally dies standing while holding the main bridge into the spaceport. Also, Angron gets blown up by artillery but comes back to life since, y'know, he's a daemon prince and all. Sanguinius' visions are getting increasingly powerful and painful, especially when he winds up inside Angron's tortured mind. He eventually delves deeply enough to realize that Angron has sensed the annihilation of Nuceria. The [[Dark Angels]] and the [[Ultramarines]] are on the way!
**Other miscellaneous things that happen: John Grammaticus is trying to meet up with Ollanius Persson and encounters the Perpetual [[Erda]], who tells us that Big-E was named '''Neoth''' when they met, but that this was just one of the many names he's had over the millennia. It is also revealed that she is the true mother of the primarchs and is technically responsible for their scattering as the result of what can only be described as a fucked up custody battle - cue the sound of countless facepalms from the fanbase. Dorn has Kyril Sindermann form the proto-[[Inquisition]], and he recruits Euphrati Keeler and some other people to go around collecting interviews with soldiers, workers, and other residents of the Palace. Keeler interviews Basilio Fo, the mad genesmith from the short story ''Misbegotten'', and he reveals that he can create a biomechanical phage that could kill Horus, along with every other Space Marine and primarch in the galaxy. Keeler and her Custodian babysitter decide that this information should go to Dorn, just in case he decides he needs such a doomsday option. The Ollanius Pius myth is partly born from a Guardsman named Olly Piers standing up and defending a banner of the Emperor before dying at Angron's hands. Horus is sliding further into apparent senility as the Chaos Gods' power begins to overwhelm his body and mind to the point that it would have killed him outright had he not died in the duel against the Emperor first, much to Abaddon's disgust. He is almost totally disconnected from the siege, asks for things and immediately forgets asking for them, and keeps calling his equerry Maloghurst, even though Maloghurst has been dead since ''Slaves to Darkness''. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels arrives with a large chunk of the Dark Angels fleet, ready to aid in the battle. In short, a lot of named characters die and plot threads are set up for other books and the rest of 40K.
*'''''Mortis''''': John French's second book in the series. As the morale of the Palace's defenders slowly erodes under the pressure of the unrelenting assault and the malign influence of the Warp, the traitor Titans of Legio Mortis are unleashed to break through the Mercury Wall, with only the loyalist engines of the Legio Ignatum to hold them off. Not as good as ''Saturnine'' or ''The Lost and the Damned'', but not as bad as Zenobi's story in ''The First Wall'', it feels more like an anthology, though all of its stories have a common beginning and converge in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus has finally decided to take direct command of the traitor forces, but his first order to Perturabo is to send everything they have, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objects to such a terrible strategy, after which Horus sends his equerry to tell him to disperse his legion among the traitor forces and let the Death Guard take over their positions. Perturabo immediately realizes that Horus is about to pull some serious warp fuckery, which he's not okay with, so he orders a complete withdrawal of all IV Legion assets on Terra and fucks off, abandoning the siege entirely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the Titan battle in front of the Mercury Wall; the traitor forces have used Warp power to reanimate countless Titan wrecks collected from Beta-Garmon and elsewhere, using them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalist defenses before attacking with the full might of the Legio Mortis, the largest Titan legion in the entire Imperium.
** Meanwhile, in another corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist Imperial Army soldiers are still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them is Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of a gun from ''The Lost and the Damned'', who has fought from the Outer Wall all the way into the central palace and is still fighting because [[Grimdark|in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war]]. Their forces are initially led by a Blood Angel, but he dies during the battle and puts Katsuhiro in charge because this man's got nothing but unwavering belief in the Emperor and balls made out of titanium.
** Shiban Khan, to everyone's surprise, survived his shuttle crashing in ''Saturnine'' thanks to his extensive augmetic rebuild. He wakes up in the middle of nowhere and starts hearing the voices of his dead brothers as he limps toward the Inner Palace. It could be warp fuckery, as the land shows various signs of Chaos corruption, or perhaps more likely, he just had some severe head trauma due to the shuttle crash (and the sky's the limit when it comes to head trauma). Either way, Shiban wants to return to the fight, so he starts to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encounters an Army lieutenant with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and the man tags along with him. The lieutenant explains that he just found the baby in the middle of all this shit and took it without any question; I keep expecting it to be a daemon or something, but it ends up to be something hopeful, wholesome even. Later the lieutenant is severely injured by an actual daemon, but Shiban refuses to leave him behind and carries him and the baby. Eventually, they come across the line Katsuhiro's defending; though the lieutenant doesn't make it, the baby survives, which amazes the crumbling troopers to no end and boosts their morale. Shiban and Katsuhiro have a brief chat before Shiban keeps pushing on to rejoin his legion. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** We finally get to see psi-titans deployed!!! For a few paragraphs at least and in somewhat limited capacity. Princeps Aurum of the Ordo sinister (whom we saw in a previous short story tell Dorn to fuck off because being one of ''The Talons of the Emperor'', they only answer to Big-E himself), shows up and tells Dorn that the Emperor has personally authorized use of the Ordo Sinister, an act that simultaneously tells Dorn that the Emperor has commanded victory at any cost. We see a psi-titan strut up to a battlefield, order all friendly titans to fire warp missiles at itself, then redirects the warp power in the warp missiles to instant-kill several daemon titan engines, and thanks to their nature as [[blanks]], they deny the traitors any further resurrections, so anything they kill ''stays'' dead. They also tank damage without even staggering, simply repairing any damage they accumulate on the spot. However, the traitors brought a LOT of titans, so even those few Psi-titans we get to see are eventually overwhelmed, though they take a fuckton of traitors with them.
** On the traitor titan side, special siege titans are unveiled bespoke from Mars. Turns out you can just line up several big titans and hook up all their reactors to mobile reactors behind their shields, then slow walk towards the wall like a big phalanx advance. And you get called the special engine class of Warmaster Titans. Plus lots and lots of guns on the front.
** At the end of the last book, Corswain and his fleet came to reinforce the loyalists. Now we learn that he was expecting to meet the Lion and the main strength of the Dark Angels at Terra, but finds out that he is the only reinforcement that has shown up yet. If you have read the new Luther book, you know that he was lied to by Luther, and most importantly, the ten thousand Dark Angels he brought along were given to him by Luther, which means they're most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitors took the Astronomican and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitors' offensive long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? The Dark Angels probably could due to their abundance of Dark Age archeotec and The Lion's maybe [[Tuchulcha|Old Ones-creation biological computer Pinnochio macguffin... Thing]], but everyone else? Nonetheless, the plot decrees that Corswain and his Dark Angels must be given something interesting to do I guess. Thus, Corswain plans an assault through the traitor fleet blockade; with the sacrifice of the Emperor's personal flagship and the gap left by the Iron Warriors' departure, the Dark Angels successfully make planetfall on Terra and retake and secure the Astronomican by killing a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and a bunch of Kakophoni. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain cannot allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the Librarians, Vassago, is having second thoughts about the whole thing after the daemonic horrors he's just witnessed. When he tells this to his fallen brothers, they decide to kill him and keep on with their plan.
** The various storylines are tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist Titan legions begin to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's ragged force faces off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago is attacked by his fallen brothers; and the Legio Mortis finally reaches the Mercury Wall, the true Imperial Palace itself.
** Also, remember all of those weird metaphorical scenes of the Emperor being a dirty old man they put in every book? Turns out it is the physical manifestation of the struggle and suffering the Emperor is enduring in the spiritual world, and it is getting worse and worse. In previous books, he could still shelter himself in a cave and have Malcador deliver him food or something; now he is quite literally cooking under the sun in an open desert with only a dead tree for cover, and because the Chaos gods are winning, it has become impossible for Malcador to keep supporting the Emperor. So the Big-E is now facing off against the entire warp with nothing but his own willpower to sustain him. Horus keeps showing up to taunt his father and sometimes the Chaos gods accompany him like some kind of pet snakes. Every time he appears he is closer to the Emperor and at the end of this book he is finally able to reach him.
** Oh, Ollanius and his crew from Calth also return in this book. They finally make it back to Terra after bouncing through all of time and space, and then they infiltrate a hive overrun by the Emperor's Children in order to rescue John Grammaticus. Along the way, they run into someone named Actaea (who might be Cyrene Valantion based on John's horrified recognition of her) and a legionary calling himself Alpharius, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. Ollanius decides to team up with these two even though Grammaticus is getting some serious bad vibes off of them. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it really feels like it has nothing to do with the ongoing siege. This, and John's plot from the last book, feel like they should have gotten their own book instead of being cut to pieces and stitched into the main series. But again, it's not as bad and irrelevant as Zenobi's storyline from ''The First Wall''. At least it revealed Ollanius was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close, you ask? He was the Emperor's first Warmaster. He led an army to raze the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel Tower of Babel] to the ground, in the 40K narrative the tower was actually built by Cognitae precursors who were using it to learn Enuncia (first seen in the Eisenhorn books). After taking the tower the Emperor decides that he in his enlightened state can actually run the project better then the Cognitae. Ollanius disagrees and stabs the Emperor while using Enuncia to bring lightning down on the tower. John, having stumbled into this memory via being caught in the same pleasure-warp trap uses his psyker language ability to learn Enuncia on the spot. Uses it to unmake a daemon (as in ''permakill''), but gets a bad nose-bleed. The horror.
* '''''Warhawk''''': The Khan vs. Morty, round two. The end of the Siege is nigh, and everyone on Terra knows it. Angron and the World Eaters are loose inside the Mercury Wall, the Sons of Horus are happily killing anything that crosses their path, and the Death Guard have taken over the Lion's Gate spaceport after Perturabo ragequit halfway through ''Mortis''. Many of the XIV Legion are still coming to terms with their new warp-touched nature. Some of them aren't sure the bargain was worth the price, while others are happily adopting pet Nurglings and savoring the feeling of turning into walking sacks of pus and tentacles. Mortarion is using his daemonic powers to turn the port into a mirror of Barbarus and blanket the Palace with a psychic miasma of despair; the effect is so potent that even Rogal Dorn is beginning to crack under the strain. Jaghatai is tired of playing defense, so he rallies up the entire V Legion and every single tank that Ilya Ravallion can coax out of reserves to storm the Lion's Gate and retake the spaceport. They use the last intact orbital plate on Terra to shield them from the traitor fleet bombardments and charge across the leveled wreckage of the Palace's outer districts en masse, wrecking shit all the way until they slam into the Death Guard and their defenses. The two legions proceed to just shred the hell out of each other across the spaceport. We get an interesting comparison between their fighting styles here; the Scars dominate the battlefield when they can use their speed and maneuverability, and then when the fighting turns into a battle of attrition the Death Guard give just as good as they get. Jaghatai is in fine form; at one point he yeets a Leviathan Dreadnought with ''one hand'', and the narration explicitly states that everyone on both sides stops to watch him do it. The battle culminates in a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the Death Lord and the Warhawk. Mortarion literally beats the Khan to a pulp, but Jaghatai just laughs it off and needles Mortarion until he makes a mistake that lets Jaghatai gut him. Mortarion reminds the Khan that he can't die, since he's a daemon prince now, and the Khan reminds Mortarion that he can die, then pulls the classic "let the other guy impale me so I can kill him" move and decapitates Morty even though he's now got a power scythe embedded in his chest. The resultant explosion of psychic energy disorients the Death Guard and sends the Scars into a frenzy. Jaghatai's body is carried out on a Leman Russ, and just when it seems like they might actually have unexpectedly killed another primarch, Ilya Ravallion shows up and demands that he be taken to Malcador, who sets about putting the Warhawk back together. The White Scars' frenzy doesn't end until a newly raised khan gets word to Shiban that their primarch yet lives, and manages to remind Shiban that they were supposed to take the port, not destroy it. The Death Guard retreat in shambles, abandoning the Gate and rejoining Typhus, who had once again taken off to do his own thing earlier in the book.
**Dorn finally lets Sigismund off the chain, telling him to just go kill as many traitors as possible. On his way out to the field, he's given the Black Sword, which was forged in the dark times prior to the Unification Wars, and sets out to become the Emperor's Champion. He kills so damn many captains and praetors that whispers of "the Black Sword" spread across the Palace, and both sides seek him out, either to join him or to kill him. He rematches Kharn and puts him down, though not before Kharn has a lucid moment and is horrified by what Sigismund has become: a remorseless, passionless, icy-hearted killing machine who will raise [[Black Templars|an entire legion of fanatical killers just like him]] to crush the galaxy beneath their boots.
**Euphrati Keeler inspires thousands of civilians, stragglers, and refugees to take up arms and go drown the enemy in bodies in the name of the God-Emperor, establishing the foundations for the Imperial Cult and the Imperium's philosophy of sending wave after wave of conscripts and Guardsmen at the problem until it ceases to be a problem. Garviel Loken tracks her down and is disturbed by her new, more nihilistic mindset, but decides to stay by her side anyway.
**Basilio Fo runs around for a bit and gets attacked by a Night Lord who can apparently see the future and isn't sure if killing him or letting him live will do more damage. He's then retrieved by Constantin Valdor, who took a break from daemon-hunting to haul him back to the Sanctum Imperialis so he can go to work on his anti-Astartes phage. Valdor wonders if using the phage would interfere with the Emperor's plans somehow, since even he isn't sure what is or isn't part of the Big-E's schemes anymore. Really, the whole subplot is kind of pointless, since Fo just winds up back under guard and doing exactly what he wanted to do all along. Makes you wonder why the authors bothered setting him loose last book.
** Ollanius Persson and his merry band are still traveling to the Palace. Actaea is all but stated to be Cyrene Valantion, who has an agenda of her own that involves getting to Horus. "Alpharius" is one of the Alpha Legion infiltrators from ''Praetorian of Dorn'', who's apparently just been kicking around the planet since his legion's attack on Pluto failed. They fly all the way to the Palace and start making their way into the Dungeon to get on with whatever their missions are, planning to pick up some more Alpha Legionnaires who were planted in the catacombs.
** The Sons of Horus are quietly starting to turn on each other. With Horus still sitting on his arse and doing nothing to lead his legion, some of his captains are starting to refer to Abaddon as the XVI's Legion Master, which is pissing off the hardcore Horus loyalists. Most of them end up getting killed by Sigismund anyway, though.
** Erda dies. Maybe. Erebus turns out to have disguised himself as a random Word Bearer in order to reach Terra and track her down, and after he introduces himself he tells her that her scattering of the primarchs was such a nice gift to the Chaos Pantheon that they themselves sing her praises in gratitude. He offers to help her achieve apotheosis and become a queen of the warp as a reward. Erda sneers at him and tells him that he's being manipulated by the cast-off thoughts and unconscious desires of humanity; more or less confirming that she knows many of the same truths about Chaos as the Emperor does, but unlike Big-E, she perhaps underestimates the danger they pose. That might also be why she tries to say it's not her fault some of the primarchs were corrupted and fell to Chaos, deflecting the blame onto the primarchs themselves, Big-E, society (that's actually barely an exaggeration), and basically everyone but herself. Erebus eventually gets sick of her obfuscation and summons four greater daemons to kill her. However, Erda's able to defeat them pretty comprehensively, with Erebus assuming they've been banished, but the book suggesting that they've been permakilled. Regardless of which however, the fight still leaves her drained enough that Erebus is able to hit her with a psychic attack that overwhelms her with the true consequences of what she did. Incidentally, this book does the seemingly impossible and actually makes us root for Erebus (the quintessential Quizling-Hitler High School Meangirl hybrid in space) of the entire Horus Heresy, due to him dropping some much needed truth-bombs on Erda (humanity's worst mom) and hands her some long overdue comeuppance. Erebus then moves to finish her off and wreck her house, [[A Game of Pretend|but does so offscreen]]. As he's leaving, however, he wonders if she let him kill her, and if so, why.
*'''''Echoes of Eternity''''': ADB's contribution. [[Meme|We're in the endgame now]]: the Palace defenses have completely collapsed, the Khan is down for the count [Shiban Khan leads the Lion's Gate Spaceport in his absence], Dorn is surrounded at Bhab Bastion, Corswain and his Dark Angels contingent have locked down the Astronomicon but are ordered to stay put, and all other surviving loyalist troops have been driven back into the Sanctum Imperialis, and Guilliman and the Lion still haven't arrived. Angron is leading the World Eaters and Sons of Horus toward victory as Sanguinius rallies his troops for a last stand at the Eternity Gate. Will almost certainly have Sanguinius duel Angron as the big climactic fight.
** A lot of this books focuses on the defenders retreat to (and attackers assault on) the Eternity Gate leading to the Sanctum Imperialis, specifically their mustering and battle before the Delphic Battlement. That being said, this is also the point in the siege where things really start to go [[Not as Planned]] for Team Chaos, and as ever, it's often as much due to them getting in their own way, just as much as the efforts of Team Emperor. The Imperial side of things is mostly narrated through the perspectives of Nassir Amit and Zephon of the Blood Angels. Zephon apparently ''wasn't'' killed back in Saturnine and was just taking a nap until Arkhan Land and some Legion serfs fix him up with Dark Age archeotech and send him on his merry way. Meanwhile, the Chaos side of things is told from the POV of the World Eaters Apothecary Kargos from ''Betrayer'' as he tags along with a random Word Bearers Chaplain, reminiscent of Kharne and Argel Tal's previous bro-ship. It doesn't matter though, because Kargos gets curb-stomped by the Flesh Tearer and left for dead by his Word Bearers buddy. After a day of fighting, the defenders begin to retreat to the Sanctum, knowing that whoever is left on the outside after the doors close will be daemon chow. Sanguinius duels Ka'Bandha and wrecks him pretty one-sidedly. Just as the gates are being closed, a Legio Audax (the same guys from ''Betrayer'') titan holds the door open long enough for Angron to swoop in and start fighting the Angel. The two duel, and Angron gets a good sword-stab to Sanguinius' gutmeats, but then Fabulous Hawk Boy rips the Butcher's Nails from daemon Angron's head and drops him to the ground before heading inside and letting the gates close.
** There's a sub-plot about Vulkan going into the shattered remains of the Emperor's Webway project to duel with Magnus, who is on the other side after being ejected in ''Fury of Magnus''. Magnus does a bunch of magic tricks to Vulkan, but Vulkan is an [[Perpetual|unkillable]] primarch with a big fuckoff hammer and eventually Magnus gets tuckered out long enough for them to 'kill' each other. Magnus is banished from the Webway and Vulkan eventually gets up and wanders out. One revelation from these parts is that the Emperor's 'you only perceive me how I want you to perceive me' shtick extends to the Primarchs, as Vulkan remembers the Emperor's offer to Magnus to lead the Grey Knights as a stern 'lol gtfo'. Well that's one interpretation anyway; the other is that the corruption of Chaos wormed its way yet further into Magnus, altering his cognitive function, allowing him to think of himself as the victim, and thus ensuring that Magnus would dance further to their tune.
** We also get a look into how things are going in the fleet and for some of the mortal followers of Chaos. The aforementioned Legio Audax Warhound, the ''Hindarah'', has been on Terra pretty much since the beginning. It's princeps still believes herself to be alive, and frequently hallucinates that the cockpit of her god-engine has become an abattoir of horrors, but then she comes back to it and everything seems normal again. It isn't until we get another character's view on the interior that we see that, yeah, the princeps and moderati have all fused into a ''[[Chaos Spawn|that thing]]''... Yuck. Lotarra Sarrin, everyone's favorite spunky girl-boss captain of the ''Conqueror'', has become a corrupted ''thing'' partly fused with her command throne, while the parts of her that wanted to run away from the horror of it all became a ghost that the rest of the crew just sort of tolerate. This ghost even manages to get in a call to Horus aboard the ''Vengeful Spirit'', who has continued to deteriorate from 'kooky grampa' to 'scary kooky grampa'. It's heavily implied that Argonis is the only one left really running the fleet.
** The book ends with the Lion's Gate Space Port finally opening fire on the traitor fleet, much to the horror of those aboard, who were caught completely unprepared, in close formation while stationary in geosynchronous orbit, and immediately starts getting torn to pieces. They then receive a message from its [[White Scars|new occupants]], who basically just calls to laugh at them. [[Troll|Then he hangs up]]. In the epilogue a few pages later, we get a sweet little note from Guilliman to Sanguinius, saying that he's a couple days from the system's edge and only a solar week from Terra. However, this message is intercepted and blocked by daemon Lotarra Sarrin from reaching the surface.
** A lot of this helps to set up and answer the ultimate question of "why did Horus drop the void shields?" At this point in the siege, the defenders are on their very last legs. Dorn and a lot of forces are cut off at Bhab Bastion, while everyone else who is still alive has fled inside the Sanctum Imperialis. There are no more walls to get behind, nowhere else to run to. On the Chaos side of things, by book's end, Horus is no longer the smug little shit we've seen throughout the siege, and is instead now shitting his pants, because he has now lost every single one of his generals. Lorgar had already been driven out for plotting to overthrow Horus, Konrad is not even in the correct side of the galaxy, Alpharius/Omegon (it's hard to keep track of which one is which at the best of times) died at Pluto while the other twin remains at large elsewhere, Fulgrim fucked off during ''Saturnine'', Perturabo during ''Mortis'', Mortarion got clapped by the Khan in ''Warhawk'' and shunted off into the warp, and by the end of ''Echoes'', both Magnus and Angron ([[Skub|arguably Horus' two most OP subordinates]] have been reduced to greasy, whiny smears, staining sections of the Webway and Eternity Gates' floors, respectively. To make matters worse for Team Chaos, but Horus especially, (as if any more were needed), with the death or absence of their respective primarchs, a significant percentage of the remaining astartes forces under the Warmaster's command (maybe even up to '''HALF''') have lost anything even remotely resembling unit cohesion, and in the case of The Thousand Sons and World Eaters, probably permanently; the former having fully succumbed to the flesh change en masse and the latter evidently now practicing for the upcoming [[Battle of Skalathrax]] by going all-in on the whole Teamkilling Fucktard thing, whereas before they'd only engaged in the occasional Teamkilling dalliance. The board, as they say, is set for the final showdown.
*'''''The End and the Death''''': This is it. 17 years and over 60 books, all leading up to ''the'' main event of the Heresy: the duel of the Emperor and Horus, as written by [[Dan Abnett|the man who started the series]][[Awesome|.]] Will be split into multiple volumes, because there's no way in hell BL wouldn't milk this for all it's worth, and because Abnett belongs to the school of write a shit ton of words (thankfully, unlike [[A Song of Ice and Fire|someone else we can name]] he actually finishes his shit).
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The first novella in the series. Flashback to the compliance of the Selenar gene cults on the moon, the high supreme matriarch tells a grumpy gene witch to take their best gene tech and hide it from the Emperor while she starts a date/mind purge to wipe out all knowledge of the tech from existence before she surrenders to the soon-to-be Luna Wolves. Flash forward to the crew of the ''Sisypheum'' returning to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna through a lot of luck and bad traitor captains. They pick up a distress signal from Ta'lab Vita-37 saying that the Sons of Horus are breaking through the defenses she has built around the Magna Mater - a silver case containing all the genetic knowledge used to make the first Space Marines. They manage to meet up with Vita-37 and make their way to the center of a moon volcano just in time to snatch it from some tech-priests. Some explosions happen and we get to see Tarsa the Salamander Apothecary walk through radioactive lava while hallucinating that Vulkan lives and dying as he hands the case to Ignatius Numen who also waded in. He dies too because [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_(1997_film) radioactive lava], but the case gets out of the lava. Justaerin Terminators chase them through the gene labs, and Vita-37 unleashes a bunch of hideous gene-monsters on the Terminators before dying. One spooks them cause it has the face of Horus, but the Terminators finally form up and continue the chase. The last two Iron Hands hand off the Mater to Sharrowkyn and tell him to run like hell while they slow down the Terminator squad, with predictable results. Sharrowkyn gets rescued by the other two Iron Hands in a Storm Eagle, and they make it back to the ''Sisypheum'', while Thamatica uses a Selenar combat AI to destroy a fighter chasing them before it turns back on him and eats his brains. Magnus makes an appearance and saves the ''Sisypheum'' for some reason, then leaves. Wayland drops off Sharrowkyn on an abandoned refueling station before flying away to distract the traitors. Sharrowkyn has to go into suspended animation, Garuda the mechanical eagle watches over him as he passes out, under the name of the station "Sangprimus Portum", strongly implying that the Magna Mater is the relic that will be given to Archmagos Cawl to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which focuses on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed inside the Palace. Alivia Sureka agrees to come with Malcador in exchange for protection for her adopted family, and he takes her down trans-dimensional tunnels known only to him (it's strongly implied that Valdor would fuck Malcador up for keeping these tunnels secret even from the custodians). Magnus and some of the Thousand Sons breach the Emperor's telesthetic wards, saving some civilians along the way, and storm the Hall of Leng deep beneath the Palace. They're met by Malcador and Alivia, and Magnus demands to know where the last shard of his soul is. Malcador admits that it's already gone, having been fused into Revuel Arvida to produce Janus, so Magnus throws a psychic tantrum that permakills the Sigillite. One of the Thousand Sons kills Alivia for some reason, so Magnus explodes his head for disobeying his orders not to kill anyone. He and his Astartes make it all the way to the Golden Throne, only to find out that the Emperor let them through because he wanted to offer Magnus a shot at redemption. He explains that, though Magnus has been wounded and touched by Chaos, there is still a chance for him to return to the Imperial fold, at the head of [[Grey Knights|a shiny new legion of incorruptible psychic warriors]]. All he has to do is abandon the remaining Thousand Sons to their fate, as they're already too corrupted to be brought back. Vulkan, who is still guarding the Throne, pleads with Magnus to accept the deal, but Magnus decides that abandoning his legion is too dear a price to pay and tries to kill the Emperor. Vulkan proceeds to kick the ever-loving shit out of him until Magnus finally surrenders to Chaos and ascends into his daemon primarch form. He forever repudiates the Emperor before being ejected from the Palace. Alivia resurrects, finds Malcador's barbecued corpse, and surrenders her Perpetuality in order to bring him back, dying permanently herself in the process.
* '''''Garro: Knight of Grey''''': The third novella in the series, featuring Nathaniel Garro's final showdown with Mortarion as he fights to protect Euphrati Keeler.

==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. The surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading, and shortly before the Siege of Terra Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt from its prison in the ruins of Prospero into his book so he can use it to get past the Emperor's psychic shield.

===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. 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 who have just humiliated a compliance force of Ultramarines and Thousand Sons. 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 throws his weight around when he arrives and tells off the Ultramarines commander for getting his ass kicked, then learns that the Gardinaal are actually some tough mothers, with their own genetically enhanced soldier caste and a willingness to nuke their own cities if it'll kill some Imperial troops. Ferrus quits 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 his own way, 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. A meeting takes place between Sanguinius, Magnus and the Khan to talk about protecting the Librarius but Magnus is dismissive as ever about it and doesn't seem to take the issue very seriously. The White Scars fight together with the Luna Wolves against Greenskins and the former legion uses their Librarius against the Orc shamans, in order to not miss a conquest deadline set by the Khan, who of course likes to go very fast in all manner of ways. This has a subtle backfire for the Imperium, as the Luna Wolves disapprove of the Librarius. Horus himself is implied to give Jagathai the cold shoulder as a result of this, due to Horus trying to be on his most neutral, goodie good boyscout behavior, in anticipation of winning the title of Warmaster. The Khan thus loses support of Horus regarding the psyker dilemma. 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. Much better book than most in the Primarchs series, as it's basically a Horus Heresy book and not a novel about a no-stakes Crusade campaign (Guilliman's book) nor a deep dive into the Primarch's life before the Emperor (Lorgar's). This is also a companion piece / prequel to Brotherhood of the Storm (this book directly intertwines with Brotherhood near the end) and Scars.

===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 grief 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 [[Warhammer High|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. Sevatar leaves the choice up to the investigating officer, and it's implied the officer chooses to hush up the report. 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. Shaken from the fight, Lorgar heads to his room and slams the door behind him for a few millennia.
:'''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 had a sculpt-off with a prodigy artist, and just like Fulgrim he made a perfect statue. But the artist worked for a decade to make a cool statue of some hero that showed a different facet of his life/personality from the angle you were standing, and practically everybody who saw them side by side said that was better than Pert's 3D-printed like replica. Pert slapped the statue and never spoke about it again. 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 up in the bowels of his flagship, causing all sorts of disgusting changes to take place. Kharn goes to talk to him and finds 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 millennia ago. 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. The 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. [https://youtu.be/X2Hb4bngxJ8 A story forever immortalized in song form].
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over most of 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 (Basilio Fo) is 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. He sends a big ball of human hands to surprise strike Horus in his command post, but Horus naturally defeats it messily. For all his own abominations, Fo admits that he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created. The epilogue shows him laughing his ass off in his cell on Terra when the Siege starts because he's kind of been proven right.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails and the Ghenna massacre. 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. There's also an epilogue where Kharn happens to ransack Ghenna 10,000 years later and comes across an embellished statue of the World Eater captain he beheaded, and has a rare moment of clear headed dispair for what he and his broken legion have become.

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. [[Slayer|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. So he really just tortured the shit out of Vulkan for shits and giggles, what a dick.

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 weren't limited to just the ruling tyrants but are completely integrated into the planet's society, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him (Liberating Humanity from Life<sup>tm</sup>).
:'''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 on the galactic fringe 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 Khrave's 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 Dark Angels, showing why even the Alpha Legion saw they were too tough a 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 passphrases 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'', the 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 [[Meme|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. 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 the Angels 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 be 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. 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 comes across 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 (Alpharius even expresses a foreboding worry that Horus is carrying too much on his shoulders), The Lion to a certain extent (whom Alpharius speculates was the only brother to see through him and sense the truth), 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?)

===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/foster father, 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 and the Imperial Fists happen upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack their fleet and are 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 and the Alpha Legion in preparation for the day that might see them standing as the Imperium's last line of defense. 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.

===Mortarion: The Pale King===
Set during Mortarion's early days in the Imperium, just after the events of ''The Verdict of the Scythe'' and flashing back to the Conquest of Galaspar, his first campaign as primarch of the Death Guard. As he's settling into command of his legion, Mortarion learns of a noncompliant human empire known as the Order in the Galaspar Cluster. Billions of people are enslaved, kept permanently drugged up, and forced to work themselves to death for the enrichment of the High Comptrollers, a pack of oligarchical assholes who refer to their slaves as "labor units" and have them executed and turned into nutrient sludge because their baking wasn't up to par (no, really). The Order's similarities to the Overlords of Barbarus piss Morty off to the point where he rejects the other Imperial commanders' suggestion that they blockade and besiege the cluster and decides to do a Leeroy Jenkins-style decapitation strike instead. He takes his fleet and barges clean through the Cluster's exterior defenses before ramming a cruiser into the side of the largest hive on Galaspar Prime and going out to kick ass the Death Guard way: fistfuls of rad grenades, rivers of phosphex, and power scythes, all topped off with plenty of orbital bombardments. No one who belongs to the Order is allowed to survive; Morty and the legion kill most of the Comptrollers even when they try to surrender and leave a few to be torn to pieces by their former slaves. Morty expects to be praised for his work, but the Emperor seems upset and sends Horus and Sanguinius to call him to account. Both primarchs are stunned by the level of destruction Mortarion has wrought, and When he tries to justify himself to his brothers, Horus points out that all he's done is replace one kind of tyranny with another. Morty has a brief moment of clarity and wonders if there is a better path forward for him and his legion. Ultimately, however, he concludes that the examples of Galaspar and Absyrtus justify his way of war and decides to become an embodiment of unstoppable, unrelenting Death, [[Nurgle|and we all know how well that worked out for him.]] Also features [[Typhus|Calas Typhon]] and [[Knights-Errant#Nathaniel Garro|Nathaniel Garro]] in their early days as line legionaries. Typhon falls into a disgusting sewer at one point and runs into a psyker who seems to know what he'll become, while Garro is the sole survivor of a kill team sent to take out the Order's chief asshole, which is probably what set him on the path to becoming battle-captain of the Seventh Grand Company.

===Rogal Dorn: The Emperor's Crusader===

Fafnir Rann and Sigismund are standing around on the walls of the Imperial Palace just before the Siege, wondering why their primarch got the job of fortifying Terra, when Malcador pops out and reminds them of the Night Crusade, whereupon all three of them start reminiscing about it.

Six decades into the Great Crusade, ten years after Dorn was recovered and shortly after Lion el'Jonson was found, Dorn, Fulgrim, Horus, and the Lion are ordered to deploy into the Occluda Noctis, an area of the galaxy obscured by a major Warp storm. Their goal is to bring the area into Imperial compliance and find the source of an unknown threat that’s already destroyed multiple expeditionary fleets. All four of them have their own ideas about how best to prosecute the campaign; the Lion wants to work his way in from the periphery of the Occluda, while Dorn’s plan boils down to “drive my fleet into the heart of the Occluda and get shit done”. He and the Lion disagree about who’s right to the point where Horus and Fulgrim have to try and calm them down, but Dorn insults the Lion, who demands an honor duel. The Lion’s champion wins because Dorn forgot he had Sigismund, and Rogal immediately apologizes to his brother for insulting him. Ultimately, they agree to do both plans. Dorn’s works surprisingly well, though the Fists don’t rack up nearly as many compliances as the Dark Angels and Emperor’s Children since he's insisting on a diplomatic approach and the fleet has to be careful when making Warp jumps in the Occluda. They eventually encounter the unknown enemy, which turns out to be a lost human civilization called the Kapikulu Continuum that uses cloaking tech and special warp gates to get around, requiring Dorn to up his game to counter them. He manages to outsmart and defeat the Continuum's fleet and convinces its leaders to join the Imperium. At the peace negotiations, he learns that the Continuum used to be the slaves of a xenos race that altered their brains to grow a special neural web that lets them use all their nifty technology (and also makes their heads explode if a psyker tries mind-probing them), which means that they’re not technically human anymore. Dorn concludes that he can’t risk letting them join the Imperium and orders them to be wiped out, following the exact letter of the Emperor’s orders: “Remove this hidden threat.” He is genuinely distressed by this outcome, but sucks it up and moves on.

The whole point of the story turns out to be summing up Dorn’s character: he was made the Praetorian of Terra because he can be trusted to do exactly what he is told to do, fulfilling both the word and spirit of the Emperor’s commands, and there’s no one else the Emperor would rather have guarding his capital world. Also a funny sidenote: Perturabo is found during the course of the Night Crusade and Dorn sends him a friendly welcome message, which one character declares will certainly lead to a greater fraternal bond between them in future.

===Sanguinius: The Great Angel===
A disgraced remembrancer joins the IX Legion on campaign and learns more about the early days of the Blood Angels, possibly including some of their more unsavory secrets.

===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 officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Curze 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."

==Horus Heresy Character Series==

A subseries of novellas and short stories focusing on major characters from the Crusade and Heresy eras. Originally these were part of the Primarchs series until BL finally split them off into their own category.

===Valdor: Birth of the Imperium===
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.

===Sigismund: The Eternal Crusader===
Solomon Voss comes to interview Sigismund for the first time near the end of the Great Crusade, and Sigismund reveals why he believes that there will only be war in the Imperium's <s>grimdark</s> noblebright future.

Most of the novel is concerned with Siggy's backstory: he was an orphan recruited from the slums of Terra by the Night Lords, but the initial genetic testing revealed he was more compatible with the Imperial Fists, War Hounds, Luna Wolves, and Raven Guard, in that order, so he got bumped into the VII Legion instead. He earned his position as First Captain by beating 200 other Templar Brethren in one-on-one duels, with his final opponent being a Contemptor Dreadnought containing the guy who coached him when he joined the Templars. He's named Dorn's personal champion after winning a duel with an Iron Hands champion over whether Dorn or Ferrus was right about the proper prosecution of a campaign. We also get to see his infamous duel with Sevatar, which lasted an entire day until Sigismund was about to land the killing blow and Sevatar cheated to end it, and his time with the World Eaters, where he picked up his habit of chaining his sword to his arm. Most interestingly, he admits that he never wanted to be recruited for the Legions, and that if he knew as a child what he'd become, he'd still have said no. Voss further realizes that Sigismund is hoping to die at some point so he can escape the endless cycle of conflict. The book ends with Voss summarizing what Sigismund believes: there will always be war, because even if the Imperium pacifies the galaxy, it will still have to fight against the cruelty, savagery, and cowardice of human nature. Needless to say, later events proved Sigismund to be absolutely right in every possible way.

==The Tabletop Wargame==
[[Forge World]] produces a line of books and models (in line with the old [[Imperial Armour]] and [[Warhammer Forge]]) to allow players to fight battles from the Horus Heresy, with rules and models for the [[Primarchs]] (both pre- and post-fall, for the Traitors), named characters who were romping around back then and ancient vehicles and machines that would be one off units in 40k armies, being fielded en-mass. Originally an add on system for [[Warhammer 40,000]], it became it's own game with a rulebook after 40k moved on to [[Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition|8th edition]] making it a sort of legacy game for the older style of 40k edition and also meaning the game has become a refuge for fa/tg/uys who don't enjoy 8th/9th edition 40k. Since the game is set during the 31st millennium pretty much all the armies are more archaic versions of their 40k counter parts, with lots of rules and quirks that help differentiate the factions from their future selves, such as legion tactical squads being able to be fielded in 20 man squads representing how much bigger the legions were and [[Daemon]]s not having their gods properly identified (though still having rules for god specific daemons) and having vague unit names to represent the only basic understanding the Imperium had of them. There are no [[xenos]] armies unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask), but all the factions that are in the game are very customisable with a huge array of rules, army types and really good conversion opportunities being able to be brought to the table, especially for Mechanicum, Daemon and Militia & Cults armies. 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.

Following the passing of Alan Bligh and the re-organisation of Forge World as a studio, the fate of this wargame had been seen as a bit precarious. While there were probably more books to cover up to and likely including the Siege of Terra, it seemed increasingly likely that Daddy GeeDubs wasn't keen on letting FW continue writing for this game (or making massive monsters and tanks for the mainstream games) on top of their work on [[Necromunda]] and [[Blood Bowl]]. One only had to look at how gutted the Imperial Armour books became in recent editions to see the writing on the wall. That said, the game had itself a sizeable following, especially after 8th Edition 40K essentially threw out all the crunch fans knew and made something entirely different, predictably leading to reactionary grognards clinging to the remaining flecks of nostalgia.

The game was never fully cancelled though. Though the black books had essentially stopped after Crusade, GW did release '''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HHZone_Mortalis_Rules.pdf Zone Mortalis]''' rules, the Exemplary Battles PDFs mentioned below and more alarmingly, the lead-up to Adepticon 2022 announced that the Horus Heresy wargame was going to see a new edition, now written by the core GW design team. Warhammer Fest 2022 displayed their full intent, with a full box set (filled with plastic Beakies, two new Praetors, a Spartan, and Cataphractii Termies, all in plastic) as well as plenty of other updated models: new support squad weapon kits, reboxed 20-man kits for Mk. III and Mk. IV Marines, plastic Deimos-pattern Rhinos, Sicarans, and Leviathan Dreadnoughts, an updated plastic Contemptor Dread kit, and the brand new [[Kratos Heavy Assault Tank]], a heavy tank placed in between the Sicaran and Fellblade. They've continued to make new models for the game since then (including plans for new models for each of the Primarchs), although it seems Forge World will still be making a bunch of the original models

===First Edition===
'''Book 1: 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.

'''Book 2: 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.

'''Book 3: 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.

'''Book 4: 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.
'''Book 5: 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.

'''Book 6: 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).

'''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.

'''Book 8: 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, two new squads, and an entire slew of relics that interact with Psykers and Daemons.

'''Book 9: 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 <s>book</s> edition. 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. This proved to be the last of the black books for the first edition of the Heresy tabletop, as GW announced a new edition of the game at Adepticon 2022.

====Condensed Lists====
The Istvaan Campaign Legions (ICL) and Legiones Astartes Crusade Army List (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 LACAL is basically the generic 30k Space Marine "codex", whilst the ICL contains all of the collected rules for the legions from Books 1-3, including their units, characters and wargear. 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 Taghmata 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.

====Exemplary Battles====
Starting in Fall 2021, GW started publishing a series of free PDFs for the Horus Heresy tabletop which contain mini-campaigns based around battles from the Heresy that have been mentioned in the novels or black books but weren't big enough for a book of their own. These PDFs also include fluff and rules for Legion units that haven't been given any yet, along with photos and conversion tips for said units. These tips boil down to "buy tons of Forge World stuff while you still can", so one could plausibly argue that the PDFs are just ads for FW's overpriced upgrade packs. Still, it's a neat concept and at least they're free. These seem to be leading into the new edition of the game as announced at Adepticon 2022; GW has confirmed that the PDFs released prior to the launch of the new edition have been written to work with both sets of rules.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Xwccsydzg8YpDsho.pdf The Battle of Pluto: Hydra's Devastation]''''': Focuses on the Alpha Legion's invasion of Pluto, as seen in ''Praetorian of Dorn'', and provides a scenario for Imperial Fists vs Alpharius' sneaky sneks. Also has rules for the Huscarls, Dorn's elite bodyguard, which make them into Phalanx Warders on steroids.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/9eA3ZYnzr5tXbxjX.pdf The Defence of Sotha: Aegida's Lament]''''': Focuses on the Night Lords' raid on Sotha and the near-destruction of the Ultramarines Aegida Company while attempting to hold Sothopolis. The Atramentar ''finally'' get their tabletop rules and also are spotlighted in the fluff, which concludes with them [[Internet Troll|murderfucking their own commanding officer]] because he was getting too uppity for the other Night Lord officers' liking.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NUTJvW4qx8d08Fkr.pdf The Siege of Hydra Cordatus: Sundering of the Cadmean Citadel]''''': Imperial Fists vs. Iron Warriors brawling it out on the ruined world of Hydra Cordatus. Includes rules for the IV Legion's Dominator Cohort, Perturabo's former bodyguards who got fired and replaced with the Iron Circle after Phall. Hilariously, they are so salty about this that they have Hatred (Cybernetica Cortex) unless you take them as Pert's retinue.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fcMVfgBlCyDHmejD.pdf The Battle of Armatura]''''': World Eaters vs. Ultramarines on the war world of Armatura, as seen in ''Betrayer''. Includes rules for the XII Legion's Red Hand Destroyer squads, who can take Caedere weapons like meteor hammers and excoriator chainaxes in addition to all the usual Destroyer nastiness and ''must'' declare a charge whenever able if they're within 12" of an enemy unit at the beginning of the Assault phase.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/mouvfePNquxVdprP.pdf The Battle of Perditus: Umbral-51]''''': The Death Guard are trying to [[Ork|loot]] galaxy-wrecking archaeotech and the Dark Angels mean to stop them. Iron Hands and Mechanicum are there too, and the mission pack has rules for rampaging battle-automata trying to kill the Spess Mehreens so the techpriests can go back to worshiping their doomsday devices in peace. Includes rules for units from both sides: the Order of the Broken Claw and the Mortus Poisoners. The Broken Claw are Inner Circle Knights who get bonuses against Monstrous and Gargantuan Creatures and daemons, representing the fact that they were the I Legion's specialized Rangdan-killers during the Xenocides. The Mortus Poisoners are Destroyers who can swap their bolters for flamers with chem-munitions for free and one in every five can swap their bolt pistol for a heavy flamer with chem-munitions for 20 points ([[Derp|that's right, their '''bolt pistol''', not their bolter, blame FW editors]]), and can be taken in units of 15 for when you just want the table to burn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/iIVebnZrYRFbaDGH.pdf The Battle of Calth: Underworld War]''''': Smurfs and Word Bearers duking it out in Zone Mortalis missions representing the underground battles fought after Calth's surface was trashed in ''Know No Fear''. Includes rules for the Ultramarines' Nemesis Destroyer squads, aka Guilliman's least favorite sons. Instead of dual bolt pistols, they get bolters with specialist ammo that gives them Assault 2 and Rending and they can take weapons usually reserved for Breacher and Support squads. Kinda weird, but makes sense given the XIII's "tactical flexibility" schtick. No jump packs, though.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/H6ygklXe9Fv2FwRe.pdf Battle For Kalium Gate]''''': Emperor's Children and White Scars get their turn, fighting over a huge void gate as the Scars try to get back to Terra in time for the big party. Has rules for new units from both sides. The III Legion gets the Sun Killers, Heavy Support squads that only use lascannons, multi-meltas, volkite culverins, and plasma cannons [[Meme|because they're elegant weapons from a more civilized time]]. The White Scars get the Karaoghlanlar, or Dark Sons of Death. Aside from sounding like a Welsh person choking on something, they're jump-pack Destroyers who don't get phosphex or missile launchers and trade one bolt pistol for a chainsword, but can be taken as a retinue for a Stormseer with a jump pack. They also have a rule that lets them autofail Sweeping Advance rolls in exchange for performing a spooky ritual that forces enemy units within 6" to pass an Ld test or suffer -1 WS next turn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AmPdr3yMZbvggCND.pdf The Breaking of the Perfect Fortress]''''': Raven Guard storming the III Legion's Perfect Fortress on the world of Narsis, previously mentioned in ''Deliverance Lost''. Includes rules for the Deliverers, Terran-born Raven Guard who were trained under Horus and still prefer to use Terminator armor and shock-assault tactics. They're Stubborn and get teleportation transponders for deep-striking, but their main rule is Corax's Shame, representing the fact that Corax wasn't fond of his brutal Terran sons. They get +1T against attacks that cause Instant Death and cannot be deployed within 18" of Corax, nor can he ever join them. If you take Deliverers as part of a traitor force, they instead gain Hatred against Corax.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TLbrp4me5GEfL37Q.pdf The Scouring of Gilden's Star]''''': Word Bearers vs Blood Angels fighting over a ''Hamlet'' reference last seen all the way back in 1989. Has rules for the Word Bearers' Procurators, basically assault squads led by evil Apothecaries who [[Blood Ravens|steal gene-seed]] and desecrate corpses to summon daemons. They give boosts to friendly psykers with the Harbinger of Chaos, Diabolism, and Anathemata disciplines and award an extra VP every time they Sweeping Advance an enemy unit.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/6i9CeSwKmbWmzac4.pdf The Battle of Trisolian: Vengeful Spirit]''''': Taking a page from the ''Wolfsbane'' novel, this portrays the part of the [[Battle of Trisolian]] when the Space Wolves broke into Horus' flagship during Russ' attempt to kill Horus before he reached Terra. Introduces the Space Wolves' Jorlund Hunter Pack, assault marines that can temporarily supercharge their flamers, and the Sons of Horus' Chieftains, an elite retinue of junior officers who specialize in hunting down characters.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/3mVvZrTG9XOWeVxv.pdf The Axandria IV Incident]''''': Imperial Fists, Custodes, and Sisters of Silence raid a Thousand Sons repository world not long before the Siege of Terra, and the Thousand Sons actually score a win this time by evacuating their data stacks before the loyalist forces can trash them. Includes rules for Numerologist Cabals of the Order of Ruin, Thousand Sons Techmarines and tacticians who used divination to generate battle plans and predict enemy movements. The Numerologist gains a special psychic power that gives him a geo-locator beacon and boosts the BS of two friendly Thousand Sons squads if he passes a psychic check. He also gets a special bubble-wrap rule that prevents him from taking any wounds no matter what until all his bodyguards are dead, unless he accepts a challenge.

===Second Edition===
The first two books for the new edition of the tabletop were revealed at Warhammer Fest 2022: the '''Liber Astartes''' and the '''Liber Hereticus'''. These are basically updated and combined versions of the LACAL and ICL books. Both books contain the rules for all non-Legion-specific units, while the Liber Astartes has the rules for the loyalist legions and the Liber Hereticus has the rules for the traitor legions, including their Primarchs, unique units and wargear, Rites of War, Warlord Traits, and faction abilities. The '''Legacies of the Age of Darkness''' PDF contains the rules for vehicles, units, and characters who either never had models or whose models are now out of production, including most of the Legion-specific special characters, Castraferrum Dreadnoughts, the [[Crassus Armored Assault Transport|CRASSUS ARMOURED ASSAULT TRANSPORT]], and all of the Baneblade variants. Later leaks, which Warhammer Community would confirm, revealed that there would also be books for the Mechanicum ('''Liber Mechanicum''') that would contain rules for the Taghmata, Knights and Titans as well as a book for the Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Solar Auxilia, and Divisio Assassinorum ('''Liber Imperium'''). Daemons of the Ruinstorm and Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults will get downloadable lists, and according to the Legacies PDF the Knights-Errant and Blackshields are being made into full factions. They will also continue to release the Exemplary Battles series; the previously released PDFs got a separate update PDF in order to work with the new edition. The tactics page for the Legions can be found [[Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/Legiones Astartes Tactics|here]].

The core rules have been drastically modified with the addition of "Reactions", which make gameplay more dynamic. In addition to basic reactions such as Overwatch that can be taken in response to the opponent's actions, each Legion now has an "Advanced Reaction" that is more powerful but requires more specific conditions to work. Furthermore, USRs have been rewritten to be more granular (e.g. Bulky, Very Bulky, and Extremely Bulky are now Bulky (X), where X is is how many models that unit counts as for the purposes of transport capacity) and the Psychic Phase has been removed in lieu of the pre-7th edition manner of resolving psychic powers.

==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==
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3170/horus-heresy-1993 Horus Heresy (1993)] at BoardGameGeek
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63543/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (2010)] at BoardGameGeek

{{40k-Timeline}}

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

Horus Heresy

2022-10-16T00:59:21Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* The Main Book 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|I never wanted this. I never wanted to unleash my legions. Together, we banished the ignorance of old night. But you betrayed me. You betrayed us all. You stole power from the Gods, and lied to your sons! Mankind has only one chance to prosper. If you will not seize it...'''then I will!!''' So let it be war! From the skies of Terra, to the Galactic Rim. Let the seas boil! Let the stars fall! Though it takes, '''the last drop of my blood''', I will see the Galaxy freed once more! And if I cannot save it from your failure, father...then let the Galaxy '''BURN!'''|Horus, making his own feelings known and [[A Game of Pretend|totally not projecting ''at all''.]]}}

{{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''', '''Paradise Lost IN SPACE''', '''[[The God-Emperor of Mankind|Jimmy Space]] and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decade''' 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. [[Derp|Also notice how the Gothic Sector and Port Maw, canonically bordering the Eye of Terror, are positioned a quarter of the galaxy away from it.]] [[Forge World|For some reason.]]]]
The Horus Heresy screwed with almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course) and changed the flavor of the Imperium's Grimdark from Stalinist Soviet "if you breathe a positive word about religion, we rape you and your family 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' to make the problem go away". 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]]
*[[Battle of Trisolian]]
*The Titandeath at [[Beta Garmon]]
*[[Siege of Terra]]

Following the Siege of Terra, Horus was permakilled, Konrad allowed himself to be assassinated, Ferrus Manus had already died in the Drop Site Massacare, Sanguinius was KIA, Big-E was interred onto the Golden Throne, the surviving loyalist 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 stories [[Alpha Legion|The Serpent Beneath]] and [[The Last Church]].

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]]. And there a couple that are just objectively bad (Battle for the Abyss).

===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 virus 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 Imperium's most effective superweapons.
*'''''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 of the III Legion from the 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 sucker punch.
*'''''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 cannot 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 GW had decided what to do with the Lion's loyalty and personality, so its descriptions of the Lion are outdated and do not match 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"! This book is still 100% canon, but in later books GW seems to have changed their mind on the Alpha Legion so they abandoned most of the plots from this book.
*'''''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 the 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, it explores many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanicum. Techpriests 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 defenses. 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 they're 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 everyone above him in 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 realizing 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 shenanigans 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 cliché one liners out there.
*'''''The First Heretic:''''' [[Lorgar]]'s turn to get a backstory 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. Significant 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 archaeologist 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 Guilliman</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 just by 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 has 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 promethium 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 in the middle of nowhere might be bad press when he's going to Terra.
** '''''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, Curze 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 Curze 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) 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 Guard for the endgame: steal the genetech, kill some Raven Guard, 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 fuckup in the shipyards that leaves 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 the Underworld 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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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. When not showing off the two traitor primarchs, the book 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. The guy also resurrects the Word Bearers' waifu, apparently turning her into a perpetual in the process, only for her to be <s>kidnapped</s> rescued by the Cabal soon after. She is never seen again in the rest of the series. Best known for containing Angron's dressing-down speech toward Guilliman 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 millennia, 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 atheist. Unmarked 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. John Grammaticus is up to no good (probably), looking for an artifact infused with the Emperor's groovy god juice and there is a Word Bearer who doesn't seem to be buying into the whole "Chaos is so epic and cool" schtick of his legion. 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 and complains about how all the primarchs that sided with him are [[Perturabo|dickheaded]] [[Mortarion|edgelords]] or [[Konrad Curze|batshit]] [[Angron|lunatics]], while the cool guys like Sanguinius and Guilliman are still loyal to the Emprah.
**'''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 realize 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 Hearthworld''' - 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 agents 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. He finally gives up 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 foresees 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 the 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 Mortarion 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 exterminatus grade phosphex to the face (he survives nonetheless, 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 defenses 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 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' defenses 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 VERY malleable, Daemons lie, and that this was written by a man whose hate-boner for Big-E exceeds that of The Four, themselves). 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 fears that he has now run out of cards to play and can't yet 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 ritualized 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 Hands 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 fatal 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 millennium, 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-aspirant 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 for 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 gets Zardu Layak to speak Fulgrim's true name and bind him into joining in a plot to depose the Warmaster, believing that his refusal to completely submit before the Chaos Gods will lead to the Traitor Legions' ultimate defeat at Terra. This turns out to be a massive mistake that leads Lorgar to be utterly curbstomped by the revived Horus and told that he will be killed if Horus ever sees him again. Witnessing this, Zardu Layak and the Word Bearers present all swear allegiance to the Warmaster before Lorgar leaves with his tail between his legs. Layak frees Fulgrim who finds it all hilarious. Magnus makes an appearance at the end, swearing himself to Horus's service. "Alpharius" makes a token appearance to hand over Terra's defense 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 Fists 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 the 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. The 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 acolyte 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 never-ending 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 ''Nightfall'' 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 deep-strikes 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 realizes 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 daemon w/ invasion on the side, then departs with his forces. The world gets covered in blood clouds and is infested by daemons. Argonis then repeats 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 and all the new Imperial Fists who were inducted during the 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, signaling 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. Big-E 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 Titans 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. As disease spreads through the fleet, Mortarion becomes increasingly horrified and outraged as he realizes what's happening to his legion and finally kills Typhon in retaliation, but the Destroyer Hive reanimates his corpse, officially 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. Unfortunately, it turns out "Keeler" was actually Samus manipulating Mersadie to get her onto the ''Phalanx'' and use her as a gateway to invade the station, so she winds up committing suicide in front of Garviel Loken. Samus rampages around the ''Phalanx'' for a few minutes and is killed '''again''', this time by Dorn. Abaddon bypasses the outer defenses via a warp rift opened up by Ahriman, captures Luna, and convinces the matriarch of the Selenar to start making more Astartes for the traitors. The book ends with Horus, Fulgrim, and Angron arriving in-system along with the main strength of their fleets, meaning shit is now officially real.
*'''''The Lost and the Damned''''': This is it, ladies and neckbeards. The Siege has begun in earnest. Dorn is using millions of conscripts and all the vast firepower he’s installed on the Palace walls to blunt Horus's initial attacks, holding the V, VII, and IX Legions in reserve. Unfortunately, this is all more or less playing into the traitors’ hands. They want to cause as much death as possible so that the walls between reality and the warp will be thin enough to let hordes of daemons onto the planet and the daemon primarchs themselves can safely set foot on Terra without being banished by the Emperor’s psychic mojo. To their credit, Dorn and his brothers are aware of this, but also recognize that they’re screwed either way, so they decide to just go ahead and kill as many traitors as possible. After a few months of traitor Army regiments, Chaos spawn, and beastmen being sent in to soften the defenses up while the Dark Mechanicum build siege guns and towers to punch through the walls, the Death Guard finally show up after their side trip to visit Grandpa Nurgle. Horus sends them in first, mightily pissing off Angron in the process, and they immediately set about turning the warzone into a large-scale recreation of Passchendaele circa 1917. Jaghatai goes out to gather intel on the siege engines and gets poked with a plague knife, but as soon as he crosses back into the Palace grounds the Emperor’s psychic aegis cures him. He then takes half the White Scars to go defend the citizens of Terra from rampaging traitors despite Dorn ordering him not to, and promises to return when needed. Sanguinius rallies the defenders and leads his sons from the front even though Azkaellon and Raldoron would really rather he didn’t. The book ends with the World Eaters and Night Lords launching their first full-scale attack on the Palace walls; Angron challenges Sanguinius to battle while Raldoron beats Gendor Skraivok hollow and tosses him off the wall. The book reveals that despite their numerical superiority and the aid of the Chaos gods, Horus is maintaining control over his war effort and the other traitor primarchs only by sheer force of will: Lorgar, Curze, and Alpharius are out of the picture, Magnus is doing his own thing, Fulgrim is being a prissy dick, Perturabo is as much a whiny bitch as ever, and Angron is so uncontrollable that Kharn and [[Lotara Sarrin]] are forced to teleport him into the labyrinth Perturabo built to contain Vulkan until he can be set loose on Terra. Only Mortarion still seems relatively normal despite the fact he’s now a daemon primarch. Moreover Abaddon is getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. It turns out that the wound Russ inflicted on him at Trisolian has resulted in his soul slowly being drained. As a result, the Chaos Gods have to keep juicing Horus up, with the downsides of time-wasting sojourns into the warp and the gradual destruction of Horus's body. What's more, there are implications that Abaddon is being groomed to take over when Horus falls, all but confirming that the Chaos Gods expected Horus to lose his duel with the Emperor.
*'''''The First Wall''''': This book focuses on the battle for the Lion’s Gate spaceport, which is the tallest structure on Terra and the only place that void-going ships can dock on the entire planet, meaning that the traitors will be able to shuttle in reinforcements and materiel more easily if they can capture it. Perturabo details Warsmith Kroeger to command the Iron Warriors’ assault on the spaceport under the logic that Dorn will be expecting Pert to command the attack personally and won’t be expecting whatever battle plans Kroeger comes up with. Warsmith Forrix isn’t happy with this or with anything else that’s going on, since he’s realized that Horus is using the Iron Warriors in the same way the Emperor did and he's become increasingly disillusioned with Perturabo himself. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum sets a technophagic virus loose inside the spaceport and Zardu Layak, [[Abaddon]], and [[Typhus]] perform a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate Cor’bax Utterblight inside the Emperor’s wards. The Fists hold out as long as they can and inflict heavy casualties, but Dorn finally gives the order to withdraw and abandon the Gate as Perturabo lands his flagship atop the port and joins an assault led by Abaddon and Kharn. Sigismund duels Kharn and nearly loses while Dorn kills Zardu Layak, which allows daemons to manifest on Terra for the first time. He then has a brief exchange of taunts with Perturabo and the first Chaos Titans set foot on Terra, spelling a new stage of the battle. In the midst of all this is a little passage detailing just how many artillery pieces the Iron Warriors have landed on the planet, including two thousand [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisks]], fifteen hundred [[Manticore Launcher Tank|Manticores]], five hundred [[Medusa Siege Gun|Medusas]], sixteen hundred Siege Dreadnoughts, seven thousand Thunderburst guns, five hundred [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher|Deathstrike]] launchers and eighty-four [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank|Typhon siege guns]], plus uncounted thousands of Rhinos, Land Raiders, Vindicators, Predators, Sicarans, and [[Baneblade|assorted]] [[Fellblade|superheavy]] [[Spartan Assault Tank|tanks]]. [[Awesome|That sound you just heard was Josef Stalin and the entire Red Army popping a boner from beyond the grave.]] Meanwhile, to stop Cor’bax’s taint from spreading inside the Imperial Palace, Malcador recruits Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian to hunt down and eliminate any corrupted cults of the Emperor, giving us the weirdest buddy-cop pairing of all time. Malcador wants to see if he can weaponize the cult’s belief in the Emperor against the Chaos gods and sees Keeler as the key to doing so, while Amon would rather just stamp it out. They eventually find a cult that has been corrupted by Cor’bax. When the daemon uses their bodies to manifest inside the walls, Keeler, Malcador, and Amon team up to kill him. Malcador tells Dorn, Valdor, and the other Imperial commanders that he will allow the cult of the Emperor to exist until the Emperor himself says otherwise. While all this is going on, we get to see more of the siege from a mortal perspective. Katsuhiro, a veteran of the initial fighting outside the walls, is detailed to a section of the outer walls under attack by the Death Guard and eventually has to aid in putting down an outbreak of plague zombies. We also follow Zenobi, a seventeen-year-old line worker from the Afrik hive of Addaba who volunteered to serve in the Imperial Army, only it turns out that she and her entire regiment are pledged to Horus, though this ultimately results their city getting bombed to shit. (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, and could '''at best''' be described as misguided, inexplicable filler; sounds like a fun read, huh?) The novel ends with John Grammaticus arriving on Terra, mission unknown.
*'''''Saturnine''''': Dan Abnett's first HH book in seven years. Dorn is trying to decide which parts of the Palace need to be defended and which can be allowed to fall, as the Imperial forces are outnumbered, outgunned, and running low on supplies. He identifies four key parts of the defense that cannot be allowed to fall to the enemy, then decides which one he can afford to lose anyway: the Eternity Wall spaceport. The Saturnine Wall, one of the other key elements, has developed a subtle fault thanks to the relentless traitor bombardment. Dorn suspects that Perturabo will try to exploit it, so he lays a trap for the traitor assault force and calls in Arkhan Land to help fix it. While this is going on, Sanguinius kills an Iron Warriors Warsmith at the Gorgon Bar, then [[Awesome|solos a Warlord Titan]] and stares down three Warhounds until they turn tail and run for it. Jaghatai and the White Scars lead a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard and really ruin their day, further pissing off Mortarion. [[Abaddon]] enlists the entire [[Emperor's Children]] Legion and three companies of the Sons of Horus, led by the entire Mournival, to attack the Saturnine Wall with Perturabo's help; however, Perturabo anticipates that Dorn will expect them to do so and refuses to lend his aid. The III Legion attacks from the front, using three ancient and irreplaceable siege engines, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrow up from beneath with Termite assault drills. When the Sons of Horus emerge from their assault drills, they're ambushed by kill teams led by [[Garviel Loken]] and [[Nathaniel Garro]]. All three companies, including the famed [[Justaerin]] and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, are wiped out to a single (armless) man. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand ([[Blood Ravens|and takes his sword]]) and Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead except for Loken and Abaddon. Abaddon goes on a killing spree, but eventually gets beaten up by a nobody [[Blood Angel]], Endryd Haar, and Garro. Abaddon manages to kill the Blood Angel and Haar, but is almost killed by Garro, only to be [[Plot Armor|teleported to safety at the last moment]] (presumably losing his arms in the transfer) despite his own wish for death, as the Chaos Gods already have him in mind as their new Warmaster. Arkhan Land floods the fault line with thousands of tons of quick-setting rockcrete, [[Grimdark|entombing a bunch of the Sons of Horus beneath the palace forever.]] Fulgrim hurls his legion at the Saturnine Wall ''en masse'', which accomplishes nothing but getting 18,000 of them killed and destroying the siege platforms. Dorn and Sigismund fight Fulgrim; Sigismund manages to injure Fulgrim despite being hilariously outclassed, but before Fulgrim can finish the job, Dorn appears. He holds his own against his psychotic bishonen brother, inflicting so much damage that Fulgrim throws a tantrum and takes his legion and goes home, abandoning the Siege entirely. The two then fight a bunch of III Legion champions and defeat them all. In one particularly awesome moment, Sigismund feeds Eidolon his own sword and just straight-up kicks him off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on Team Horus who still gives a shit about winning the siege. The rest of traitor primarchs are all too indignant to focus on their alleged objective, too busy conspiring against each other, or too insane to care.
**Crucially to the ongoing progress of the Siege, the loyalists lose the Eternity Wall spaceport, but this was part of the plan. As noted above, Dorn identified four key points in the defense that he couldn't afford to lose, then chose the one that he couldn't afford to lose the least, personally took command at the Saturnine Wall, and sent Sanguinius and Jaghatai to hold the other two spots. Angron and the World Eaters assault the spaceport, and pretty much every named Imperial Army character in the book dies at this point, along with Jenetia Krole, the leader of the [[Sisters of Silence]], who gets killed by Kharn, and Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists, who literally dies standing while holding the main bridge into the spaceport. Also, Angron gets blown up by artillery but comes back to life since, y'know, he's a daemon prince and all. Sanguinius' visions are getting increasingly powerful and painful, especially when he winds up inside Angron's tortured mind. He eventually delves deeply enough to realize that Angron has sensed the annihilation of Nuceria. The [[Dark Angels]] and the [[Ultramarines]] are on the way!
**Other miscellaneous things that happen: John Grammaticus is trying to meet up with Ollanius Persson and encounters the Perpetual [[Erda]], who tells us that Big-E was named '''Neoth''' when they met, but that this was just one of the many names he's had over the millennia. It is also revealed that she is the true mother of the primarchs and is technically responsible for their scattering as the result of what can only be described as a fucked up custody battle - cue the sound of countless facepalms from the fanbase. Dorn has Kyril Sindermann form the proto-[[Inquisition]], and he recruits Euphrati Keeler and some other people to go around collecting interviews with soldiers, workers, and other residents of the Palace. Keeler interviews Basilio Fo, the mad genesmith from the short story ''Misbegotten'', and he reveals that he can create a biomechanical phage that could kill Horus, along with every other Space Marine and primarch in the galaxy. Keeler and her Custodian babysitter decide that this information should go to Dorn, just in case he decides he needs such a doomsday option. The Ollanius Pius myth is partly born from a Guardsman named Olly Piers standing up and defending a banner of the Emperor before dying at Angron's hands. Horus is sliding further into apparent senility as the Chaos Gods' power begins to overwhelm his body and mind to the point that it would have killed him outright had he not died in the duel against the Emperor first, much to Abaddon's disgust. He is almost totally disconnected from the siege, asks for things and immediately forgets asking for them, and keeps calling his equerry Maloghurst, even though Maloghurst has been dead since ''Slaves to Darkness''. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels arrives with a large chunk of the Dark Angels fleet, ready to aid in the battle. In short, a lot of named characters die and plot threads are set up for other books and the rest of 40K.
*'''''Mortis''''': John French's second book in the series. As the morale of the Palace's defenders slowly erodes under the pressure of the unrelenting assault and the malign influence of the Warp, the traitor Titans of Legio Mortis are unleashed to break through the Mercury Wall, with only the loyalist engines of the Legio Ignatum to hold them off. Not as good as ''Saturnine'' or ''The Lost and the Damned'', but not as bad as Zenobi's story in ''The First Wall'', it feels more like an anthology, though all of its stories have a common beginning and converge in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus has finally decided to take direct command of the traitor forces, but his first order to Perturabo is to send everything they have, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objects to such a terrible strategy, after which Horus sends his equerry to tell him to disperse his legion among the traitor forces and let the Death Guard take over their positions. Perturabo immediately realizes that Horus is about to pull some serious warp fuckery, which he's not okay with, so he orders a complete withdrawal of all IV Legion assets on Terra and fucks off, abandoning the siege entirely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the Titan battle in front of the Mercury Wall; the traitor forces have used Warp power to reanimate countless Titan wrecks collected from Beta-Garmon and elsewhere, using them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalist defenses before attacking with the full might of the Legio Mortis, the largest Titan legion in the entire Imperium.
** Meanwhile, in another corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist Imperial Army soldiers are still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them is Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of a gun from ''The Lost and the Damned'', who has fought from the Outer Wall all the way into the central palace and is still fighting because [[Grimdark|in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war]]. Their forces are initially led by a Blood Angel, but he dies during the battle and puts Katsuhiro in charge because this man's got nothing but unwavering belief in the Emperor and balls made out of titanium.
** Shiban Khan, to everyone's surprise, survived his shuttle crashing in ''Saturnine'' thanks to his extensive augmetic rebuild. He wakes up in the middle of nowhere and starts hearing the voices of his dead brothers as he limps toward the Inner Palace. It could be warp fuckery, as the land shows various signs of Chaos corruption, or perhaps more likely, he just had some severe head trauma due to the shuttle crash (and the sky's the limit when it comes to head trauma). Either way, Shiban wants to return to the fight, so he starts to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encounters an Army lieutenant with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and the man tags along with him. The lieutenant explains that he just found the baby in the middle of all this shit and took it without any question; I keep expecting it to be a daemon or something, but it ends up to be something hopeful, wholesome even. Later the lieutenant is severely injured by an actual daemon, but Shiban refuses to leave him behind and carries him and the baby. Eventually, they come across the line Katsuhiro's defending; though the lieutenant doesn't make it, the baby survives, which amazes the crumbling troopers to no end and boosts their morale. Shiban and Katsuhiro have a brief chat before Shiban keeps pushing on to rejoin his legion. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** We finally get to see psi-titans deployed!!! For a few paragraphs at least and in somewhat limited capacity. Princeps Aurum of the Ordo sinister (whom we saw in a previous short story tell Dorn to fuck off because being one of ''The Talons of the Emperor'', they only answer to Big-E himself), shows up and tells Dorn that the Emperor has personally authorized use of the Ordo Sinister, an act that simultaneously tells Dorn that the Emperor has commanded victory at any cost. We see a psi-titan strut up to a battlefield, order all friendly titans to fire warp missiles at itself, then redirects the warp power in the warp missiles to instant-kill several daemon titan engines, and thanks to their nature as [[blanks]], they deny the traitors any further resurrections, so anything they kill ''stays'' dead. They also tank damage without even staggering, simply repairing any damage they accumulate on the spot. However, the traitors brought a LOT of titans, so even those few Psi-titans we get to see are eventually overwhelmed, though they take a fuckton of traitors with them.
** On the traitor titan side, special siege titans are unveiled bespoke from Mars. Turns out you can just line up several big titans and hook up all their reactors to mobile reactors behind their shields, then slow walk towards the wall like a big phalanx advance. And you get called the special engine class of Warmaster Titans. Plus lots and lots of guns on the front.
** At the end of the last book, Corswain and his fleet came to reinforce the loyalists. Now we learn that he was expecting to meet the Lion and the main strength of the Dark Angels at Terra, but finds out that he is the only reinforcement that has shown up yet. If you have read the new Luther book, you know that he was lied to by Luther, and most importantly, the ten thousand Dark Angels he brought along were given to him by Luther, which means they're most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitors took the Astronomican and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitors' offensive long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? The Dark Angels probably could due to their abundance of Dark Age archeotec and The Lion's maybe [[Tuchulcha|Old Ones-creation biological computer Pinnochio macguffin... Thing]], but everyone else? Nonetheless, the plot decrees that Corswain and his Dark Angels must be given something interesting to do I guess. Thus, Corswain plans an assault through the traitor fleet blockade; with the sacrifice of the Emperor's personal flagship and the gap left by the Iron Warriors' departure, the Dark Angels successfully make planetfall on Terra and retake and secure the Astronomican by killing a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and a bunch of Kakophoni. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain cannot allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the Librarians, Vassago, is having second thoughts about the whole thing after the daemonic horrors he's just witnessed. When he tells this to his fallen brothers, they decide to kill him and keep on with their plan.
** The various storylines are tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist Titan legions begin to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's ragged force faces off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago is attacked by his fallen brothers; and the Legio Mortis finally reaches the Mercury Wall, the true Imperial Palace itself.
** Also, remember all of those weird metaphorical scenes of the Emperor being a dirty old man they put in every book? Turns out it is the physical manifestation of the struggle and suffering the Emperor is enduring in the spiritual world, and it is getting worse and worse. In previous books, he could still shelter himself in a cave and have Malcador deliver him food or something; now he is quite literally cooking under the sun in an open desert with only a dead tree for cover, and because the Chaos gods are winning, it has become impossible for Malcador to keep supporting the Emperor. So the Big-E is now facing off against the entire warp with nothing but his own willpower to sustain him. Horus keeps showing up to taunt his father and sometimes the Chaos gods accompany him like some kind of pet snakes. Every time he appears he is closer to the Emperor and at the end of this book he is finally able to reach him.
** Oh, Ollanius and his crew from Calth also return in this book. They finally make it back to Terra after bouncing through all of time and space, and then they infiltrate a hive overrun by the Emperor's Children in order to rescue John Grammaticus. Along the way, they run into someone named Actaea (who might be Cyrene Valantion based on John's horrified recognition of her) and a legionary calling himself Alpharius, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. Ollanius decides to team up with these two even though Grammaticus is getting some serious bad vibes off of them. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it really feels like it has nothing to do with the ongoing siege. This, and John's plot from the last book, feel like they should have gotten their own book instead of being cut to pieces and stitched into the main series. But again, it's not as bad and irrelevant as Zenobi's storyline from ''The First Wall''. At least it revealed Ollanius was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close, you ask? He was the Emperor's first Warmaster. He led an army to raze the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel Tower of Babel] to the ground, in the 40K narrative the tower was actually built by Cognitae precursors who were using it to learn Enuncia (first seen in the Eisenhorn books). After taking the tower the Emperor decides that he in his enlightened state can actually run the project better then the Cognitae. Ollanius disagrees and stabs the Emperor while using Enuncia to bring lightning down on the tower. John, having stumbled into this memory via being caught in the same pleasure-warp trap uses his psyker language ability to learn Enuncia on the spot. Uses it to unmake a daemon (as in ''permakill''), but gets a bad nose-bleed. The horror.
* '''''Warhawk''''': The Khan vs. Morty, round two. The end of the Siege is nigh, and everyone on Terra knows it. Angron and the World Eaters are loose inside the Mercury Wall, the Sons of Horus are happily killing anything that crosses their path, and the Death Guard have taken over the Lion's Gate spaceport after Perturabo ragequit halfway through ''Mortis''. Many of the XIV Legion are still coming to terms with their new warp-touched nature. Some of them aren't sure the bargain was worth the price, while others are happily adopting pet Nurglings and savoring the feeling of turning into walking sacks of pus and tentacles. Mortarion is using his daemonic powers to turn the port into a mirror of Barbarus and blanket the Palace with a psychic miasma of despair; the effect is so potent that even Rogal Dorn is beginning to crack under the strain. Jaghatai is tired of playing defense, so he rallies up the entire V Legion and every single tank that Ilya Ravallion can coax out of reserves to storm the Lion's Gate and retake the spaceport. They use the last intact orbital plate on Terra to shield them from the traitor fleet bombardments and charge across the leveled wreckage of the Palace's outer districts en masse, wrecking shit all the way until they slam into the Death Guard and their defenses. The two legions proceed to just shred the hell out of each other across the spaceport. We get an interesting comparison between their fighting styles here; the Scars dominate the battlefield when they can use their speed and maneuverability, and then when the fighting turns into a battle of attrition the Death Guard give just as good as they get. Jaghatai is in fine form; at one point he yeets a Leviathan Dreadnought with ''one hand'', and the narration explicitly states that everyone on both sides stops to watch him do it. The battle culminates in a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the Death Lord and the Warhawk. Mortarion literally beats the Khan to a pulp, but Jaghatai just laughs it off and needles Mortarion until he makes a mistake that lets Jaghatai gut him. Mortarion reminds the Khan that he can't die, since he's a daemon prince now, and the Khan reminds Mortarion that he can die, then pulls the classic "let the other guy impale me so I can kill him" move and decapitates Morty even though he's now got a power scythe embedded in his chest. The resultant explosion of psychic energy disorients the Death Guard and sends the Scars into a frenzy. Jaghatai's body is carried out on a Leman Russ, and just when it seems like they might actually have unexpectedly killed another primarch, Ilya Ravallion shows up and demands that he be taken to Malcador, who sets about putting the Warhawk back together. The White Scars' frenzy doesn't end until a newly raised khan gets word to Shiban that their primarch yet lives, and manages to remind Shiban that they were supposed to take the port, not destroy it. The Death Guard retreat in shambles, abandoning the Gate and rejoining Typhus, who had once again taken off to do his own thing earlier in the book.
**Dorn finally lets Sigismund off the chain, telling him to just go kill as many traitors as possible. On his way out to the field, he's given the Black Sword, which was forged in the dark times prior to the Unification Wars, and sets out to become the Emperor's Champion. He kills so damn many captains and praetors that whispers of "the Black Sword" spread across the Palace, and both sides seek him out, either to join him or to kill him. He rematches Kharn and puts him down, though not before Kharn has a lucid moment and is horrified by what Sigismund has become: a remorseless, passionless, icy-hearted killing machine who will raise [[Black Templars|an entire legion of fanatical killers just like him]] to crush the galaxy beneath their boots.
**Euphrati Keeler inspires thousands of civilians, stragglers, and refugees to take up arms and go drown the enemy in bodies in the name of the God-Emperor, establishing the foundations for the Imperial Cult and the Imperium's philosophy of sending wave after wave of conscripts and Guardsmen at the problem until it ceases to be a problem. Garviel Loken tracks her down and is disturbed by her new, more nihilistic mindset, but decides to stay by her side anyway.
**Basilio Fo runs around for a bit and gets attacked by a Night Lord who can apparently see the future and isn't sure if killing him or letting him live will do more damage. He's then retrieved by Constantin Valdor, who took a break from daemon-hunting to haul him back to the Sanctum Imperialis so he can go to work on his anti-Astartes phage. Valdor wonders if using the phage would interfere with the Emperor's plans somehow, since even he isn't sure what is or isn't part of the Big-E's schemes anymore. Really, the whole subplot is kind of pointless, since Fo just winds up back under guard and doing exactly what he wanted to do all along. Makes you wonder why the authors bothered setting him loose last book.
** Ollanius Persson and his merry band are still traveling to the Palace. Actaea is all but stated to be Cyrene Valantion, who has an agenda of her own that involves getting to Horus. "Alpharius" is one of the Alpha Legion infiltrators from ''Praetorian of Dorn'', who's apparently just been kicking around the planet since his legion's attack on Pluto failed. They fly all the way to the Palace and start making their way into the Dungeon to get on with whatever their missions are, planning to pick up some more Alpha Legionnaires who were planted in the catacombs.
** The Sons of Horus are quietly starting to turn on each other. With Horus still sitting on his arse and doing nothing to lead his legion, some of his captains are starting to refer to Abaddon as the XVI's Legion Master, which is pissing off the hardcore Horus loyalists. Most of them end up getting killed by Sigismund anyway, though.
** Erda dies. Maybe. Erebus turns out to have disguised himself as a random Word Bearer in order to reach Terra and track her down, and after he introduces himself he tells her that her scattering of the primarchs was such a nice gift to the Chaos Pantheon that they themselves sing her praises in gratitude. He offers to help her achieve apotheosis and become a queen of the warp as a reward. Erda sneers at him and tells him that he's being manipulated by the cast-off thoughts and unconscious desires of humanity; more or less confirming that she knows many of the same truths about Chaos as the Emperor does, but unlike Big-E, she perhaps underestimates the danger they pose. That might also be why she tries to say it's not her fault some of the primarchs were corrupted and fell to Chaos, deflecting the blame onto the primarchs themselves, Big-E, society (that's actually barely an exaggeration), and basically everyone but herself. Erebus eventually gets sick of her obfuscation and summons four greater daemons to kill her. However, Erda's able to defeat them pretty comprehensively, with Erebus assuming they've been banished, but the book suggesting that they've been permakilled. Regardless of which however, the fight still leaves her drained enough that Erebus is able to hit her with a psychic attack that overwhelms her with the true consequences of what she did. Incidentally, this book does the seemingly impossible and actually makes us root for Erebus (the quintessential Quizling-Hitler High School Meangirl hybrid in space) of the entire Horus Heresy, due to him dropping some much needed truth-bombs on Erda (humanity's worst mom) and hands her some long overdue comeuppance. Erebus then moves to finish her off and wreck her house, [[A Game of Pretend|but does so offscreen]]. As he's leaving, however, he wonders if she let him kill her, and if so, why.
*'''''Echoes of Eternity''''': ADB's contribution. [[Meme|We're in the endgame now]]: the Palace defenses have completely collapsed, the Khan is down for the count [Shiban Khan leads the Lion's Gate Spaceport in his absence], Dorn is surrounded at Bhab Bastion, Corswain and his Dark Angels contingent have locked down the Astronomicon but are ordered to stay put, and all other surviving loyalist troops have been driven back into the Sanctum Imperialis, and Guilliman and the Lion still haven't arrived. Angron is leading the World Eaters and Sons of Horus toward victory as Sanguinius rallies his troops for a last stand at the Eternity Gate. Will almost certainly have Sanguinius duel Angron as the big climactic fight.
** A lot of this books focuses on the defenders retreat to (and attackers assault on) the Eternity Gate leading to the Sanctum Imperialis, specifically their mustering and battle before the Delphic Battlement. That being said, this is also the point in the siege where things really start to go [[Not as Planned]] for Team Chaos, and as ever, it's often as much due to them getting in their own way, just as much as the efforts of Team Emperor. The Imperial side of things is mostly narrated through the perspectives of Nassir Amit and Zephon of the Blood Angels. Zephon apparently ''wasn't'' killed back in Saturnine and was just taking a nap until Arkhan Land and some Legion serfs fix him up with Dark Age archeotech and send him on his merry way. Meanwhile, the Chaos side of things is told from the POV of the World Eaters Apothecary Kargos from ''Betrayer'' as he tags along with a random Word Bearers Chaplain, reminiscent of Kharne and Argel Tal's previous bro-ship. It doesn't matter though, because Kargos gets curb-stomped by the Flesh Tearer and left for dead by his Word Bearers buddy. After a day of fighting, the defenders begin to retreat to the Sanctum, knowing that whoever is left on the outside after the doors close will be daemon chow. Sanguinius duels Ka'Bandha and wrecks him pretty one-sidedly. Just as the gates are being closed, a Legio Audax (the same guys from ''Betrayer'') titan holds the door open long enough for Angron to swoop in and start fighting the Angel. The two duel, and Angron gets a good sword-stab to Sanguinius' gutmeats, but then Fabulous Hawk Boy rips the Butcher's Nails from daemon Angron's head and drops him to the ground before heading inside and letting the gates close.
** There's a sub-plot about Vulkan going into the shattered remains of the Emperor's Webway project to duel with Magnus, who is on the other side after being ejected in ''Fury of Magnus''. Magnus does a bunch of magic tricks to Vulkan, but Vulkan is an [[Perpetual|unkillable]] primarch with a big fuckoff hammer and eventually Magnus gets tuckered out long enough for them to 'kill' each other. Magnus is banished from the Webway and Vulkan eventually gets up and wanders out. One revelation from these parts is that the Emperor's 'you only perceive me how I want you to perceive me' shtick extends to the Primarchs, as Vulkan remembers the Emperor's offer to Magnus to lead the Grey Knights as a stern 'lol gtfo'. Well that's one interpretation anyway; the other is that the corruption of Chaos wormed its way yet further into Magnus, altering his cognitive function, allowing him to think of himself as the victim, and thus ensuring that Magnus would dance further to their tune.
** We also get a look into how things are going in the fleet and for some of the mortal followers of Chaos. The aforementioned Legio Audax Warhound, the ''Hindarah'', has been on Terra pretty much since the beginning. It's princeps still believes herself to be alive, and frequently hallucinates that the cockpit of her god-engine has become an abattoir of horrors, but then she comes back to it and everything seems normal again. It isn't until we get another character's view on the interior that we see that, yeah, the princeps and moderati have all fused into a ''[[Chaos Spawn|that thing]]''... Yuck. Lotarra Sarrin, everyone's favorite spunky girl-boss captain of the ''Conqueror'', has become a corrupted ''thing'' partly fused with her command throne, while the parts of her that wanted to run away from the horror of it all became a ghost that the rest of the crew just sort of tolerate. This ghost even manages to get in a call to Horus aboard the ''Vengeful Spirit'', who has continued to deteriorate from 'kooky grampa' to 'scary kooky grampa'. It's heavily implied that Argonis is the only one left really running the fleet.
** The book ends with the Lion's Gate Space Port finally opening fire on the traitor fleet, much to the horror of those aboard, who were caught completely unprepared, in close formation while stationary in geosynchronous orbit, and immediately starts getting torn to pieces. They then receive a message from its [[White Scars|new occupants]], who basically just calls to laugh at them. [[Troll|Then he hangs up]]. In the epilogue a few pages later, we get a sweet little note from Guilliman to Sanguinius, saying that he's a couple days from the system's edge and only a solar week from Terra. However, this message is intercepted and blocked by daemon Lotarra Sarrin from reaching the surface.
** A lot of this helps to set up and answer the ultimate question of "why did Horus drop the void shields?" At this point in the siege, the defenders are on their very last legs. Dorn and a lot of forces are cut off at Bhab Bastion, while everyone else who is still alive has fled inside the Sanctum Imperialis. There are no more walls to get behind, nowhere else to run to. On the Chaos side of things, by book's end, Horus is no longer the smug little shit we've seen throughout the siege, and is instead now shitting his pants, because he has now lost every single one of his generals. Lorgar had already been driven out for plotting to overthrow Horus, Konrad is not even in the correct side of the galaxy, Alpharius/Omegon (it's hard to keep track of which one is which at the best of times) died at Pluto while the other twin remains at large elsewhere, Fulgrim fucked off during ''Saturnine'', Perturabo during ''Mortis'', Mortarion got clapped by the Khan in ''Warhawk'' and shunted off into the warp, and by the end of ''Echoes'', both Magnus and Angron ([[Skub|arguably Horus' two most OP subordinates]] have been reduced to greasy, whiny smears, staining sections of the Webway and Eternity Gates' floors, respectively. To make matters worse for Team Chaos, but Horus especially, (as if any more were needed), with the death or absence of their respective primarchs, a significant percentage of the remaining astartes forces under the Warmaster's command (maybe even up to '''HALF''') have lost anything even remotely resembling unit cohesion, and in the case of The Thousand Sons and World Eaters, probably permanently; the former having fully succumbed to the flesh change en masse and the latter evidently now practicing for the upcoming [[Battle of Skalathrax]] by going all-in on the whole Teamkilling Fucktard thing, whereas before they'd only engaged in the occasional Teamkilling dalliance. The board, as they say, is set for the final showdown.
*'''''The End and the Death''''': This is it. 17 years and over 60 books, all leading up to ''the'' main event of the Heresy: the duel of the Emperor and Horus, as written by [[Dan Abnett|the man who started the series]][[Awesome|.]] Will be split into multiple volumes, because there's no way in hell BL wouldn't milk this for all it's worth, and because Abnett belongs to the school of write a shit ton of words (thankfully, unlike [[A Song of Ice and Fire|someone else we can name]] he actually finishes his shit).
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The first novella in the series. Flashback to the compliance of the Selenar gene cults on the moon, the high supreme matriarch tells a grumpy gene witch to take their best gene tech and hide it from the Emperor while she starts a date/mind purge to wipe out all knowledge of the tech from existence before she surrenders to the soon-to-be Luna Wolves. Flash forward to the crew of the ''Sisypheum'' returning to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna through a lot of luck and bad traitor captains. They pick up a distress signal from Ta'lab Vita-37 saying that the Sons of Horus are breaking through the defenses she has built around the Magna Mater - a silver case containing all the genetic knowledge used to make the first Space Marines. They manage to meet up with Vita-37 and make their way to the center of a moon volcano just in time to snatch it from some tech-priests. Some explosions happen and we get to see Tarsa the Salamander Apothecary walk through radioactive lava while hallucinating that Vulkan lives and dying as he hands the case to Ignatius Numen who also waded in. He dies too because [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_(1997_film) radioactive lava], but the case gets out of the lava. Justaerin Terminators chase them through the gene labs, and Vita-37 unleashes a bunch of hideous gene-monsters on the Terminators before dying. One spooks them cause it has the face of Horus, but the Terminators finally form up and continue the chase. The last two Iron Hands hand off the Mater to Sharrowkyn and tell him to run like hell while they slow down the Terminator squad, with predictable results. Sharrowkyn gets rescued by the other two Iron Hands in a Storm Eagle, and they make it back to the ''Sisypheum'', while Thamatica uses a Selenar combat AI to destroy a fighter chasing them before it turns back on him and eats his brains. Magnus makes an appearance and saves the ''Sisypheum'' for some reason, then leaves. Wayland drops off Sharrowkyn on an abandoned refueling station before flying away to distract the traitors. Sharrowkyn has to go into suspended animation, Garuda the mechanical eagle watches over him as he passes out, under the name of the station "Sangprimus Portum", strongly implying that the Magna Mater is the relic that will be given to Archmagos Cawl to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which focuses on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed inside the Palace. Alivia Sureka agrees to come with Malcador in exchange for protection for her adopted family, and he takes her down trans-dimensional tunnels known only to him (it's strongly implied that Valdor would fuck Malcador up for keeping these tunnels secret even from the custodians). Magnus and some of the Thousand Sons breach the Emperor's telesthetic wards, saving some civilians along the way, and storm the Hall of Leng deep beneath the Palace. They're met by Malcador and Alivia, and Magnus demands to know where the last shard of his soul is. Malcador admits that it's already gone, having been fused into Revuel Arvida to produce Janus, so Magnus throws a psychic tantrum that permakills the Sigillite. One of the Thousand Sons kills Alivia for some reason, so Magnus explodes his head for disobeying his orders not to kill anyone. He and his Astartes make it all the way to the Golden Throne, only to find out that the Emperor let them through because he wanted to offer Magnus a shot at redemption. He explains that, though Magnus has been wounded and touched by Chaos, there is still a chance for him to return to the Imperial fold, at the head of [[Grey Knights|a shiny new legion of incorruptible psychic warriors]]. All he has to do is abandon the remaining Thousand Sons to their fate, as they're already too corrupted to be brought back. Vulkan, who is still guarding the Throne, pleads with Magnus to accept the deal, but Magnus decides that abandoning his legion is too dear a price to pay and tries to kill the Emperor. Vulkan proceeds to kick the ever-loving shit out of him until Magnus finally surrenders to Chaos and ascends into his daemon primarch form. He forever repudiates the Emperor before being ejected from the Palace. Alivia resurrects, finds Malcador's barbecued corpse, and surrenders her Perpetuality in order to bring him back, dying permanently herself in the process.
* '''''Garro: Knight of Grey''''': The third novella in the series, featuring Nathaniel Garro's final showdown with Mortarion as he fights to protect Euphrati Keeler.

==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. The surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading, and shortly before the Siege of Terra Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt from its prison in the ruins of Prospero into his book so he can use it to get past the Emperor's psychic shield.

===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. 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 who have just humiliated a compliance force of Ultramarines and Thousand Sons. 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 throws his weight around when he arrives and tells off the Ultramarines commander for getting his ass kicked, then learns that the Gardinaal are actually some tough mothers, with their own genetically enhanced soldier caste and a willingness to nuke their own cities if it'll kill some Imperial troops. Ferrus quits 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 his own way, 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. A meeting takes place between Sanguinius, Magnus and the Khan to talk about protecting the Librarius but Magnus is dismissive as ever about it and doesn't seem to take the issue very seriously. The White Scars fight together with the Luna Wolves against Greenskins and the former legion uses their Librarius against the Orc shamans, in order to not miss a conquest deadline set by the Khan, who of course likes to go very fast in all manner of ways. This has a subtle backfire for the Imperium, as the Luna Wolves disapprove of the Librarius. Horus himself is implied to give Jagathai the cold shoulder as a result of this, due to Horus trying to be on his most neutral, goodie good boyscout behavior, in anticipation of winning the title of Warmaster. The Khan thus loses support of Horus regarding the psyker dilemma. 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. Much better book than most in the Primarchs series, as it's basically a Horus Heresy book and not a novel about a no-stakes Crusade campaign (Guilliman's book) nor a deep dive into the Primarch's life before the Emperor (Lorgar's). This is also a companion piece / prequel to Brotherhood of the Storm (this book directly intertwines with Brotherhood near the end) and Scars.

===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 grief 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 [[Warhammer High|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. Sevatar leaves the choice up to the investigating officer, and it's implied the officer chooses to hush up the report. 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. Shaken from the fight, Lorgar heads to his room and slams the door behind him for a few millennia.
:'''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 had a sculpt-off with a prodigy artist, and just like Fulgrim he made a perfect statue. But the artist worked for a decade to make a cool statue of some hero that showed a different facet of his life/personality from the angle you were standing, and practically everybody who saw them side by side said that was better than Pert's 3D-printed like replica. Pert slapped the statue and never spoke about it again. 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 up in the bowels of his flagship, causing all sorts of disgusting changes to take place. Kharn goes to talk to him and finds 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 millennia ago. 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. The 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. [https://youtu.be/X2Hb4bngxJ8 A story forever immortalized in song form].
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over most of 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 (Basilio Fo) is 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. He sends a big ball of human hands to surprise strike Horus in his command post, but Horus naturally defeats it messily. For all his own abominations, Fo admits that he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created. The epilogue shows him laughing his ass off in his cell on Terra when the Siege starts because he's kind of been proven right.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails and the Ghenna massacre. 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. There's also an epilogue where Kharn happens to ransack Ghenna 10,000 years later and comes across an embellished statue of the World Eater captain he beheaded, and has a rare moment of clear headed dispair for what he and his broken legion have become.

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. [[Slayer|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. So he really just tortured the shit out of Vulkan for shits and giggles, what a dick.

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 weren't limited to just the ruling tyrants but are completely integrated into the planet's society, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him (Liberating Humanity from Life<sup>tm</sup>).
:'''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 on the galactic fringe 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 Khrave's 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 Dark Angels, showing why even the Alpha Legion saw they were too tough a 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 passphrases 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'', the 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 [[Meme|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. 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 the Angels 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 be 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. 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 comes across 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 (Alpharius even expresses a foreboding worry that Horus is carrying too much on his shoulders), The Lion to a certain extent (whom Alpharius speculates was the only brother to see through him and sense the truth), 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?)

===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/foster father, 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 and the Imperial Fists happen upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack their fleet and are 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 and the Alpha Legion in preparation for the day that might see them standing as the Imperium's last line of defense. 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.

===Mortarion: The Pale King===
Set during Mortarion's early days in the Imperium, just after the events of ''The Verdict of the Scythe'' and flashing back to the Conquest of Galaspar, his first campaign as primarch of the Death Guard. As he's settling into command of his legion, Mortarion learns of a noncompliant human empire known as the Order in the Galaspar Cluster. Billions of people are enslaved, kept permanently drugged up, and forced to work themselves to death for the enrichment of the High Comptrollers, a pack of oligarchical assholes who refer to their slaves as "labor units" and have them executed and turned into nutrient sludge because their baking wasn't up to par (no, really). The Order's similarities to the Overlords of Barbarus piss Morty off to the point where he rejects the other Imperial commanders' suggestion that they blockade and besiege the cluster and decides to do a Leeroy Jenkins-style decapitation strike instead. He takes his fleet and barges clean through the Cluster's exterior defenses before ramming a cruiser into the side of the largest hive on Galaspar Prime and going out to kick ass the Death Guard way: fistfuls of rad grenades, rivers of phosphex, and power scythes, all topped off with plenty of orbital bombardments. No one who belongs to the Order is allowed to survive; Morty and the legion kill most of the Comptrollers even when they try to surrender and leave a few to be torn to pieces by their former slaves. Morty expects to be praised for his work, but the Emperor seems upset and sends Horus and Sanguinius to call him to account. Both primarchs are stunned by the level of destruction Mortarion has wrought, and When he tries to justify himself to his brothers, Horus points out that all he's done is replace one kind of tyranny with another. Morty has a brief moment of clarity and wonders if there is a better path forward for him and his legion. Ultimately, however, he concludes that the examples of Galaspar and Absyrtus justify his way of war and decides to become an embodiment of unstoppable, unrelenting Death, [[Nurgle|and we all know how well that worked out for him.]] Also features [[Typhus|Calas Typhon]] and [[Knights-Errant#Nathaniel Garro|Nathaniel Garro]] in their early days as line legionaries. Typhon falls into a disgusting sewer at one point and runs into a psyker who seems to know what he'll become, while Garro is the sole survivor of a kill team sent to take out the Order's chief asshole, which is probably what set him on the path to becoming battle-captain of the Seventh Grand Company.

===Rogal Dorn: The Emperor's Crusader===

Fafnir Rann and Sigismund are standing around on the walls of the Imperial Palace just before the Siege, wondering why their primarch got the job of fortifying Terra, when Malcador pops out and reminds them of the Night Crusade, whereupon all three of them start reminiscing about it.

Six decades into the Great Crusade, ten years after Dorn was recovered and shortly after Lion el'Jonson was found, Dorn, Fulgrim, Horus, and the Lion are ordered to deploy into the Occluda Noctis, an area of the galaxy obscured by a major Warp storm. Their goal is to bring the area into Imperial compliance and find the source of an unknown threat that’s already destroyed multiple expeditionary fleets. All four of them have their own ideas about how best to prosecute the campaign; the Lion wants to work his way in from the periphery of the Occluda, while Dorn’s plan boils down to “drive my fleet into the heart of the Occluda and get shit done”. He and the Lion disagree about who’s right to the point where Horus and Fulgrim have to try and calm them down, but Dorn insults the Lion, who demands an honor duel. The Lion’s champion wins because Dorn forgot he had Sigismund, and Rogal immediately apologizes to his brother for insulting him. Ultimately, they agree to do both plans. Dorn’s works surprisingly well, though the Fists don’t rack up nearly as many compliances as the Dark Angels and Emperor’s Children since he's insisting on a diplomatic approach and the fleet has to be careful when making Warp jumps in the Occluda. They eventually encounter the unknown enemy, which turns out to be a lost human civilization called the Kapikulu Continuum that uses cloaking tech and special warp gates to get around, requiring Dorn to up his game to counter them. He manages to outsmart and defeat the Continuum's fleet and convinces its leaders to join the Imperium. At the peace negotiations, he learns that the Continuum used to be the slaves of a xenos race that altered their brains to grow a special neural web that lets them use all their nifty technology (and also makes their heads explode if a psyker tries mind-probing them), which means that they’re not technically human anymore. Dorn concludes that he can’t risk letting them join the Imperium and orders them to be wiped out, following the exact letter of the Emperor’s orders: “Remove this hidden threat.” He is genuinely distressed by this outcome, but sucks it up and moves on.

The whole point of the story turns out to be summing up Dorn’s character: he was made the Praetorian of Terra because he can be trusted to do exactly what he is told to do, fulfilling both the word and spirit of the Emperor’s commands, and there’s no one else the Emperor would rather have guarding his capital world. Also a funny sidenote: Perturabo is found during the course of the Night Crusade and Dorn sends him a friendly welcome message, which one character declares will certainly lead to a greater fraternal bond between them in future.

===Sanguinius: The Great Angel===
A disgraced remembrancer joins the IX Legion on campaign and learns more about the early days of the Blood Angels, possibly including some of their more unsavory secrets.

===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 officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Curze 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."

==Horus Heresy Character Series==

A subseries of novellas and short stories focusing on major characters from the Crusade and Heresy eras. Originally these were part of the Primarchs series until BL finally split them off into their own category.

===Valdor: Birth of the Imperium===
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.

===Sigismund: The Eternal Crusader===
Solomon Voss comes to interview Sigismund for the first time near the end of the Great Crusade, and Sigismund reveals why he believes that there will only be war in the Imperium's <s>grimdark</s> noblebright future.

Most of the novel is concerned with Siggy's backstory: he was an orphan recruited from the slums of Terra by the Night Lords, but the initial genetic testing revealed he was more compatible with the Imperial Fists, War Hounds, Luna Wolves, and Raven Guard, in that order, so he got bumped into the VII Legion instead. He earned his position as First Captain by beating 200 other Templar Brethren in one-on-one duels, with his final opponent being a Contemptor Dreadnought containing the guy who coached him when he joined the Templars. He's named Dorn's personal champion after winning a duel with an Iron Hands champion over whether Dorn or Ferrus was right about the proper prosecution of a campaign. We also get to see his infamous duel with Sevatar, which lasted an entire day until Sigismund was about to land the killing blow and Sevatar cheated to end it, and his time with the World Eaters, where he picked up his habit of chaining his sword to his arm. Most interestingly, he admits that he never wanted to be recruited for the Legions, and that if he knew as a child what he'd become, he'd still have said no. Voss further realizes that Sigismund is hoping to die at some point so he can escape the endless cycle of conflict. The book ends with Voss summarizing what Sigismund believes: there will always be war, because even if the Imperium pacifies the galaxy, it will still have to fight against the cruelty, savagery, and cowardice of human nature. Needless to say, later events proved Sigismund to be absolutely right in every possible way.

==The Tabletop Wargame==
[[Forge World]] produces a line of books and models (in line with the old [[Imperial Armour]] and [[Warhammer Forge]]) to allow players to fight battles from the Horus Heresy, with rules and models for the [[Primarchs]] (both pre- and post-fall, for the Traitors), named characters who were romping around back then and ancient vehicles and machines that would be one off units in 40k armies, being fielded en-mass. Originally an add on system for [[Warhammer 40,000]], it became it's own game with a rulebook after 40k moved on to [[Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition|8th edition]] making it a sort of legacy game for the older style of 40k edition and also meaning the game has become a refuge for fa/tg/uys who don't enjoy 8th/9th edition 40k. Since the game is set during the 31st millennium pretty much all the armies are more archaic versions of their 40k counter parts, with lots of rules and quirks that help differentiate the factions from their future selves, such as legion tactical squads being able to be fielded in 20 man squads representing how much bigger the legions were and [[Daemon]]s not having their gods properly identified (though still having rules for god specific daemons) and having vague unit names to represent the only basic understanding the Imperium had of them. There are no [[xenos]] armies unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask), but all the factions that are in the game are very customisable with a huge array of rules, army types and really good conversion opportunities being able to be brought to the table, especially for Mechanicum, Daemon and Militia & Cults armies. 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.

Following the passing of Alan Bligh and the re-organisation of Forge World as a studio, the fate of this wargame had been seen as a bit precarious. While there were probably more books to cover up to and likely including the Siege of Terra, it seemed increasingly likely that Daddy GeeDubs wasn't keen on letting FW continue writing for this game (or making massive monsters and tanks for the mainstream games) on top of their work on [[Necromunda]] and [[Blood Bowl]]. One only had to look at how gutted the Imperial Armour books became in recent editions to see the writing on the wall. That said, the game had itself a sizeable following, especially after 8th Edition 40K essentially threw out all the crunch fans knew and made something entirely different, predictably leading to reactionary grognards clinging to the remaining flecks of nostalgia.

The game was never fully cancelled though. Though the black books had essentially stopped after Crusade, GW did release '''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HHZone_Mortalis_Rules.pdf Zone Mortalis]''' rules, the Exemplary Battles PDFs mentioned below and more alarmingly, the lead-up to Adepticon 2022 announced that the Horus Heresy wargame was going to see a new edition, now written by the core GW design team. Warhammer Fest 2022 displayed their full intent, with a full box set (filled with plastic Beakies, two new Praetors, a Spartan, and Cataphractii Termies, all in plastic) as well as plenty of other updated models: new support squad weapon kits, reboxed 20-man kits for Mk. III and Mk. IV Marines, plastic Deimos-pattern Rhinos, Sicarans, and Leviathan Dreadnoughts, an updated plastic Contemptor Dread kit, and the brand new [[Kratos Heavy Assault Tank]], a heavy tank placed in between the Sicaran and Fellblade. They've continued to make new models for the game since then (including plans for new models for each of the Primarchs), although it seems Forge World will still be making a bunch of the original models

===First Edition===
'''Book 1: 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.

'''Book 2: 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.

'''Book 3: 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.

'''Book 4: 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.
'''Book 5: 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.

'''Book 6: 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).

'''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.

'''Book 8: 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, two new squads, and an entire slew of relics that interact with Psykers and Daemons.

'''Book 9: 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 <s>book</s> edition. 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. This proved to be the last of the black books for the first edition of the Heresy tabletop, as GW announced a new edition of the game at Adepticon 2022.

====Condensed Lists====
The Istvaan Campaign Legions (ICL) and Legiones Astartes Crusade Army List (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 LACAL is basically the generic 30k Space Marine "codex", whilst the ICL contains all of the collected rules for the legions from Books 1-3, including their units, characters and wargear. 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 Taghmata 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.

====Exemplary Battles====
Starting in Fall 2021, GW started publishing a series of free PDFs for the Horus Heresy tabletop which contain mini-campaigns based around battles from the Heresy that have been mentioned in the novels or black books but weren't big enough for a book of their own. These PDFs also include fluff and rules for Legion units that haven't been given any yet, along with photos and conversion tips for said units. These tips boil down to "buy tons of Forge World stuff while you still can", so one could plausibly argue that the PDFs are just ads for FW's overpriced upgrade packs. Still, it's a neat concept and at least they're free. These seem to be leading into the new edition of the game as announced at Adepticon 2022; GW has confirmed that the PDFs released prior to the launch of the new edition have been written to work with both sets of rules.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Xwccsydzg8YpDsho.pdf The Battle of Pluto: Hydra's Devastation]''''': Focuses on the Alpha Legion's invasion of Pluto, as seen in ''Praetorian of Dorn'', and provides a scenario for Imperial Fists vs Alpharius' sneaky sneks. Also has rules for the Huscarls, Dorn's elite bodyguard, which make them into Phalanx Warders on steroids.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/9eA3ZYnzr5tXbxjX.pdf The Defence of Sotha: Aegida's Lament]''''': Focuses on the Night Lords' raid on Sotha and the near-destruction of the Ultramarines Aegida Company while attempting to hold Sothopolis. The Atramentar ''finally'' get their tabletop rules and also are spotlighted in the fluff, which concludes with them [[Internet Troll|murderfucking their own commanding officer]] because he was getting too uppity for the other Night Lord officers' liking.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NUTJvW4qx8d08Fkr.pdf The Siege of Hydra Cordatus: Sundering of the Cadmean Citadel]''''': Imperial Fists vs. Iron Warriors brawling it out on the ruined world of Hydra Cordatus. Includes rules for the IV Legion's Dominator Cohort, Perturabo's former bodyguards who got fired and replaced with the Iron Circle after Phall. Hilariously, they are so salty about this that they have Hatred (Cybernetica Cortex) unless you take them as Pert's retinue.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fcMVfgBlCyDHmejD.pdf The Battle of Armatura]''''': World Eaters vs. Ultramarines on the war world of Armatura, as seen in ''Betrayer''. Includes rules for the XII Legion's Red Hand Destroyer squads, who can take Caedere weapons like meteor hammers and excoriator chainaxes in addition to all the usual Destroyer nastiness and ''must'' declare a charge whenever able if they're within 12" of an enemy unit at the beginning of the Assault phase.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/mouvfePNquxVdprP.pdf The Battle of Perditus: Umbral-51]''''': The Death Guard are trying to [[Ork|loot]] galaxy-wrecking archaeotech and the Dark Angels mean to stop them. Iron Hands and Mechanicum are there too, and the mission pack has rules for rampaging battle-automata trying to kill the Spess Mehreens so the techpriests can go back to worshiping their doomsday devices in peace. Includes rules for units from both sides: the Order of the Broken Claw and the Mortus Poisoners. The Broken Claw are Inner Circle Knights who get bonuses against Monstrous and Gargantuan Creatures and daemons, representing the fact that they were the I Legion's specialized Rangdan-killers during the Xenocides. The Mortus Poisoners are Destroyers who can swap their bolters for flamers with chem-munitions for free and one in every five can swap their bolt pistol for a heavy flamer with chem-munitions for 20 points ([[Derp|that's right, their '''bolt pistol''', not their bolter, blame FW editors]]), and can be taken in units of 15 for when you just want the table to burn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/iIVebnZrYRFbaDGH.pdf The Battle of Calth: Underworld War]''''': Smurfs and Word Bearers duking it out in Zone Mortalis missions representing the underground battles fought after Calth's surface was trashed in ''Know No Fear''. Includes rules for the Ultramarines' Nemesis Destroyer squads, aka Guilliman's least favorite sons. Instead of dual bolt pistols, they get bolters with specialist ammo that gives them Assault 2 and Rending and they can take weapons usually reserved for Breacher and Support squads. Kinda weird, but makes sense given the XIII's "tactical flexibility" schtick. No jump packs, though.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/H6ygklXe9Fv2FwRe.pdf Battle For Kalium Gate]''''': Emperor's Children and White Scars get their turn, fighting over a huge void gate as the Scars try to get back to Terra in time for the big party. Has rules for new units from both sides. The III Legion gets the Sun Killers, Heavy Support squads that only use lascannons, multi-meltas, volkite culverins, and plasma cannons [[Meme|because they're elegant weapons from a more civilized time]]. The White Scars get the Karaoghlanlar, or Dark Sons of Death. Aside from sounding like a Welsh person choking on something, they're jump-pack Destroyers who don't get phosphex or missile launchers and trade one bolt pistol for a chainsword, but can be taken as a retinue for a Stormseer with a jump pack. They also have a rule that lets them autofail Sweeping Advance rolls in exchange for performing a spooky ritual that forces enemy units within 6" to pass an Ld test or suffer -1 WS next turn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AmPdr3yMZbvggCND.pdf The Breaking of the Perfect Fortress]''''': Raven Guard storming the III Legion's Perfect Fortress on the world of Narsis, previously mentioned in ''Deliverance Lost''. Includes rules for the Deliverers, Terran-born Raven Guard who were trained under Horus and still prefer to use Terminator armor and shock-assault tactics. They're Stubborn and get teleportation transponders for deep-striking, but their main rule is Corax's Shame, representing the fact that Corax wasn't fond of his brutal Terran sons. They get +1T against attacks that cause Instant Death and cannot be deployed within 18" of Corax, nor can he ever join them. If you take Deliverers as part of a traitor force, they instead gain Hatred against Corax.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TLbrp4me5GEfL37Q.pdf The Scouring of Gilden's Star]''''': Word Bearers vs Blood Angels fighting over a ''Hamlet'' reference last seen all the way back in 1989. Has rules for the Word Bearers' Procurators, basically assault squads led by evil Apothecaries who [[Blood Ravens|steal gene-seed]] and desecrate corpses to summon daemons. They give boosts to friendly psykers with the Harbinger of Chaos, Diabolism, and Anathemata disciplines and award an extra VP every time they Sweeping Advance an enemy unit.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/6i9CeSwKmbWmzac4.pdf The Battle of Trisolian: Vengeful Spirit]''''': Taking a page from the ''Wolfsbane'' novel, this portrays the part of the [[Battle of Trisolian]] when the Space Wolves broke into Horus' flagship during Russ' attempt to kill Horus before he reached Terra. Introduces the Space Wolves' Jorlund Hunter Pack, assault marines that can temporarily supercharge their flamers, and the Sons of Horus' Chieftains, an elite retinue of junior officers who specialize in hunting down characters.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/3mVvZrTG9XOWeVxv.pdf The Axandria IV Incident]''''': Imperial Fists, Custodes, and Sisters of Silence raid a Thousand Sons repository world not long before the Siege of Terra, and the Thousand Sons actually score a win this time by evacuating their data stacks before the loyalist forces can trash them. Includes rules for Numerologist Cabals of the Order of Ruin, Thousand Sons Techmarines and tacticians who used divination to generate battle plans and predict enemy movements. The Numerologist gains a special psychic power that gives him a geo-locator beacon and boosts the BS of two friendly Thousand Sons squads if he passes a psychic check. He also gets a special bubble-wrap rule that prevents him from taking any wounds no matter what until all his bodyguards are dead, unless he accepts a challenge.

===Second Edition===
The first two books for the new edition of the tabletop were revealed at Warhammer Fest 2022: the '''Liber Astartes''' and the '''Liber Hereticus'''. These are basically updated and combined versions of the LACAL and ICL books. Both books contain the rules for all non-Legion-specific units, while the Liber Astartes has the rules for the loyalist legions and the Liber Hereticus has the rules for the traitor legions, including their Primarchs, unique units and wargear, Rites of War, Warlord Traits, and faction abilities. The '''Legacies of the Age of Darkness''' PDF contains the rules for vehicles, units, and characters who either never had models or whose models are now out of production, including most of the Legion-specific special characters, Castraferrum Dreadnoughts, the [[Crassus Armored Assault Transport|CRASSUS ARMOURED ASSAULT TRANSPORT]], and all of the Baneblade variants. Later leaks, which Warhammer Community would confirm, revealed that there would also be books for the Mechanicum ('''Liber Mechanicum''') that would contain rules for the Taghmata, Knights and Titans as well as a book for the Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Solar Auxilia, and Divisio Assassinorum ('''Liber Imperium'''). Daemons of the Ruinstorm and Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults will get downloadable lists, and according to the Legacies PDF the Knights-Errant and Blackshields are being made into full factions. They will also continue to release the Exemplary Battles series; the previously released PDFs got a separate update PDF in order to work with the new edition. The tactics page for the Legions can be found [[Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/Legiones Astartes Tactics|here]].

The core rules have been drastically modified with the addition of "Reactions", which make gameplay more dynamic. In addition to basic reactions such as Overwatch that can be taken in response to the opponent's actions, each Legion now has an "Advanced Reaction" that is more powerful but requires more specific conditions to work. Furthermore, USRs have been rewritten to be more granular (e.g. Bulky, Very Bulky, and Extremely Bulky are now Bulky (X), where X is is how many models that unit counts as for the purposes of transport capacity) and the Psychic Phase has been removed in lieu of the pre-7th edition manner of resolving psychic powers.

==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==
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3170/horus-heresy-1993 Horus Heresy (1993)] at BoardGameGeek
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63543/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (2010)] at BoardGameGeek

{{40k-Timeline}}

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

Horus Heresy

2022-10-16T00:58:58Z

2A02:8070:8E82:C500:E8A2:5450:48E0:91C1: /* The Main Book 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|I never wanted this. I never wanted to unleash my legions. Together, we banished the ignorance of old night. But you betrayed me. You betrayed us all. You stole power from the Gods, and lied to your sons! Mankind has only one chance to prosper. If you will not seize it...'''then I will!!''' So let it be war! From the skies of Terra, to the Galactic Rim. Let the seas boil! Let the stars fall! Though it takes, '''the last drop of my blood''', I will see the Galaxy freed once more! And if I cannot save it from your failure, father...then let the Galaxy '''BURN!'''|Horus, making his own feelings known and [[A Game of Pretend|totally not projecting ''at all''.]]}}

{{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''', '''Paradise Lost IN SPACE''', '''[[The God-Emperor of Mankind|Jimmy Space]] and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Decade''' 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. [[Derp|Also notice how the Gothic Sector and Port Maw, canonically bordering the Eye of Terror, are positioned a quarter of the galaxy away from it.]] [[Forge World|For some reason.]]]]
The Horus Heresy screwed with almost everyone's plans (except the Chaos Gods' of course) and changed the flavor of the Imperium's Grimdark from Stalinist Soviet "if you breathe a positive word about religion, we rape you and your family 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' to make the problem go away". 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]]
*[[Battle of Trisolian]]
*The Titandeath at [[Beta Garmon]]
*[[Siege of Terra]]

Following the Siege of Terra, Horus was permakilled, Konrad allowed himself to be assassinated, Ferrus Manus had already died in the Drop Site Massacare, Sanguinius was KIA, Big-E was interred onto the Golden Throne, the surviving loyalist 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 stories [[Alpha Legion|The Serpent Beneath]] and [[The last Church]].

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]]. And there a couple that are just objectively bad (Battle for the Abyss).

===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 virus 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 Imperium's most effective superweapons.
*'''''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 of the III Legion from the 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 sucker punch.
*'''''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 cannot 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 GW had decided what to do with the Lion's loyalty and personality, so its descriptions of the Lion are outdated and do not match 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"! This book is still 100% canon, but in later books GW seems to have changed their mind on the Alpha Legion so they abandoned most of the plots from this book.
*'''''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 the 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, it explores many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanicum. Techpriests 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 defenses. 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 they're 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 everyone above him in 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 realizing 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 shenanigans 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 cliché one liners out there.
*'''''The First Heretic:''''' [[Lorgar]]'s turn to get a backstory 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. Significant 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 archaeologist 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 Guilliman</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 just by 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 has 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 promethium 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 in the middle of nowhere might be bad press when he's going to Terra.
** '''''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, Curze 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 Curze 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) 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 Guard for the endgame: steal the genetech, kill some Raven Guard, 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 fuckup in the shipyards that leaves 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 the Underworld 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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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 Emperor'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. When not showing off the two traitor primarchs, the book 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. The guy also resurrects the Word Bearers' waifu, apparently turning her into a perpetual in the process, only for her to be <s>kidnapped</s> rescued by the Cabal soon after. She is never seen again in the rest of the series. Best known for containing Angron's dressing-down speech toward Guilliman 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 millennia, 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 atheist. Unmarked 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. John Grammaticus is up to no good (probably), looking for an artifact infused with the Emperor's groovy god juice and there is a Word Bearer who doesn't seem to be buying into the whole "Chaos is so epic and cool" schtick of his legion. 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 and complains about how all the primarchs that sided with him are [[Perturabo|dickheaded]] [[Mortarion|edgelords]] or [[Konrad Curze|batshit]] [[Angron|lunatics]], while the cool guys like Sanguinius and Guilliman are still loyal to the Emprah.
**'''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 realize 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 Hearthworld''' - 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 agents 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. He finally gives up 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 foresees 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 the 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 Mortarion 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 exterminatus grade phosphex to the face (he survives nonetheless, 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 defenses 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 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' defenses 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 VERY malleable, Daemons lie, and that this was written by a man whose hate-boner for Big-E exceeds that of The Four, themselves). 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 fears that he has now run out of cards to play and can't yet 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 ritualized 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 Hands 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 fatal 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 millennium, 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-aspirant 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 for 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 gets Zardu Layak to speak Fulgrim's true name and bind him into joining in a plot to depose the Warmaster, believing that his refusal to completely submit before the Chaos Gods will lead to the Traitor Legions' ultimate defeat at Terra. This turns out to be a massive mistake that leads Lorgar to be utterly curbstomped by the revived Horus and told that he will be killed if Horus ever sees him again. Witnessing this, Zardu Layak and the Word Bearers present all swear allegiance to the Warmaster before Lorgar leaves with his tail between his legs. Layak frees Fulgrim who finds it all hilarious. Magnus makes an appearance at the end, swearing himself to Horus's service. "Alpharius" makes a token appearance to hand over Terra's defense 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 Fists 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 the 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. The 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 acolyte 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 never-ending 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 ''Nightfall'' 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 deep-strikes 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 realizes 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 daemon w/ invasion on the side, then departs with his forces. The world gets covered in blood clouds and is infested by daemons. Argonis then repeats 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 and all the new Imperial Fists who were inducted during the 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, signaling 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. Big-E 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 Titans 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. As disease spreads through the fleet, Mortarion becomes increasingly horrified and outraged as he realizes what's happening to his legion and finally kills Typhon in retaliation, but the Destroyer Hive reanimates his corpse, officially 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. Unfortunately, it turns out "Keeler" was actually Samus manipulating Mersadie to get her onto the ''Phalanx'' and use her as a gateway to invade the station, so she winds up committing suicide in front of Garviel Loken. Samus rampages around the ''Phalanx'' for a few minutes and is killed '''again''', this time by Dorn. Abaddon bypasses the outer defenses via a warp rift opened up by Ahriman, captures Luna, and convinces the matriarch of the Selenar to start making more Astartes for the traitors. The book ends with Horus, Fulgrim, and Angron arriving in-system along with the main strength of their fleets, meaning shit is now officially real.
*'''''The Lost and the Damned''''': This is it, ladies and neckbeards. The Siege has begun in earnest. Dorn is using millions of conscripts and all the vast firepower he’s installed on the Palace walls to blunt Horus's initial attacks, holding the V, VII, and IX Legions in reserve. Unfortunately, this is all more or less playing into the traitors’ hands. They want to cause as much death as possible so that the walls between reality and the warp will be thin enough to let hordes of daemons onto the planet and the daemon primarchs themselves can safely set foot on Terra without being banished by the Emperor’s psychic mojo. To their credit, Dorn and his brothers are aware of this, but also recognize that they’re screwed either way, so they decide to just go ahead and kill as many traitors as possible. After a few months of traitor Army regiments, Chaos spawn, and beastmen being sent in to soften the defenses up while the Dark Mechanicum build siege guns and towers to punch through the walls, the Death Guard finally show up after their side trip to visit Grandpa Nurgle. Horus sends them in first, mightily pissing off Angron in the process, and they immediately set about turning the warzone into a large-scale recreation of Passchendaele circa 1917. Jaghatai goes out to gather intel on the siege engines and gets poked with a plague knife, but as soon as he crosses back into the Palace grounds the Emperor’s psychic aegis cures him. He then takes half the White Scars to go defend the citizens of Terra from rampaging traitors despite Dorn ordering him not to, and promises to return when needed. Sanguinius rallies the defenders and leads his sons from the front even though Azkaellon and Raldoron would really rather he didn’t. The book ends with the World Eaters and Night Lords launching their first full-scale attack on the Palace walls; Angron challenges Sanguinius to battle while Raldoron beats Gendor Skraivok hollow and tosses him off the wall. The book reveals that despite their numerical superiority and the aid of the Chaos gods, Horus is maintaining control over his war effort and the other traitor primarchs only by sheer force of will: Lorgar, Curze, and Alpharius are out of the picture, Magnus is doing his own thing, Fulgrim is being a prissy dick, Perturabo is as much a whiny bitch as ever, and Angron is so uncontrollable that Kharn and [[Lotara Sarrin]] are forced to teleport him into the labyrinth Perturabo built to contain Vulkan until he can be set loose on Terra. Only Mortarion still seems relatively normal despite the fact he’s now a daemon primarch. Moreover Abaddon is getting really fucking cagey about Horus's new habit of Chaos worship, for good reason. It turns out that the wound Russ inflicted on him at Trisolian has resulted in his soul slowly being drained. As a result, the Chaos Gods have to keep juicing Horus up, with the downsides of time-wasting sojourns into the warp and the gradual destruction of Horus's body. What's more, there are implications that Abaddon is being groomed to take over when Horus falls, all but confirming that the Chaos Gods expected Horus to lose his duel with the Emperor.
*'''''The First Wall''''': This book focuses on the battle for the Lion’s Gate spaceport, which is the tallest structure on Terra and the only place that void-going ships can dock on the entire planet, meaning that the traitors will be able to shuttle in reinforcements and materiel more easily if they can capture it. Perturabo details Warsmith Kroeger to command the Iron Warriors’ assault on the spaceport under the logic that Dorn will be expecting Pert to command the attack personally and won’t be expecting whatever battle plans Kroeger comes up with. Warsmith Forrix isn’t happy with this or with anything else that’s going on, since he’s realized that Horus is using the Iron Warriors in the same way the Emperor did and he's become increasingly disillusioned with Perturabo himself. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum sets a technophagic virus loose inside the spaceport and Zardu Layak, [[Abaddon]], and [[Typhus]] perform a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate Cor’bax Utterblight inside the Emperor’s wards. The Fists hold out as long as they can and inflict heavy casualties, but Dorn finally gives the order to withdraw and abandon the Gate as Perturabo lands his flagship atop the port and joins an assault led by Abaddon and Kharn. Sigismund duels Kharn and nearly loses while Dorn kills Zardu Layak, which allows daemons to manifest on Terra for the first time. He then has a brief exchange of taunts with Perturabo and the first Chaos Titans set foot on Terra, spelling a new stage of the battle. In the midst of all this is a little passage detailing just how many artillery pieces the Iron Warriors have landed on the planet, including two thousand [[Basilisk Artillery Gun|Basilisks]], fifteen hundred [[Manticore Launcher Tank|Manticores]], five hundred [[Medusa Siege Gun|Medusas]], sixteen hundred Siege Dreadnoughts, seven thousand Thunderburst guns, five hundred [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher|Deathstrike]] launchers and eighty-four [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank|Typhon siege guns]], plus uncounted thousands of Rhinos, Land Raiders, Vindicators, Predators, Sicarans, and [[Baneblade|assorted]] [[Fellblade|superheavy]] [[Spartan Assault Tank|tanks]]. [[Awesome|That sound you just heard was Josef Stalin and the entire Red Army popping a boner from beyond the grave.]] Meanwhile, to stop Cor’bax’s taint from spreading inside the Imperial Palace, Malcador recruits Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian to hunt down and eliminate any corrupted cults of the Emperor, giving us the weirdest buddy-cop pairing of all time. Malcador wants to see if he can weaponize the cult’s belief in the Emperor against the Chaos gods and sees Keeler as the key to doing so, while Amon would rather just stamp it out. They eventually find a cult that has been corrupted by Cor’bax. When the daemon uses their bodies to manifest inside the walls, Keeler, Malcador, and Amon team up to kill him. Malcador tells Dorn, Valdor, and the other Imperial commanders that he will allow the cult of the Emperor to exist until the Emperor himself says otherwise. While all this is going on, we get to see more of the siege from a mortal perspective. Katsuhiro, a veteran of the initial fighting outside the walls, is detailed to a section of the outer walls under attack by the Death Guard and eventually has to aid in putting down an outbreak of plague zombies. We also follow Zenobi, a seventeen-year-old line worker from the Afrik hive of Addaba who volunteered to serve in the Imperial Army, only it turns out that she and her entire regiment are pledged to Horus, though this ultimately results their city getting bombed to shit. (Zenobi's story took about a quarter of the book, but its entirety can be summed up in one sentence, and could '''at best''' be described as misguided, inexplicable filler; sounds like a fun read, huh?) The novel ends with John Grammaticus arriving on Terra, mission unknown.
*'''''Saturnine''''': Dan Abnett's first HH book in seven years. Dorn is trying to decide which parts of the Palace need to be defended and which can be allowed to fall, as the Imperial forces are outnumbered, outgunned, and running low on supplies. He identifies four key parts of the defense that cannot be allowed to fall to the enemy, then decides which one he can afford to lose anyway: the Eternity Wall spaceport. The Saturnine Wall, one of the other key elements, has developed a subtle fault thanks to the relentless traitor bombardment. Dorn suspects that Perturabo will try to exploit it, so he lays a trap for the traitor assault force and calls in Arkhan Land to help fix it. While this is going on, Sanguinius kills an Iron Warriors Warsmith at the Gorgon Bar, then [[Awesome|solos a Warlord Titan]] and stares down three Warhounds until they turn tail and run for it. Jaghatai and the White Scars lead a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard and really ruin their day, further pissing off Mortarion. [[Abaddon]] enlists the entire [[Emperor's Children]] Legion and three companies of the Sons of Horus, led by the entire Mournival, to attack the Saturnine Wall with Perturabo's help; however, Perturabo anticipates that Dorn will expect them to do so and refuses to lend his aid. The III Legion attacks from the front, using three ancient and irreplaceable siege engines, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrow up from beneath with Termite assault drills. When the Sons of Horus emerge from their assault drills, they're ambushed by kill teams led by [[Garviel Loken]] and [[Nathaniel Garro]]. All three companies, including the famed [[Justaerin]] and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, are wiped out to a single (armless) man. Garro kills Falkus Kibre while Loken kills Horus Aximand ([[Blood Ravens|and takes his sword]]) and Tormageddon, finally avenging his old friend. Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen are also killed off, meaning that all of the Sons of Horus characters we were introduced to at the beginning of the series are now dead except for Loken and Abaddon. Abaddon goes on a killing spree, but eventually gets beaten up by a nobody [[Blood Angel]], Endryd Haar, and Garro. Abaddon manages to kill the Blood Angel and Haar, but is almost killed by Garro, only to be [[Plot Armor|teleported to safety at the last moment]] (presumably losing his arms in the transfer) despite his own wish for death, as the Chaos Gods already have him in mind as their new Warmaster. Arkhan Land floods the fault line with thousands of tons of quick-setting rockcrete, [[Grimdark|entombing a bunch of the Sons of Horus beneath the palace forever.]] Fulgrim hurls his legion at the Saturnine Wall ''en masse'', which accomplishes nothing but getting 18,000 of them killed and destroying the siege platforms. Dorn and Sigismund fight Fulgrim; Sigismund manages to injure Fulgrim despite being hilariously outclassed, but before Fulgrim can finish the job, Dorn appears. He holds his own against his psychotic bishonen brother, inflicting so much damage that Fulgrim throws a tantrum and takes his legion and goes home, abandoning the Siege entirely. The two then fight a bunch of III Legion champions and defeat them all. In one particularly awesome moment, Sigismund feeds Eidolon his own sword and just straight-up kicks him off the wall. At this point, Perturabo seems to be the only person on Team Horus who still gives a shit about winning the siege. The rest of traitor primarchs are all too indignant to focus on their alleged objective, too busy conspiring against each other, or too insane to care.
**Crucially to the ongoing progress of the Siege, the loyalists lose the Eternity Wall spaceport, but this was part of the plan. As noted above, Dorn identified four key points in the defense that he couldn't afford to lose, then chose the one that he couldn't afford to lose the least, personally took command at the Saturnine Wall, and sent Sanguinius and Jaghatai to hold the other two spots. Angron and the World Eaters assault the spaceport, and pretty much every named Imperial Army character in the book dies at this point, along with Jenetia Krole, the leader of the [[Sisters of Silence]], who gets killed by Kharn, and Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists, who literally dies standing while holding the main bridge into the spaceport. Also, Angron gets blown up by artillery but comes back to life since, y'know, he's a daemon prince and all. Sanguinius' visions are getting increasingly powerful and painful, especially when he winds up inside Angron's tortured mind. He eventually delves deeply enough to realize that Angron has sensed the annihilation of Nuceria. The [[Dark Angels]] and the [[Ultramarines]] are on the way!
**Other miscellaneous things that happen: John Grammaticus is trying to meet up with Ollanius Persson and encounters the Perpetual [[Erda]], who tells us that Big-E was named '''Neoth''' when they met, but that this was just one of the many names he's had over the millennia. It is also revealed that she is the true mother of the primarchs and is technically responsible for their scattering as the result of what can only be described as a fucked up custody battle - cue the sound of countless facepalms from the fanbase. Dorn has Kyril Sindermann form the proto-[[Inquisition]], and he recruits Euphrati Keeler and some other people to go around collecting interviews with soldiers, workers, and other residents of the Palace. Keeler interviews Basilio Fo, the mad genesmith from the short story ''Misbegotten'', and he reveals that he can create a biomechanical phage that could kill Horus, along with every other Space Marine and primarch in the galaxy. Keeler and her Custodian babysitter decide that this information should go to Dorn, just in case he decides he needs such a doomsday option. The Ollanius Pius myth is partly born from a Guardsman named Olly Piers standing up and defending a banner of the Emperor before dying at Angron's hands. Horus is sliding further into apparent senility as the Chaos Gods' power begins to overwhelm his body and mind to the point that it would have killed him outright had he not died in the duel against the Emperor first, much to Abaddon's disgust. He is almost totally disconnected from the siege, asks for things and immediately forgets asking for them, and keeps calling his equerry Maloghurst, even though Maloghurst has been dead since ''Slaves to Darkness''. At the very end, Corswain of the Dark Angels arrives with a large chunk of the Dark Angels fleet, ready to aid in the battle. In short, a lot of named characters die and plot threads are set up for other books and the rest of 40K.
*'''''Mortis''''': John French's second book in the series. As the morale of the Palace's defenders slowly erodes under the pressure of the unrelenting assault and the malign influence of the Warp, the traitor Titans of Legio Mortis are unleashed to break through the Mercury Wall, with only the loyalist engines of the Legio Ignatum to hold them off. Not as good as ''Saturnine'' or ''The Lost and the Damned'', but not as bad as Zenobi's story in ''The First Wall'', it feels more like an anthology, though all of its stories have a common beginning and converge in the end.
** The main story, the siege itself, has very little to offer. Horus has finally decided to take direct command of the traitor forces, but his first order to Perturabo is to send everything they have, include the entire Legio Mortis, to attack the Mercury Wall head on. Perturabo objects to such a terrible strategy, after which Horus sends his equerry to tell him to disperse his legion among the traitor forces and let the Death Guard take over their positions. Perturabo immediately realizes that Horus is about to pull some serious warp fuckery, which he's not okay with, so he orders a complete withdrawal of all IV Legion assets on Terra and fucks off, abandoning the siege entirely. The rest of the main siege plot centers around the Titan battle in front of the Mercury Wall; the traitor forces have used Warp power to reanimate countless Titan wrecks collected from Beta-Garmon and elsewhere, using them as cannon fodder to weaken the loyalist defenses before attacking with the full might of the Legio Mortis, the largest Titan legion in the entire Imperium.
** Meanwhile, in another corner of the battle, a small group of loyalist Imperial Army soldiers are still holding a maybe no longer important line of defense. Amongst them is Katsuhiro, the luckiest unlucky son of a gun from ''The Lost and the Damned'', who has fought from the Outer Wall all the way into the central palace and is still fighting because [[Grimdark|in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war]]. Their forces are initially led by a Blood Angel, but he dies during the battle and puts Katsuhiro in charge because this man's got nothing but unwavering belief in the Emperor and balls made out of titanium.
** Shiban Khan, to everyone's surprise, survived his shuttle crashing in ''Saturnine'' thanks to his extensive augmetic rebuild. He wakes up in the middle of nowhere and starts hearing the voices of his dead brothers as he limps toward the Inner Palace. It could be warp fuckery, as the land shows various signs of Chaos corruption, or perhaps more likely, he just had some severe head trauma due to the shuttle crash (and the sky's the limit when it comes to head trauma). Either way, Shiban wants to return to the fight, so he starts to walk, and walk, and walk (there is a lot of walking in this not that long of a side plot). Then he encounters an Army lieutenant with a baby (feels like there is a joke in there somewhere) and the man tags along with him. The lieutenant explains that he just found the baby in the middle of all this shit and took it without any question; I keep expecting it to be a daemon or something, but it ends up to be something hopeful, wholesome even. Later the lieutenant is severely injured by an actual daemon, but Shiban refuses to leave him behind and carries him and the baby. Eventually, they come across the line Katsuhiro's defending; though the lieutenant doesn't make it, the baby survives, which amazes the crumbling troopers to no end and boosts their morale. Shiban and Katsuhiro have a brief chat before Shiban keeps pushing on to rejoin his legion. For the Emperor's sake, please don't let the baby be a daemon in the coming books.
** We finally get to see psi-titans deployed!!! For a few paragraphs at least and in somewhat limited capacity. Princeps Aurum of the Ordo sinister (whom we saw in a previous short story tell Dorn to fuck off because being one of ''The Talons of the Emperor'', they only answer to Big-E himself), shows up and tells Dorn that the Emperor has personally authorized use of the Ordo Sinister, an act that simultaneously tells Dorn that the Emperor has commanded victory at any cost. We see a psi-titan strut up to a battlefield, order all friendly titans to fire warp missiles at itself, then redirects the warp power in the warp missiles to instant-kill several daemon titan engines, and thanks to their nature as [[blanks]], they deny the traitors any further resurrections, so anything they kill ''stays'' dead. They also tank damage without even staggering, simply repairing any damage they accumulate on the spot. However, the traitors brought a LOT of titans, so even those few Psi-titans we get to see are eventually overwhelmed, though they take a fuckton of traitors with them.
** On the traitor titan side, special siege titans are unveiled bespoke from Mars. Turns out you can just line up several big titans and hook up all their reactors to mobile reactors behind their shields, then slow walk towards the wall like a big phalanx advance. And you get called the special engine class of Warmaster Titans. Plus lots and lots of guns on the front.
** At the end of the last book, Corswain and his fleet came to reinforce the loyalists. Now we learn that he was expecting to meet the Lion and the main strength of the Dark Angels at Terra, but finds out that he is the only reinforcement that has shown up yet. If you have read the new Luther book, you know that he was lied to by Luther, and most importantly, the ten thousand Dark Angels he brought along were given to him by Luther, which means they're most likely no longer loyal to the Imperium. Now here comes some plot fuckery: the traitors took the Astronomican and put it out. What? Wasn't Dorn's entire plan was to delay the traitors' offensive long enough for the reinforcements to arrive? Why was the Astronomican not as heavily defended as the Imperial Palace itself? How the fuck are the reinforcements going get to Terra without the Astronomican? The Dark Angels probably could due to their abundance of Dark Age archeotec and The Lion's maybe [[Tuchulcha|Old Ones-creation biological computer Pinnochio macguffin... Thing]], but everyone else? Nonetheless, the plot decrees that Corswain and his Dark Angels must be given something interesting to do I guess. Thus, Corswain plans an assault through the traitor fleet blockade; with the sacrifice of the Emperor's personal flagship and the gap left by the Iron Warriors' departure, the Dark Angels successfully make planetfall on Terra and retake and secure the Astronomican by killing a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh and a bunch of Kakophoni. But here comes the backstabbing: the officers Luther sent to follow Corswain cannot allow his plan to succeed for obvious reasons, but one of the Librarians, Vassago, is having second thoughts about the whole thing after the daemonic horrors he's just witnessed. When he tells this to his fallen brothers, they decide to kill him and keep on with their plan.
** The various storylines are tied together in the end by a speech given by Dorn. As he speaks, what's left of the loyalist Titan legions begin to charge an unknown anomaly that appeared mid-battle; Katsuhiro's ragged force faces off against a new wave of enemies; Vassago is attacked by his fallen brothers; and the Legio Mortis finally reaches the Mercury Wall, the true Imperial Palace itself.
** Also, remember all of those weird metaphorical scenes of the Emperor being a dirty old man they put in every book? Turns out it is the physical manifestation of the struggle and suffering the Emperor is enduring in the spiritual world, and it is getting worse and worse. In previous books, he could still shelter himself in a cave and have Malcador deliver him food or something; now he is quite literally cooking under the sun in an open desert with only a dead tree for cover, and because the Chaos gods are winning, it has become impossible for Malcador to keep supporting the Emperor. So the Big-E is now facing off against the entire warp with nothing but his own willpower to sustain him. Horus keeps showing up to taunt his father and sometimes the Chaos gods accompany him like some kind of pet snakes. Every time he appears he is closer to the Emperor and at the end of this book he is finally able to reach him.
** Oh, Ollanius and his crew from Calth also return in this book. They finally make it back to Terra after bouncing through all of time and space, and then they infiltrate a hive overrun by the Emperor's Children in order to rescue John Grammaticus. Along the way, they run into someone named Actaea (who might be Cyrene Valantion based on John's horrified recognition of her) and a legionary calling himself Alpharius, because everything wasn't convoluted enough already. Ollanius decides to team up with these two even though Grammaticus is getting some serious bad vibes off of them. This part of the plot is not a bad read, but it really feels like it has nothing to do with the ongoing siege. This, and John's plot from the last book, feel like they should have gotten their own book instead of being cut to pieces and stitched into the main series. But again, it's not as bad and irrelevant as Zenobi's storyline from ''The First Wall''. At least it revealed Ollanius was once a close friend to the Big-E. How close, you ask? He was the Emperor's first Warmaster. He led an army to raze the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel Tower of Babel] to the ground, in the 40K narrative the tower was actually built by Cognitae precursors who were using it to learn Enuncia (first seen in the Eisenhorn books). After taking the tower the Emperor decides that he in his enlightened state can actually run the project better then the Cognitae. Ollanius disagrees and stabs the Emperor while using Enuncia to bring lightning down on the tower. John, having stumbled into this memory via being caught in the same pleasure-warp trap uses his psyker language ability to learn Enuncia on the spot. Uses it to unmake a daemon (as in ''permakill''), but gets a bad nose-bleed. The horror.
* '''''Warhawk''''': The Khan vs. Morty, round two. The end of the Siege is nigh, and everyone on Terra knows it. Angron and the World Eaters are loose inside the Mercury Wall, the Sons of Horus are happily killing anything that crosses their path, and the Death Guard have taken over the Lion's Gate spaceport after Perturabo ragequit halfway through ''Mortis''. Many of the XIV Legion are still coming to terms with their new warp-touched nature. Some of them aren't sure the bargain was worth the price, while others are happily adopting pet Nurglings and savoring the feeling of turning into walking sacks of pus and tentacles. Mortarion is using his daemonic powers to turn the port into a mirror of Barbarus and blanket the Palace with a psychic miasma of despair; the effect is so potent that even Rogal Dorn is beginning to crack under the strain. Jaghatai is tired of playing defense, so he rallies up the entire V Legion and every single tank that Ilya Ravallion can coax out of reserves to storm the Lion's Gate and retake the spaceport. They use the last intact orbital plate on Terra to shield them from the traitor fleet bombardments and charge across the leveled wreckage of the Palace's outer districts en masse, wrecking shit all the way until they slam into the Death Guard and their defenses. The two legions proceed to just shred the hell out of each other across the spaceport. We get an interesting comparison between their fighting styles here; the Scars dominate the battlefield when they can use their speed and maneuverability, and then when the fighting turns into a battle of attrition the Death Guard give just as good as they get. Jaghatai is in fine form; at one point he yeets a Leviathan Dreadnought with ''one hand'', and the narration explicitly states that everyone on both sides stops to watch him do it. The battle culminates in a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the Death Lord and the Warhawk. Mortarion literally beats the Khan to a pulp, but Jaghatai just laughs it off and needles Mortarion until he makes a mistake that lets Jaghatai gut him. Mortarion reminds the Khan that he can't die, since he's a daemon prince now, and the Khan reminds Mortarion that he can die, then pulls the classic "let the other guy impale me so I can kill him" move and decapitates Morty even though he's now got a power scythe embedded in his chest. The resultant explosion of psychic energy disorients the Death Guard and sends the Scars into a frenzy. Jaghatai's body is carried out on a Leman Russ, and just when it seems like they might actually have unexpectedly killed another primarch, Ilya Ravallion shows up and demands that he be taken to Malcador, who sets about putting the Warhawk back together. The White Scars' frenzy doesn't end until a newly raised khan gets word to Shiban that their primarch yet lives, and manages to remind Shiban that they were supposed to take the port, not destroy it. The Death Guard retreat in shambles, abandoning the Gate and rejoining Typhus, who had once again taken off to do his own thing earlier in the book.
**Dorn finally lets Sigismund off the chain, telling him to just go kill as many traitors as possible. On his way out to the field, he's given the Black Sword, which was forged in the dark times prior to the Unification Wars, and sets out to become the Emperor's Champion. He kills so damn many captains and praetors that whispers of "the Black Sword" spread across the Palace, and both sides seek him out, either to join him or to kill him. He rematches Kharn and puts him down, though not before Kharn has a lucid moment and is horrified by what Sigismund has become: a remorseless, passionless, icy-hearted killing machine who will raise [[Black Templars|an entire legion of fanatical killers just like him]] to crush the galaxy beneath their boots.
**Euphrati Keeler inspires thousands of civilians, stragglers, and refugees to take up arms and go drown the enemy in bodies in the name of the God-Emperor, establishing the foundations for the Imperial Cult and the Imperium's philosophy of sending wave after wave of conscripts and Guardsmen at the problem until it ceases to be a problem. Garviel Loken tracks her down and is disturbed by her new, more nihilistic mindset, but decides to stay by her side anyway.
**Basilio Fo runs around for a bit and gets attacked by a Night Lord who can apparently see the future and isn't sure if killing him or letting him live will do more damage. He's then retrieved by Constantin Valdor, who took a break from daemon-hunting to haul him back to the Sanctum Imperialis so he can go to work on his anti-Astartes phage. Valdor wonders if using the phage would interfere with the Emperor's plans somehow, since even he isn't sure what is or isn't part of the Big-E's schemes anymore. Really, the whole subplot is kind of pointless, since Fo just winds up back under guard and doing exactly what he wanted to do all along. Makes you wonder why the authors bothered setting him loose last book.
** Ollanius Persson and his merry band are still traveling to the Palace. Actaea is all but stated to be Cyrene Valantion, who has an agenda of her own that involves getting to Horus. "Alpharius" is one of the Alpha Legion infiltrators from ''Praetorian of Dorn'', who's apparently just been kicking around the planet since his legion's attack on Pluto failed. They fly all the way to the Palace and start making their way into the Dungeon to get on with whatever their missions are, planning to pick up some more Alpha Legionnaires who were planted in the catacombs.
** The Sons of Horus are quietly starting to turn on each other. With Horus still sitting on his arse and doing nothing to lead his legion, some of his captains are starting to refer to Abaddon as the XVI's Legion Master, which is pissing off the hardcore Horus loyalists. Most of them end up getting killed by Sigismund anyway, though.
** Erda dies. Maybe. Erebus turns out to have disguised himself as a random Word Bearer in order to reach Terra and track her down, and after he introduces himself he tells her that her scattering of the primarchs was such a nice gift to the Chaos Pantheon that they themselves sing her praises in gratitude. He offers to help her achieve apotheosis and become a queen of the warp as a reward. Erda sneers at him and tells him that he's being manipulated by the cast-off thoughts and unconscious desires of humanity; more or less confirming that she knows many of the same truths about Chaos as the Emperor does, but unlike Big-E, she perhaps underestimates the danger they pose. That might also be why she tries to say it's not her fault some of the primarchs were corrupted and fell to Chaos, deflecting the blame onto the primarchs themselves, Big-E, society (that's actually barely an exaggeration), and basically everyone but herself. Erebus eventually gets sick of her obfuscation and summons four greater daemons to kill her. However, Erda's able to defeat them pretty comprehensively, with Erebus assuming they've been banished, but the book suggesting that they've been permakilled. Regardless of which however, the fight still leaves her drained enough that Erebus is able to hit her with a psychic attack that overwhelms her with the true consequences of what she did. Incidentally, this book does the seemingly impossible and actually makes us root for Erebus (the quintessential Quizling-Hitler High School Meangirl hybrid in space) of the entire Horus Heresy, due to him dropping some much needed truth-bombs on Erda (humanity's worst mom) and hands her some long overdue comeuppance. Erebus then moves to finish her off and wreck her house, [[A Game of Pretend|but does so offscreen]]. As he's leaving, however, he wonders if she let him kill her, and if so, why.
*'''''Echoes of Eternity''''': ADB's contribution. [[Meme|We're in the endgame now]]: the Palace defenses have completely collapsed, the Khan is down for the count [Shiban Khan leads the Lion's Gate Spaceport in his absence], Dorn is surrounded at Bhab Bastion, Corswain and his Dark Angels contingent have locked down the Astronomicon but are ordered to stay put, and all other surviving loyalist troops have been driven back into the Sanctum Imperialis, and Guilliman and the Lion still haven't arrived. Angron is leading the World Eaters and Sons of Horus toward victory as Sanguinius rallies his troops for a last stand at the Eternity Gate. Will almost certainly have Sanguinius duel Angron as the big climactic fight.
** A lot of this books focuses on the defenders retreat to (and attackers assault on) the Eternity Gate leading to the Sanctum Imperialis, specifically their mustering and battle before the Delphic Battlement. That being said, this is also the point in the siege where things really start to go [[Not as Planned]] for Team Chaos, and as ever, it's often as much due to them getting in their own way, just as much as the efforts of Team Emperor. The Imperial side of things is mostly narrated through the perspectives of Nassir Amit and Zephon of the Blood Angels. Zephon apparently ''wasn't'' killed back in Saturnine and was just taking a nap until Arkhan Land and some Legion serfs fix him up with Dark Age archeotech and send him on his merry way. Meanwhile, the Chaos side of things is told from the POV of the World Eaters Apothecary Kargos from ''Betrayer'' as he tags along with a random Word Bearers Chaplain, reminiscent of Kharne and Argel Tal's previous bro-ship. It doesn't matter though, because Kargos gets curb-stomped by the Flesh Tearer and left for dead by his Word Bearers buddy. After a day of fighting, the defenders begin to retreat to the Sanctum, knowing that whoever is left on the outside after the doors close will be daemon chow. Sanguinius duels Ka'Bandha and wrecks him pretty one-sidedly. Just as the gates are being closed, a Legio Audax (the same guys from ''Betrayer'') titan holds the door open long enough for Angron to swoop in and start fighting the Angel. The two duel, and Angron gets a good sword-stab to Sanguinius' gutmeats, but then Fabulous Hawk Boy rips the Butcher's Nails from daemon Angron's head and drops him to the ground before heading inside and letting the gates close.
** There's a sub-plot about Vulkan going into the shattered remains of the Emperor's Webway project to duel with Magnus, who is on the other side after being ejected in ''Fury of Magnus''. Magnus does a bunch of magic tricks to Vulkan, but Vulkan is an [[Perpetual|unkillable]] primarch with a big fuckoff hammer and eventually Magnus gets tuckered out long enough for them to 'kill' each other. Magnus is banished from the Webway and Vulkan eventually gets up and wanders out. One revelation from these parts is that the Emperor's 'you only perceive me how I want you to perceive me' shtick extends to the Primarchs, as Vulkan remembers the Emperor's offer to Magnus to lead the Grey Knights as a stern 'lol gtfo'. Well that's one interpretation anyway; the other is that the corruption of Chaos wormed its way yet further into Magnus, altering his cognitive function, allowing him to think of himself as the victim, and thus ensuring that Magnus would dance further to their tune.
** We also get a look into how things are going in the fleet and for some of the mortal followers of Chaos. The aforementioned Legio Audax Warhound, the ''Hindarah'', has been on Terra pretty much since the beginning. It's princeps still believes herself to be alive, and frequently hallucinates that the cockpit of her god-engine has become an abattoir of horrors, but then she comes back to it and everything seems normal again. It isn't until we get another character's view on the interior that we see that, yeah, the princeps and moderati have all fused into a ''[[Chaos Spawn|that thing]]''... Yuck. Lotarra Sarrin, everyone's favorite spunky girl-boss captain of the ''Conqueror'', has become a corrupted ''thing'' partly fused with her command throne, while the parts of her that wanted to run away from the horror of it all became a ghost that the rest of the crew just sort of tolerate. This ghost even manages to get in a call to Horus aboard the ''Vengeful Spirit'', who has continued to deteriorate from 'kooky grampa' to 'scary kooky grampa'. It's heavily implied that Argonis is the only one left really running the fleet.
** The book ends with the Lion's Gate Space Port finally opening fire on the traitor fleet, much to the horror of those aboard, who were caught completely unprepared, in close formation while stationary in geosynchronous orbit, and immediately starts getting torn to pieces. They then receive a message from its [[White Scars|new occupants]], who basically just calls to laugh at them. [[Troll|Then he hangs up]]. In the epilogue a few pages later, we get a sweet little note from Guilliman to Sanguinius, saying that he's a couple days from the system's edge and only a solar week from Terra. However, this message is intercepted and blocked by daemon Lotarra Sarrin from reaching the surface.
** A lot of this helps to set up and answer the ultimate question of "why did Horus drop the void shields?" At this point in the siege, the defenders are on their very last legs. Dorn and a lot of forces are cut off at Bhab Bastion, while everyone else who is still alive has fled inside the Sanctum Imperialis. There are no more walls to get behind, nowhere else to run to. On the Chaos side of things, by book's end, Horus is no longer the smug little shit we've seen throughout the siege, and is instead now shitting his pants, because he has now lost every single one of his generals. Lorgar had already been driven out for plotting to overthrow Horus, Konrad is not even in the correct side of the galaxy, Alpharius/Omegon (it's hard to keep track of which one is which at the best of times) died at Pluto while the other twin remains at large elsewhere, Fulgrim fucked off during ''Saturnine'', Perturabo during ''Mortis'', Mortarion got clapped by the Khan in ''Warhawk'' and shunted off into the warp, and by the end of ''Echoes'', both Magnus and Angron ([[Skub|arguably Horus' two most OP subordinates]] have been reduced to greasy, whiny smears, staining sections of the Webway and Eternity Gates' floors, respectively. To make matters worse for Team Chaos, but Horus especially, (as if any more were needed), with the death or absence of their respective primarchs, a significant percentage of the remaining astartes forces under the Warmaster's command (maybe even up to '''HALF''') have lost anything even remotely resembling unit cohesion, and in the case of The Thousand Sons and World Eaters, probably permanently; the former having fully succumbed to the flesh change en masse and the latter evidently now practicing for the upcoming [[Battle of Skalathrax]] by going all-in on the whole Teamkilling Fucktard thing, whereas before they'd only engaged in the occasional Teamkilling dalliance. The board, as they say, is set for the final showdown.
*'''''The End and the Death''''': This is it. 17 years and over 60 books, all leading up to ''the'' main event of the Heresy: the duel of the Emperor and Horus, as written by [[Dan Abnett|the man who started the series]][[Awesome|.]] Will be split into multiple volumes, because there's no way in hell BL wouldn't milk this for all it's worth, and because Abnett belongs to the school of write a shit ton of words (thankfully, unlike [[A Song of Ice and Fire|someone else we can name]] he actually finishes his shit).
*'''''Sons of the Selenar''''': The first novella in the series. Flashback to the compliance of the Selenar gene cults on the moon, the high supreme matriarch tells a grumpy gene witch to take their best gene tech and hide it from the Emperor while she starts a date/mind purge to wipe out all knowledge of the tech from existence before she surrenders to the soon-to-be Luna Wolves. Flash forward to the crew of the ''Sisypheum'' returning to Terra, SOMEHOW getting all the way to Luna through a lot of luck and bad traitor captains. They pick up a distress signal from Ta'lab Vita-37 saying that the Sons of Horus are breaking through the defenses she has built around the Magna Mater - a silver case containing all the genetic knowledge used to make the first Space Marines. They manage to meet up with Vita-37 and make their way to the center of a moon volcano just in time to snatch it from some tech-priests. Some explosions happen and we get to see Tarsa the Salamander Apothecary walk through radioactive lava while hallucinating that Vulkan lives and dying as he hands the case to Ignatius Numen who also waded in. He dies too because [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcano_(1997_film) radioactive lava], but the case gets out of the lava. Justaerin Terminators chase them through the gene labs, and Vita-37 unleashes a bunch of hideous gene-monsters on the Terminators before dying. One spooks them cause it has the face of Horus, but the Terminators finally form up and continue the chase. The last two Iron Hands hand off the Mater to Sharrowkyn and tell him to run like hell while they slow down the Terminator squad, with predictable results. Sharrowkyn gets rescued by the other two Iron Hands in a Storm Eagle, and they make it back to the ''Sisypheum'', while Thamatica uses a Selenar combat AI to destroy a fighter chasing them before it turns back on him and eats his brains. Magnus makes an appearance and saves the ''Sisypheum'' for some reason, then leaves. Wayland drops off Sharrowkyn on an abandoned refueling station before flying away to distract the traitors. Sharrowkyn has to go into suspended animation, Garuda the mechanical eagle watches over him as he passes out, under the name of the station "Sangprimus Portum", strongly implying that the Magna Mater is the relic that will be given to Archmagos Cawl to create the [[Primaris Space Marines]].
* '''''Fury of Magnus''''': The second novella, which focuses on Magnus's attempt to reclaim the shard of his soul that he believes is housed inside the Palace. Alivia Sureka agrees to come with Malcador in exchange for protection for her adopted family, and he takes her down trans-dimensional tunnels known only to him (it's strongly implied that Valdor would fuck Malcador up for keeping these tunnels secret even from the custodians). Magnus and some of the Thousand Sons breach the Emperor's telesthetic wards, saving some civilians along the way, and storm the Hall of Leng deep beneath the Palace. They're met by Malcador and Alivia, and Magnus demands to know where the last shard of his soul is. Malcador admits that it's already gone, having been fused into Revuel Arvida to produce Janus, so Magnus throws a psychic tantrum that permakills the Sigillite. One of the Thousand Sons kills Alivia for some reason, so Magnus explodes his head for disobeying his orders not to kill anyone. He and his Astartes make it all the way to the Golden Throne, only to find out that the Emperor let them through because he wanted to offer Magnus a shot at redemption. He explains that, though Magnus has been wounded and touched by Chaos, there is still a chance for him to return to the Imperial fold, at the head of [[Grey Knights|a shiny new legion of incorruptible psychic warriors]]. All he has to do is abandon the remaining Thousand Sons to their fate, as they're already too corrupted to be brought back. Vulkan, who is still guarding the Throne, pleads with Magnus to accept the deal, but Magnus decides that abandoning his legion is too dear a price to pay and tries to kill the Emperor. Vulkan proceeds to kick the ever-loving shit out of him until Magnus finally surrenders to Chaos and ascends into his daemon primarch form. He forever repudiates the Emperor before being ejected from the Palace. Alivia resurrects, finds Malcador's barbecued corpse, and surrenders her Perpetuality in order to bring him back, dying permanently herself in the process.
* '''''Garro: Knight of Grey''''': The third novella in the series, featuring Nathaniel Garro's final showdown with Mortarion as he fights to protect Euphrati Keeler.

==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. The surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading, and shortly before the Siege of Terra Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt from its prison in the ruins of Prospero into his book so he can use it to get past the Emperor's psychic shield.

===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. 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 who have just humiliated a compliance force of Ultramarines and Thousand Sons. 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 throws his weight around when he arrives and tells off the Ultramarines commander for getting his ass kicked, then learns that the Gardinaal are actually some tough mothers, with their own genetically enhanced soldier caste and a willingness to nuke their own cities if it'll kill some Imperial troops. Ferrus quits 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 his own way, 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. A meeting takes place between Sanguinius, Magnus and the Khan to talk about protecting the Librarius but Magnus is dismissive as ever about it and doesn't seem to take the issue very seriously. The White Scars fight together with the Luna Wolves against Greenskins and the former legion uses their Librarius against the Orc shamans, in order to not miss a conquest deadline set by the Khan, who of course likes to go very fast in all manner of ways. This has a subtle backfire for the Imperium, as the Luna Wolves disapprove of the Librarius. Horus himself is implied to give Jagathai the cold shoulder as a result of this, due to Horus trying to be on his most neutral, goodie good boyscout behavior, in anticipation of winning the title of Warmaster. The Khan thus loses support of Horus regarding the psyker dilemma. 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. Much better book than most in the Primarchs series, as it's basically a Horus Heresy book and not a novel about a no-stakes Crusade campaign (Guilliman's book) nor a deep dive into the Primarch's life before the Emperor (Lorgar's). This is also a companion piece / prequel to Brotherhood of the Storm (this book directly intertwines with Brotherhood near the end) and Scars.

===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 grief 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 [[Warhammer High|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. Sevatar leaves the choice up to the investigating officer, and it's implied the officer chooses to hush up the report. 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. Shaken from the fight, Lorgar heads to his room and slams the door behind him for a few millennia.
:'''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 had a sculpt-off with a prodigy artist, and just like Fulgrim he made a perfect statue. But the artist worked for a decade to make a cool statue of some hero that showed a different facet of his life/personality from the angle you were standing, and practically everybody who saw them side by side said that was better than Pert's 3D-printed like replica. Pert slapped the statue and never spoke about it again. 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 up in the bowels of his flagship, causing all sorts of disgusting changes to take place. Kharn goes to talk to him and finds 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 millennia ago. 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. The 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. [https://youtu.be/X2Hb4bngxJ8 A story forever immortalized in song form].
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over most of 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 (Basilio Fo) is 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. He sends a big ball of human hands to surprise strike Horus in his command post, but Horus naturally defeats it messily. For all his own abominations, Fo admits that he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created. The epilogue shows him laughing his ass off in his cell on Terra when the Siege starts because he's kind of been proven right.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails and the Ghenna massacre. 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. There's also an epilogue where Kharn happens to ransack Ghenna 10,000 years later and comes across an embellished statue of the World Eater captain he beheaded, and has a rare moment of clear headed dispair for what he and his broken legion have become.

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. [[Slayer|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. So he really just tortured the shit out of Vulkan for shits and giggles, what a dick.

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 weren't limited to just the ruling tyrants but are completely integrated into the planet's society, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him (Liberating Humanity from Life<sup>tm</sup>).
:'''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 on the galactic fringe 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 Khrave's 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 Dark Angels, showing why even the Alpha Legion saw they were too tough a 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 passphrases 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'', the 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 [[Meme|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. 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 the Angels 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 be 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. 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 comes across 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 (Alpharius even expresses a foreboding worry that Horus is carrying too much on his shoulders), The Lion to a certain extent (whom Alpharius speculates was the only brother to see through him and sense the truth), 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?)

===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/foster father, 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 and the Imperial Fists happen upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack their fleet and are 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 and the Alpha Legion in preparation for the day that might see them standing as the Imperium's last line of defense. 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.

===Mortarion: The Pale King===
Set during Mortarion's early days in the Imperium, just after the events of ''The Verdict of the Scythe'' and flashing back to the Conquest of Galaspar, his first campaign as primarch of the Death Guard. As he's settling into command of his legion, Mortarion learns of a noncompliant human empire known as the Order in the Galaspar Cluster. Billions of people are enslaved, kept permanently drugged up, and forced to work themselves to death for the enrichment of the High Comptrollers, a pack of oligarchical assholes who refer to their slaves as "labor units" and have them executed and turned into nutrient sludge because their baking wasn't up to par (no, really). The Order's similarities to the Overlords of Barbarus piss Morty off to the point where he rejects the other Imperial commanders' suggestion that they blockade and besiege the cluster and decides to do a Leeroy Jenkins-style decapitation strike instead. He takes his fleet and barges clean through the Cluster's exterior defenses before ramming a cruiser into the side of the largest hive on Galaspar Prime and going out to kick ass the Death Guard way: fistfuls of rad grenades, rivers of phosphex, and power scythes, all topped off with plenty of orbital bombardments. No one who belongs to the Order is allowed to survive; Morty and the legion kill most of the Comptrollers even when they try to surrender and leave a few to be torn to pieces by their former slaves. Morty expects to be praised for his work, but the Emperor seems upset and sends Horus and Sanguinius to call him to account. Both primarchs are stunned by the level of destruction Mortarion has wrought, and When he tries to justify himself to his brothers, Horus points out that all he's done is replace one kind of tyranny with another. Morty has a brief moment of clarity and wonders if there is a better path forward for him and his legion. Ultimately, however, he concludes that the examples of Galaspar and Absyrtus justify his way of war and decides to become an embodiment of unstoppable, unrelenting Death, [[Nurgle|and we all know how well that worked out for him.]] Also features [[Typhus|Calas Typhon]] and [[Knights-Errant#Nathaniel Garro|Nathaniel Garro]] in their early days as line legionaries. Typhon falls into a disgusting sewer at one point and runs into a psyker who seems to know what he'll become, while Garro is the sole survivor of a kill team sent to take out the Order's chief asshole, which is probably what set him on the path to becoming battle-captain of the Seventh Grand Company.

===Rogal Dorn: The Emperor's Crusader===

Fafnir Rann and Sigismund are standing around on the walls of the Imperial Palace just before the Siege, wondering why their primarch got the job of fortifying Terra, when Malcador pops out and reminds them of the Night Crusade, whereupon all three of them start reminiscing about it.

Six decades into the Great Crusade, ten years after Dorn was recovered and shortly after Lion el'Jonson was found, Dorn, Fulgrim, Horus, and the Lion are ordered to deploy into the Occluda Noctis, an area of the galaxy obscured by a major Warp storm. Their goal is to bring the area into Imperial compliance and find the source of an unknown threat that’s already destroyed multiple expeditionary fleets. All four of them have their own ideas about how best to prosecute the campaign; the Lion wants to work his way in from the periphery of the Occluda, while Dorn’s plan boils down to “drive my fleet into the heart of the Occluda and get shit done”. He and the Lion disagree about who’s right to the point where Horus and Fulgrim have to try and calm them down, but Dorn insults the Lion, who demands an honor duel. The Lion’s champion wins because Dorn forgot he had Sigismund, and Rogal immediately apologizes to his brother for insulting him. Ultimately, they agree to do both plans. Dorn’s works surprisingly well, though the Fists don’t rack up nearly as many compliances as the Dark Angels and Emperor’s Children since he's insisting on a diplomatic approach and the fleet has to be careful when making Warp jumps in the Occluda. They eventually encounter the unknown enemy, which turns out to be a lost human civilization called the Kapikulu Continuum that uses cloaking tech and special warp gates to get around, requiring Dorn to up his game to counter them. He manages to outsmart and defeat the Continuum's fleet and convinces its leaders to join the Imperium. At the peace negotiations, he learns that the Continuum used to be the slaves of a xenos race that altered their brains to grow a special neural web that lets them use all their nifty technology (and also makes their heads explode if a psyker tries mind-probing them), which means that they’re not technically human anymore. Dorn concludes that he can’t risk letting them join the Imperium and orders them to be wiped out, following the exact letter of the Emperor’s orders: “Remove this hidden threat.” He is genuinely distressed by this outcome, but sucks it up and moves on.

The whole point of the story turns out to be summing up Dorn’s character: he was made the Praetorian of Terra because he can be trusted to do exactly what he is told to do, fulfilling both the word and spirit of the Emperor’s commands, and there’s no one else the Emperor would rather have guarding his capital world. Also a funny sidenote: Perturabo is found during the course of the Night Crusade and Dorn sends him a friendly welcome message, which one character declares will certainly lead to a greater fraternal bond between them in future.

===Sanguinius: The Great Angel===
A disgraced remembrancer joins the IX Legion on campaign and learns more about the early days of the Blood Angels, possibly including some of their more unsavory secrets.

===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 officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Curze 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."

==Horus Heresy Character Series==

A subseries of novellas and short stories focusing on major characters from the Crusade and Heresy eras. Originally these were part of the Primarchs series until BL finally split them off into their own category.

===Valdor: Birth of the Imperium===
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.

===Sigismund: The Eternal Crusader===
Solomon Voss comes to interview Sigismund for the first time near the end of the Great Crusade, and Sigismund reveals why he believes that there will only be war in the Imperium's <s>grimdark</s> noblebright future.

Most of the novel is concerned with Siggy's backstory: he was an orphan recruited from the slums of Terra by the Night Lords, but the initial genetic testing revealed he was more compatible with the Imperial Fists, War Hounds, Luna Wolves, and Raven Guard, in that order, so he got bumped into the VII Legion instead. He earned his position as First Captain by beating 200 other Templar Brethren in one-on-one duels, with his final opponent being a Contemptor Dreadnought containing the guy who coached him when he joined the Templars. He's named Dorn's personal champion after winning a duel with an Iron Hands champion over whether Dorn or Ferrus was right about the proper prosecution of a campaign. We also get to see his infamous duel with Sevatar, which lasted an entire day until Sigismund was about to land the killing blow and Sevatar cheated to end it, and his time with the World Eaters, where he picked up his habit of chaining his sword to his arm. Most interestingly, he admits that he never wanted to be recruited for the Legions, and that if he knew as a child what he'd become, he'd still have said no. Voss further realizes that Sigismund is hoping to die at some point so he can escape the endless cycle of conflict. The book ends with Voss summarizing what Sigismund believes: there will always be war, because even if the Imperium pacifies the galaxy, it will still have to fight against the cruelty, savagery, and cowardice of human nature. Needless to say, later events proved Sigismund to be absolutely right in every possible way.

==The Tabletop Wargame==
[[Forge World]] produces a line of books and models (in line with the old [[Imperial Armour]] and [[Warhammer Forge]]) to allow players to fight battles from the Horus Heresy, with rules and models for the [[Primarchs]] (both pre- and post-fall, for the Traitors), named characters who were romping around back then and ancient vehicles and machines that would be one off units in 40k armies, being fielded en-mass. Originally an add on system for [[Warhammer 40,000]], it became it's own game with a rulebook after 40k moved on to [[Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition|8th edition]] making it a sort of legacy game for the older style of 40k edition and also meaning the game has become a refuge for fa/tg/uys who don't enjoy 8th/9th edition 40k. Since the game is set during the 31st millennium pretty much all the armies are more archaic versions of their 40k counter parts, with lots of rules and quirks that help differentiate the factions from their future selves, such as legion tactical squads being able to be fielded in 20 man squads representing how much bigger the legions were and [[Daemon]]s not having their gods properly identified (though still having rules for god specific daemons) and having vague unit names to represent the only basic understanding the Imperium had of them. There are no [[xenos]] armies unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask), but all the factions that are in the game are very customisable with a huge array of rules, army types and really good conversion opportunities being able to be brought to the table, especially for Mechanicum, Daemon and Militia & Cults armies. 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.

Following the passing of Alan Bligh and the re-organisation of Forge World as a studio, the fate of this wargame had been seen as a bit precarious. While there were probably more books to cover up to and likely including the Siege of Terra, it seemed increasingly likely that Daddy GeeDubs wasn't keen on letting FW continue writing for this game (or making massive monsters and tanks for the mainstream games) on top of their work on [[Necromunda]] and [[Blood Bowl]]. One only had to look at how gutted the Imperial Armour books became in recent editions to see the writing on the wall. That said, the game had itself a sizeable following, especially after 8th Edition 40K essentially threw out all the crunch fans knew and made something entirely different, predictably leading to reactionary grognards clinging to the remaining flecks of nostalgia.

The game was never fully cancelled though. Though the black books had essentially stopped after Crusade, GW did release '''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HHZone_Mortalis_Rules.pdf Zone Mortalis]''' rules, the Exemplary Battles PDFs mentioned below and more alarmingly, the lead-up to Adepticon 2022 announced that the Horus Heresy wargame was going to see a new edition, now written by the core GW design team. Warhammer Fest 2022 displayed their full intent, with a full box set (filled with plastic Beakies, two new Praetors, a Spartan, and Cataphractii Termies, all in plastic) as well as plenty of other updated models: new support squad weapon kits, reboxed 20-man kits for Mk. III and Mk. IV Marines, plastic Deimos-pattern Rhinos, Sicarans, and Leviathan Dreadnoughts, an updated plastic Contemptor Dread kit, and the brand new [[Kratos Heavy Assault Tank]], a heavy tank placed in between the Sicaran and Fellblade. They've continued to make new models for the game since then (including plans for new models for each of the Primarchs), although it seems Forge World will still be making a bunch of the original models

===First Edition===
'''Book 1: 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.

'''Book 2: 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.

'''Book 3: 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.

'''Book 4: 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.
'''Book 5: 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.

'''Book 6: 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).

'''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.

'''Book 8: 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, two new squads, and an entire slew of relics that interact with Psykers and Daemons.

'''Book 9: 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 <s>book</s> edition. 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. This proved to be the last of the black books for the first edition of the Heresy tabletop, as GW announced a new edition of the game at Adepticon 2022.

====Condensed Lists====
The Istvaan Campaign Legions (ICL) and Legiones Astartes Crusade Army List (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 LACAL is basically the generic 30k Space Marine "codex", whilst the ICL contains all of the collected rules for the legions from Books 1-3, including their units, characters and wargear. 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 Taghmata 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.

====Exemplary Battles====
Starting in Fall 2021, GW started publishing a series of free PDFs for the Horus Heresy tabletop which contain mini-campaigns based around battles from the Heresy that have been mentioned in the novels or black books but weren't big enough for a book of their own. These PDFs also include fluff and rules for Legion units that haven't been given any yet, along with photos and conversion tips for said units. These tips boil down to "buy tons of Forge World stuff while you still can", so one could plausibly argue that the PDFs are just ads for FW's overpriced upgrade packs. Still, it's a neat concept and at least they're free. These seem to be leading into the new edition of the game as announced at Adepticon 2022; GW has confirmed that the PDFs released prior to the launch of the new edition have been written to work with both sets of rules.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Xwccsydzg8YpDsho.pdf The Battle of Pluto: Hydra's Devastation]''''': Focuses on the Alpha Legion's invasion of Pluto, as seen in ''Praetorian of Dorn'', and provides a scenario for Imperial Fists vs Alpharius' sneaky sneks. Also has rules for the Huscarls, Dorn's elite bodyguard, which make them into Phalanx Warders on steroids.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/9eA3ZYnzr5tXbxjX.pdf The Defence of Sotha: Aegida's Lament]''''': Focuses on the Night Lords' raid on Sotha and the near-destruction of the Ultramarines Aegida Company while attempting to hold Sothopolis. The Atramentar ''finally'' get their tabletop rules and also are spotlighted in the fluff, which concludes with them [[Internet Troll|murderfucking their own commanding officer]] because he was getting too uppity for the other Night Lord officers' liking.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NUTJvW4qx8d08Fkr.pdf The Siege of Hydra Cordatus: Sundering of the Cadmean Citadel]''''': Imperial Fists vs. Iron Warriors brawling it out on the ruined world of Hydra Cordatus. Includes rules for the IV Legion's Dominator Cohort, Perturabo's former bodyguards who got fired and replaced with the Iron Circle after Phall. Hilariously, they are so salty about this that they have Hatred (Cybernetica Cortex) unless you take them as Pert's retinue.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fcMVfgBlCyDHmejD.pdf The Battle of Armatura]''''': World Eaters vs. Ultramarines on the war world of Armatura, as seen in ''Betrayer''. Includes rules for the XII Legion's Red Hand Destroyer squads, who can take Caedere weapons like meteor hammers and excoriator chainaxes in addition to all the usual Destroyer nastiness and ''must'' declare a charge whenever able if they're within 12" of an enemy unit at the beginning of the Assault phase.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/mouvfePNquxVdprP.pdf The Battle of Perditus: Umbral-51]''''': The Death Guard are trying to [[Ork|loot]] galaxy-wrecking archaeotech and the Dark Angels mean to stop them. Iron Hands and Mechanicum are there too, and the mission pack has rules for rampaging battle-automata trying to kill the Spess Mehreens so the techpriests can go back to worshiping their doomsday devices in peace. Includes rules for units from both sides: the Order of the Broken Claw and the Mortus Poisoners. The Broken Claw are Inner Circle Knights who get bonuses against Monstrous and Gargantuan Creatures and daemons, representing the fact that they were the I Legion's specialized Rangdan-killers during the Xenocides. The Mortus Poisoners are Destroyers who can swap their bolters for flamers with chem-munitions for free and one in every five can swap their bolt pistol for a heavy flamer with chem-munitions for 20 points ([[Derp|that's right, their '''bolt pistol''', not their bolter, blame FW editors]]), and can be taken in units of 15 for when you just want the table to burn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/iIVebnZrYRFbaDGH.pdf The Battle of Calth: Underworld War]''''': Smurfs and Word Bearers duking it out in Zone Mortalis missions representing the underground battles fought after Calth's surface was trashed in ''Know No Fear''. Includes rules for the Ultramarines' Nemesis Destroyer squads, aka Guilliman's least favorite sons. Instead of dual bolt pistols, they get bolters with specialist ammo that gives them Assault 2 and Rending and they can take weapons usually reserved for Breacher and Support squads. Kinda weird, but makes sense given the XIII's "tactical flexibility" schtick. No jump packs, though.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/H6ygklXe9Fv2FwRe.pdf Battle For Kalium Gate]''''': Emperor's Children and White Scars get their turn, fighting over a huge void gate as the Scars try to get back to Terra in time for the big party. Has rules for new units from both sides. The III Legion gets the Sun Killers, Heavy Support squads that only use lascannons, multi-meltas, volkite culverins, and plasma cannons [[Meme|because they're elegant weapons from a more civilized time]]. The White Scars get the Karaoghlanlar, or Dark Sons of Death. Aside from sounding like a Welsh person choking on something, they're jump-pack Destroyers who don't get phosphex or missile launchers and trade one bolt pistol for a chainsword, but can be taken as a retinue for a Stormseer with a jump pack. They also have a rule that lets them autofail Sweeping Advance rolls in exchange for performing a spooky ritual that forces enemy units within 6" to pass an Ld test or suffer -1 WS next turn.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AmPdr3yMZbvggCND.pdf The Breaking of the Perfect Fortress]''''': Raven Guard storming the III Legion's Perfect Fortress on the world of Narsis, previously mentioned in ''Deliverance Lost''. Includes rules for the Deliverers, Terran-born Raven Guard who were trained under Horus and still prefer to use Terminator armor and shock-assault tactics. They're Stubborn and get teleportation transponders for deep-striking, but their main rule is Corax's Shame, representing the fact that Corax wasn't fond of his brutal Terran sons. They get +1T against attacks that cause Instant Death and cannot be deployed within 18" of Corax, nor can he ever join them. If you take Deliverers as part of a traitor force, they instead gain Hatred against Corax.

* '''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/TLbrp4me5GEfL37Q.pdf The Scouring of Gilden's Star]''''': Word Bearers vs Blood Angels fighting over a ''Hamlet'' reference last seen all the way back in 1989. Has rules for the Word Bearers' Procurators, basically assault squads led by evil Apothecaries who [[Blood Ravens|steal gene-seed]] and desecrate corpses to summon daemons. They give boosts to friendly psykers with the Harbinger of Chaos, Diabolism, and Anathemata disciplines and award an extra VP every time they Sweeping Advance an enemy unit.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/6i9CeSwKmbWmzac4.pdf The Battle of Trisolian: Vengeful Spirit]''''': Taking a page from the ''Wolfsbane'' novel, this portrays the part of the [[Battle of Trisolian]] when the Space Wolves broke into Horus' flagship during Russ' attempt to kill Horus before he reached Terra. Introduces the Space Wolves' Jorlund Hunter Pack, assault marines that can temporarily supercharge their flamers, and the Sons of Horus' Chieftains, an elite retinue of junior officers who specialize in hunting down characters.

*'''''[https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/3mVvZrTG9XOWeVxv.pdf The Axandria IV Incident]''''': Imperial Fists, Custodes, and Sisters of Silence raid a Thousand Sons repository world not long before the Siege of Terra, and the Thousand Sons actually score a win this time by evacuating their data stacks before the loyalist forces can trash them. Includes rules for Numerologist Cabals of the Order of Ruin, Thousand Sons Techmarines and tacticians who used divination to generate battle plans and predict enemy movements. The Numerologist gains a special psychic power that gives him a geo-locator beacon and boosts the BS of two friendly Thousand Sons squads if he passes a psychic check. He also gets a special bubble-wrap rule that prevents him from taking any wounds no matter what until all his bodyguards are dead, unless he accepts a challenge.

===Second Edition===
The first two books for the new edition of the tabletop were revealed at Warhammer Fest 2022: the '''Liber Astartes''' and the '''Liber Hereticus'''. These are basically updated and combined versions of the LACAL and ICL books. Both books contain the rules for all non-Legion-specific units, while the Liber Astartes has the rules for the loyalist legions and the Liber Hereticus has the rules for the traitor legions, including their Primarchs, unique units and wargear, Rites of War, Warlord Traits, and faction abilities. The '''Legacies of the Age of Darkness''' PDF contains the rules for vehicles, units, and characters who either never had models or whose models are now out of production, including most of the Legion-specific special characters, Castraferrum Dreadnoughts, the [[Crassus Armored Assault Transport|CRASSUS ARMOURED ASSAULT TRANSPORT]], and all of the Baneblade variants. Later leaks, which Warhammer Community would confirm, revealed that there would also be books for the Mechanicum ('''Liber Mechanicum''') that would contain rules for the Taghmata, Knights and Titans as well as a book for the Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Solar Auxilia, and Divisio Assassinorum ('''Liber Imperium'''). Daemons of the Ruinstorm and Imperialis Militia/Warp Cults will get downloadable lists, and according to the Legacies PDF the Knights-Errant and Blackshields are being made into full factions. They will also continue to release the Exemplary Battles series; the previously released PDFs got a separate update PDF in order to work with the new edition. The tactics page for the Legions can be found [[Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/Legiones Astartes Tactics|here]].

The core rules have been drastically modified with the addition of "Reactions", which make gameplay more dynamic. In addition to basic reactions such as Overwatch that can be taken in response to the opponent's actions, each Legion now has an "Advanced Reaction" that is more powerful but requires more specific conditions to work. Furthermore, USRs have been rewritten to be more granular (e.g. Bulky, Very Bulky, and Extremely Bulky are now Bulky (X), where X is is how many models that unit counts as for the purposes of transport capacity) and the Psychic Phase has been removed in lieu of the pre-7th edition manner of resolving psychic powers.

==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==
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3170/horus-heresy-1993 Horus Heresy (1993)] at BoardGameGeek
* [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63543/horus-heresy Horus Heresy (2010)] at BoardGameGeek

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