Editing Horus (section)

==New fluff==
[[File:Horus vs The Emperor.jpg|600px|thumb|right|If this reminds you of every Baroque and/or Christianity-related painting from the Renaissance up until the 19th Century, good. Also note how the Custodes are Dark Silver and wearing Pickelhauben (That's because these are Sagittarum Guard).]]
Recent fluff from the book ''Vengeful Spirit'' has Horus visiting the same gate to the Warp on Molech that the [[Emperor]] used to get some of his powers. While only seconds pass in the Materium, Horus spends what is basically implied to be an eternity inside the Warp battling rival Daemon Princes, amassing billions of warp-creature minions, and wrecking shit. In the end he somehow gains the same powers that the Emperor received to create the Primarchs, but Horus gets them in a "legit" way (as far as the Ruinous Powers are concerned) by passing their near constant tests through sheer force of will, where the Emperor just took what he wanted. Refusing to become a slave to the Ruinous Powers (or perhaps that's what the Chaos Gods wanted him to think) he leaves his Warp-empire to return to his rebellion in the Materium. Horus' time inside the Warp was so long that he, a fully grown Primarch, had visibly aged. However with his new psychic hack abilities he disguises his over-the-hill face and still maintains his youthful appearance. Apparently the Emperor does the same trick. This was basically a big retcon by Black Library who previously explained Horus being able to fight toe-to-toe with the Big E as having all four Chaos Gods channel their powers into him at once.

It's important to explore this clusterfuck of nonsense to make sense of the lore before one comes to the rubbish conclusion that the Emperor only became god-like after Molech. This is balls-deep nonsense. This is what Horus (who is himself not in any way whatsoever a good source for reliable information regarding Chaos) thinks he knows from his own narrow/skewed/manipulated point of view. The more commonly held belief is that, as with the vision he received from the [[Erebus|Great Fuckhead Himself]], he was misled. That the Emperor, a being capable of trapping and fighting a C'Tan (that as it turned out had been tired out prior by another warp entity... oops) during the Middle Ages, was always as powerful as He has been portrayed. It is explained that the Primarchs are more than just flesh and bone, and that each of them has a fraction of His personality in them that they themselves embody. [[Ferrus Manus]]' rather dramatic death highlights that inside Primarchs lies a great deal of energy. Now to the heart of it - Molech. Why would a being as powerful as the Emperor, who has to combat 4 monstrously powerful otherworldly entities whilst maintaining a beacon anywhere he goes, soul bound psykers and fight throughout the Great Crusade, split His formidable power 20 times into 20 beings? He wouldn't, he'd grab extra power to do so. That was Molech - a source and gateway to a wellspring of power claimed by Chaos for its use alone. A source the Emperor broke into and stole/took/tricked for His Primarch Project. Using the additional power, He crafted, with His scientific mastery, 20 genetically engineered super hosts. In the same way that god-aligned daemons are formed by splitting a portion off the God itself, He used each portion of power as a blank mold, investing them with a sliver of His personality and allowing the power to coalesce around it to form a soul/Emperor-Greater Daemon. That pseudo-daemon is then implanted in a host that can never die or degrade due to age, perfectly tailored to hold it. This explains why each Primarch radiates an aura of awe and magnificence. Horus didn't become as powerful as the Emperor, he retrieved the power that made himself and all his brothers and had it infused into himself. While it appears he has lost a significant chunk of this power (and a piece of his soul) after his duel with Leman Russ in the [[Battle of Trisolian]], the Ruinous Powers soon after began to mainline him with warp energy to the point where he began to bulge at the seams, so by the onset of the [[Siege of Terra]] he resembled something in between walking cancerous tumor growth amalgamation and juicing steroid junkie. Whether or not he will manage to be a match for the Emperor as yet remains to be seen. That said, we know who won the duel.

Following the duel with Russ, Horus suddenly entered a near coma, throwing the legion into disarray. Maloghurst later entered the Realm of Chaos and found that a part of Horus's soul - an uncorrupted part - was still trapped in the Warp. That part of his soul was suffering from the effects of Russ's spear, leading to the material Horus falling unconcious. The fragment expressed remorse over it's actions, as well as a morbid clarity that his rebellion was just part of the Gods plan and he had been manipulated into doing so. Left with no other option, Maloghurst destroyed the fragment at the cost of his own life, releasing Horus from his coma and giving him total control over the powers granted by the Chaos Gods, as well as leaving him utterly without doubt in his actions (however delusional they may actually have been).

In Path of Heaven he appears in all his pomp and Chaotic corruption to assign Mortarion to kill Jaghatai Khan, explain that all his other generals have gone doolally and wax lyrical about killing the Emperor, as well as make the point that being 'roided up by the raw stuff of the Empyrean doesn't get you out of having to manage the logistics of a galactic civil war. Soon after, Mortarion kills his Navigators in a fit of rage and makes the dumbass decision to go into the warp anyway. In other words, Horus was the only one of his brothers who had his shit together, which was why the Horus Heresy fell apart so quickly after his death.

Newest fluff heavily suggests that Chaos Gods' plan from the very beginning was for Horus to lose, but only barely. Apparently the Gods knew about the [[Cabal]]'s plans and made sure they would get the outcome of a fucked up Imperium that lasts for millennia, feeding them with all the negative emotions they needed, rather than an Imperium of Chaos which would go to shit in a few centuries of infighting, taking humanity and gods themselves with it. It does make sense that at least Khorne and Nurgle would appreciate a bloody and decaying Imperium. One daemon even referred to Horus as "sacrificial lamb" needed to stop the Imperium from turning into a prosperous empire of reason, and kickstart the [[Long War]]. (Though Eldrad disagrees and John Grammaticus has seen Horus actually won the Heresy and Chaos was not only fine but enjoying the aftermath) The Emperor may have developed a counter-plan that caused the Chaos Gods to scream in frustration in ''The Outcast Dead'' but that book is fairly trippy. Later still, Lorgar hinted that the Chaos Gods were displeased with the Warmaster's unwillingness to become a slave to Chaos and that his ultimate defeat in the duel with the Emperor would be a punishment for his refusal to surrender his will to them.

By the time of the Siege of Terra, his body and mind were outright falling apart as the Chaos Gods' power was becoming too much to handle, forcing Abaddon to do much of the actual work in leading the Traitor Legions while Horus was either comatose or too insane to form a coherent battle strategy. Not coincidentally, this was the point where Abaddon started viewing his gene-father with increasing contempt (and the Chaos Gods are outright stated to have begun grooming him to be their new Warmaster to replace Horus during the Siege of Terra, so they knew what they were doing). Horus himself is implied to be planning to use the destruction of the Imperium to fuel his ascension to godhood as the being called "the Dark King".

Long after the Scouring, Fabius Bile succeeded in creating a stable clone of a pre-Molech Horus, who utterly wrecked a huge boarding party of traitor marines before being fucking impaled through the chest with his own talon by Abbadon. The clone was capable of speech and seemed to possess a semblance of memory from its twin brother's past (calling Abbadon its "son", just before being turned into a kebab). It's unknown why it was so hostile to other Astartes or what degree of control Fabius had over it. Several prominent marines were adamant that such an abomination (cloned Astartes apparently being the closest thing to taboo you can get for even a traitor marine) would not be Horus in any way, because his soul was annihilated by the Emperor.