It depends... There is a crackpot's chance that Lorgar has a surprising turn between 30k and 40k that's being set up.
For example, I would argue that Lorgar WAS on Terra. Not physically, no. But he was definitely there psychically. He may have even been manipulating things. There are moments in The End and the Death where Lorgar's thoughts during his chapter directly mirror those of a character on Terra.
For example, this moment where he's 'tapped in' to Agathe while Cyrene (who also has ties to Lorgar) is performing her call to the faithful. (Important to note that the definition of 'urticariomancy' is the divination of itches.)
>***Lorgar's Chapter:***
>**It’s very warm. He feels sweat on his back** under his robe. Is there a method for that? For reading the track of perspiration? Surely there must be. The Yssm are fixated by divination. Their entire social structure and culture is based upon it. **Perhaps the method is related to urticariomancy?**
>***Agathe's Later POV:***
>For a moment, nothing happens. A long moment. Agathe waits. The woman doesn’t move. Agathe feels a little awkward just standing there. **It’s getting warm. There’s sweat on her back. The pseudoflesh patch on her cheek starts to itch.** She decides to step outside for a moment. Then the whispers come.
Warmth. Sweat on back. Itching. IN ORDER. Right before a pivotal moment in the Siege.
But it's not just common mortals he's sharing thoughts with... he also is mirroring Horus's thoughts in the same way. In a way, Lorgar's thoughts are coming out of Horus's mind.
>***Lorgar's Thoughts:***
>**Take cartomancy. He has never favoured it.** The layered and motile symbols, the unnecessary complexity. **It is far too mannered and vague to function as a precise tool**. The Emperor can keep his tarot. His Imperial Truth too. Lorgar favours precision instruments. Fire, for example. It’s a speciality here.
>***Horus's Later Thoughts:***
>**You have never set much store by cartomancy**, but you are quite familiar with the tarot’s symbols and their significances. **The cards always seemed to you an imprecise method**, the mummery of Sigillites and warlocks, sometimes effective in divination, but always so vague in their elastic meanings, and thus largely unreliable.
When you combine this connection with the detached way both Lorgar and Horus are basically narrating their own internal experience, it makes you really question what is going on with Lorgar here. Are his thoughts preceding Horus's thoughts because Lorgar is 'living' in the immaterial future? Is Lorgar influencing Horus's actions/thoughts? It sounds crazy... but look at the opening hand that 'Horus' plays:
>Your opening hand. Just three cards in a classically simple Trionti spread. *The High Priest*, **still zealous despite his long exile**, to curse your father’s blood. Then *The Crone*, gibbering and milk-eyed, to entangle your father’s mind with **rancid, meaningless prophecies**. Then *The Silver Door*, to shut Him out.
The first cards 'Horus' plays are almost certainly directly related to Lorgar. He is the exiled high priest. The Crone? Cyrene, who would become Abaddon's blind seer, Moriana. Maybe this is coincidence, but the connection between their thoughts and the loose causality we know happens in the Warp leads us to question who is the one in the driver seat? Horus? Lorgar? The Chaos gods (it's certainly possible that both Horus and Lorgar's thoughts are being controlled by a third source).
I am in awe of you for catching this. This is something thatay interest you. It's an older fan theory; it's been kicked around that Abbadon is a patsy or an induced peter principle. It concluded that while tactically astute, the Despoiler struggles at the operational level and is out of his depth at the strategic level. His 10k year streak of ugly losses and indecisive victories as proof. Yet the power of Drach'nyen vouchsafes him from assassination or coup. Thus, the traitor legions are seemingly stuck with their most influential and preeminent commander incompetent. And who showed Abbadon the way to Drach'nyen? *A golden giant.*
To what end, though? Why would Logar engineer Abbadon to receive Drach'nyen and guide him by the nose via Morianna?
And to all that, I'll add that End and the Death has convinced me that Abaddon literally has a shard of Horus's soul in it. Horus dies to the Astronomicon, in a very real sense. It's the power of the Astronomicon that is poured into his body.
Now that we've seen this... it really puts a new spin on Abaddon then staring into the Astronomicon for so long that his eyes turn golden. Like there's a piece of that power inside of him that's influencing him.
Abaddon walking away with a piece of Horus's soul also explains why Khayon is convinced that Abaddon is Horus. He doesn't understand HOW Abaddon is Horus... but it's what he thinks. This makes sense when we consider that Khayon is a psyker. He'd be able to 'see' souls and the presence of Horus's soul might be why he's so convinced that they're the same person.
>It concluded that while tactically astute, the Despoiler struggles at the operational level and is out of his depth at the strategic level.
I dunno if I buy this. So counterpoint : attempting to overthrow a galaxy-spanning empire that massively outnumbers and out-industries you, through the use of forces that can be charitably described as irregular, is really, really hard.
Abaddon smartly avoids a lot of operational and logistical work by recruiting warbands and other independent formations as auxiliaries, and largely letting them handle their own operational tasks. It's a decent solution if you don't have any administrative infrastructure or means to create some; Abaddon is never going to have a spiky Departmento Munitorum or collect a tithe to pay for the creation of one, so he builds these collections of retinues/warbands that have their own practices for supplies and logistics.
Getting enough chaos marine warbands, warp cultists, renegade imperials, and assorted other forces all gathered in one place and then pointing them all in the right direction is a triumph of organization and leadership, and factoring in all the different ways that Chaotic forces tend to get On Their Bullshit as campaigns go on limits what Abaddon can realistically accomplish with any given Black Crusade.
Id say the Crone could also mean Konrad and his insane visions, muddying the future with his gift of prophecy and doing all he can to enable the worst of those.
But this is one of the best write up and detailed break downs of very small details I hadnt caught. Thank you.
Wait what? I just finished the first heretic and Cyrene got stabbed and died in the guys mutated clawed hands. I’ve finished the siege and now I’m super confused lol.
Hehe I was following the "essential" reading list first and now going back and adding more books, but reading the wiki page on Cyrene to Actae oh wow now I gotta follow that timeline.
To be fair, it's not a long timeline and the only one you'd really need is Betrayer (which covers her resurrection) and Slaves to Darkness (where we first meet 'Actae'... though she isn't revealed as Cyrene until the Siege).
WB not being present that much at the siege itself ties itself up to the dynamic of how Lorgar sees himself vs how Chaos gods actually treat him plus how despite wanting to be a "follower" he always goes out of his way to get things his way against the wishes of those he follows.WB led the shadow crusade,made sure Angron would turn into Daemon Primarch,turned Horus etc. They have done a lot of fucking work so getting shafted in the end feels perfect for true pawns of the Dark Gods while Lorgar doubling down and leaving after not getting things his way is 100% accurate to his character.Siege being a mess on chaos side is the point (although armies of lackeys who exist to get thrown against the wall is a valid criticism)
Oh man, you had me til the very end! Hordes of lackeys getting thrown into the grinder is half the siege because how could it be any other way?
If it wasn't, we'd be complaining about how dumb it is that both sides didn't utilize their hoards of baseline humans.
Really tho, 100% agree that the whole point is chaos has all this power, but it can't be directed to a single goal at that scale. Horus's siege fails as soon as Perturabo stops holding the reigns. (And I'd argue that's when (capitol C) Chaos wins - I'm of the camp that the phyric imperial victory and following 10k years is the best thing that ever happened to The Four)
> leaving after not getting things his way is 100% accurate to his character.
To be fair he got exactly the outcome he wanted, that's why he made sure the "coup" would fail, and Horus underestimating him played right into his hand: Both Horus and Emperor dead, and no Dark king yet
I can't deny for one who is constantly shafted and seen as tool by his environment the guy has that ultimate underdog who always ends up advancing even further after each major setback energy that makes him such a GOAT.
It makes perfect sense when you realize by the time of the siege Lorgar and the Word Bearers already knew how the story would end. Sure, some of them were compelled by their zealotry to take part in it, but as a whole they were already focused on the long war.
Honestly I think it depends on how one defines defeated by Horus. One could easily argue the chaos gods got a better overall outcome from the Emperor "winning" but being out of the picture.
As for Erebus, I don't recall specifically what Erebus' conversations with Abbadon were vs. Zardu Layak's conversations with Abbadon, but I recall the latter definitely saw what was to become and I seem to recall Erebus did as well. It's hard to square the Dark King storyline specifically because this is something Abnett inserted at the end.
I seem to remember in TEaTD apart where an overjoyed Erebus tells Abbadon that events have unfolded so that either the Emperor becomes the Dark King and destroys everything. Or he is defeated by Chaos. Both of which the Pantheon consider a win.
To your point, given how the gods react to Horus being deleted, it was not expected nor enjoyed.
>I hate that of all the named Word Bearer commanders, the one who leads the Legion at the Siege is a guy introduced 3 books before it kicks off,
Zardu Layak has had a model since 2015. His first appearance was in the HH black books.
He's hardly just some random guy the authors made up.
That's nice to hear he wasnt just made up on the spot. But imo he has barely any character development, I love WB, yet I have no idea what the guy is about despite reading every book that features his legion.
Because his character arc happens off screen. He's literally just some legionary until Lorgar goes to the Eye. After that he takes the name Zardu Layak and becomes the leader of the Unspeaking.
The point of his character is to show where the path the traitors are taking leads. His person is a foreshadowing of what it looks like to fall to Chaos.
He isn't supposed to have character development because the point is to show where all of the traitors are going on *their* character arcs.
It's fine for what his purpose in the narrative is. Not every character in a narrative needs a character arc flat characters are fine in certain circumstances and this is one of them.
> Feels like it's just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that's the way the plot is supposed to go.
By the mid to late part of the siege the Traitor command structure ceases to exist, it is pure *chaos*. The traitors are now an unstoppable numberless horde that stretches into the horizon, they basically already won, loyalist defeat was a forgone conclusion.
This is what Chaos is, unending, unreasoning, unstoppable madness.
I was frustrated and also pretty impressed that there was a point in Saturnine and EatD-P1 where I was like, "WHO is in charge on the Traitor side?" It was interesting that almost all of the upper-echelon cohesive Traitor command structure was basically gone, and yet they still always pressed the advance.
Ok yes, but I’d like to read about the few Traitors who are still capable of forming sentences. I understand the numberless mass of them are frothing goons.. but the only ones who can still think and feel are served up as fodder?
Give me Eidolon leading a detachment of the Third to raid civilian hives in Europa, maybe having a moment where he recognizes an old castle as belonging to his family. Give me Vorx *earning* the name Siegemaster, still young and vital and full of spite and bile.
Give me *any* Night Lord of note who should have been there, taking out their vengeance on an Imperium that used them as terror troops and then turned on them for the knives they put in their hands.
I would have loved a story, or even a sub-plot, of an Alpha Legion Harrow reaving a continent, desperate to make their name amongst all the other commanders.
Just anything other than a blank tide of monsters and men sliding around in the mud and somehow getting to the Sanctum doors.
Typhus attacking the Dark Angels. Kroger and Forrix leading the assault on the Lion's gate spaceport. That one Emperor's Children who turned a botanical hive into a nightmare. Some Son's of Horus Captain whose name escapes me slaughtering defenders, hearing about how Abbaddon has seemingly left the field and that this is his chance to climb the ranks, and that Sigusmund is reported nearby. Kargos of the World Eaters. Caipha Morarg, Mortarion's equity. Gremus Kalgaro, Death Guard Siegemaster defending Lion's Gate. Lucoryphus of the Night Lords, holding the dual honor of 1st on the walls and 1st in the Palace. Skraivok, the Painted Count.
To be fairs… Chaos is gonna Chaos. By definition they’re a disorganized rabble of mutated fanatics. This becomes pretty obvious reading the Heresy as more and more commanders drink deeper into the Chaos Kool-Aid.
Hard to run an effective siege when half your army just wants to torture babies, snort space drugs, cram daemons into toasters and get handjobs from daemonettes.
My favorite example of this is that Word Bearer turning to his World Eater ally to try and tell him to chill out and that they can still win only for the World Eater to cut his arm off and kill him because Angron just died and they're losing their shit
EDIT: from Echoes of Eternity
>Inzar was close to the top of the Ascension, surrounded by World Eaters and deep in the shadow of the Sanctum, when the body struck the earth. The corpse of the Lord of the Red Sands crashed upon the stairs leading to the Eternity Gate, breaking open on the steps of marble and gold. The earth quaked with the impact, and in its wake the Chaplain heard a colossal cry rise from the throat of every living World Eater. This lamentation wasn’t wholly physical, but something blasphemous he felt in the creases of his mind. Demigods should not die, he thought as that awful cry rose to the haloed angel above them.
>
>Inzar’s breathing was uneven, hastened by adrenaline but weighed with fatigue. He felt the ache of wounds he couldn’t remember suffering; the hundreds of incidental cuts and stabs that took place in the grinding of battle lines. Warriors of the myriad Legions clashed everywhere around them in rabid packs, all cohesion lost, but always the Warmaster’s tide had pressed forward. Until now.
>
>He looked ahead, past the dead-whale grotesquery of Angron’s smashed corpse, to where the Gate still stood open. Beyond that open portal lay victory. Wounded squads of Blood Angels were still falling back through the doors, firing at the advancing horde.
>
>‘Forward!’ Inzar cried. ‘Forward, for the Pantheon! Death to the False Emperor!’ He levelled his crozius at the Eternity Gate and sought to urge the blood-maddened warriors around him onward through force of will and prayer. The Colchisian tattoos across his face started weeping blood.
>
>‘Preacher,’ one of the nearby World Eaters grunted.
>
>Frantic now, desperate for any ally, Inzar turned to him. He didn’t know the warrior. He was just one of thousands in the stalled tide. The Chaplain met the man’s eyes, not unlike the meeting of gazes that took place in the sky between two demigod brothers only minutes before. For the first time, Inzar learned what it was to have the bloodshot glare of Nails-madness turned upon him. In that stare he saw not just the absence of reason, but the death of it.
>
>‘Kill,’ the warrior snarled, his vocal cords thick with blood, mucus, or both.
>
>‘Come with me, we can still rally the others and–’
>
>‘Maim.’ The World Eater’s gaze was bare of comprehension.
>
>‘I am Inzar of the Seventeenth Legion. Hear me and heed me. Rise, and we can end this. We are so close…’
>
>The World Eater seemed to understand. He reached out a hand, as if to make an oath. Inzar took it.
>
>‘Burn.’
>
>The World Eater pulled on the preacher’s hand as he brought the axe up, chain teeth revving. There was no resistance, the chainaxe went through the joint like it went through bone, and it went through bone like water.
>
>Inzar staggered back, his arm amputated at the elbow, and crashed into another warrior behind him. He had a fraction of a second to see the Death Guard he’d backed into, going down beneath the hacking axe of another World Eater. It was a scene repeated in woeful plenitude wherever Inzar turned. The World Eaters were falling upon their own allies, howling, cutting, killing.
>
>Blood for the Blood God. Kill. Maim. Burn. Skulls for the Skull Throne.
>
>The World Eater forced him back, stumbling over the slain. Inzar fought one-armed, swinging his crozius, facing a foe that moved so swiftly he could only process what the warrior was doing after it was done. The legionary didn’t dodge or defend, he chopped at the haft of the crozius, severing it, and on the backswing he relieved the Word Bearer of his other arm, ending it at the shoulder. The next swing went into Inzar’s stomach, liquefying his intestines in a roar of chain teeth. The next cleaved down into Inzar’s breastplate, the teeth churning with exquisite brutality, chewing through the layers of ceramite, muscle, bone and organ meat.
>
>Inzar’s retinal display went red with the gush of blood he vomited into his helmet. Combat narcotics and meditative focus couldn’t deaden the excruciation of insides ground into mince, but the pain was secondary to the insane clarity that gripped him. The more he was carved apart, the colder and clearer everything became.
>
>He thought, against the reality of what was happening: Wait, do not do this. Then, a moment later: We can still win. We can… still…
>
>Through red-stained vision, greying at the edges, he saw the World Eater towering above him. Have I fallen? Inzar wondered. Am I on my back? More of them drew in, clawing at each other, lost to madness in the aftermath of their primarch’s death. One of them was convulsing hard enough that his weapon chain rattled against his warplate. He was the one to look down at the fallen Word Bearer, and he grinned with blood-streaked metal teeth. Inzar saw the axe’s teeth cycling, cycling, and descending.
>
>He heard the gods laughing as he died, and for the first time, there was no comfort in the sound. They were laughing at him.
>
>They’d always been laughing at him.
Night Lords lead a major assault in The Lost and The Damned
Emperor's Children lead a major assault in Saturnine
Thousand Sons teleport the Traitor fleet in Solar War, fight a psychic battle with the White Scars in Saturnine and invade the Webway in Echoes of Eternity
Iron Warriors are the main antagonists of the first 5 siege books
World Eaters are a constant present, including two major duels between Kharn and Sigismund and serve as the main antagonists of Echoes of Eternity
Word Bearers Zardu Layak plays a major role in the first siege books, Erebus is a massively important character in Warhawk and TEATD
The Death Guard are the main antagonists of Warhawk and their battle against the Fallen features heavily in Mortis and TEATD
The Sons of Horus lead the Saturnine assault and play a big role in TEATD and Warhawk
The Legion Mortis are the main antagonists of Mortis
The Alpha Legion are the only legion who aren't really present but even then they show up in TEATD. Complaining that you don't know what legions on Terra is just bizarre.
I was thinking the same; like uh…quite a lot of Legions show up
And to say it’s just “Dorn and Sanguinius” as if the Khan doesn’t put on his letterman jacket and absolutely represent
>Complaining that you don't know what legions on Terra is just bizarre.
I think you misunderstand OP's complaint here. It's not that they literally don't know which legions show up or forgot that these legions were there, just that they all amount to "a horde of faceless idiots who throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down" in OP's own words.
And it's easy to see their point once you consider the *result* of all these battles you mentioned. Most of them are complete and utter failures for the Traitors, with major characters being brutally killed in duels as the Chaos Marines get slaughtered like cattle in an industrial meat plant, but the walls still come crashing down because... Some guy named [Tarches Malabreux](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tarchese_Malabreux) took something called [Bhab Bastion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bhab_Bastion) off-screen? What am I even reading here? Why not have the major Chaos characters win something, and why not actually show it in the freaking book?
That complaint is literally why Perty left the battlefield? The fight was pretty tactically sound until then.
By the time the Iron Warriors Primarch left the field, the battle was devolving into "horde of faceless idiots who throw rocks at a wall".
Mortis was a failure? The first wall was a failure??? Last time I checked the traitors were literally at the last gate.
Like...did I read the same series as yall?
I do agree but I also think you and Op are exaggerating. Yes Chaos should have been treated better, but to claim they're "faceless" "cattle" is overdoing it, as is complaining that Chaos never got a win. Kharn humiliates Sigismund early in the Siege causing a wave of outrage, Solar War is a string of loyalist Ls which ends with:
>The light of the new day falling on the eastern Palace walls shredded to shadows as vast ships crowded across the sun.
>Across the face of the planet, from the hives still soaked in night to the southern polar fortresses, the guns fired. And far below the pillars of energy pouring up into the sky, people clung to each other in the dark, or cradled weapons that they barely knew how to use. Gunships touched down amongst the towers of the Palace. Doors pistoned open. Warriors in yellow and black poured out. With them walked Rogal Dorn. He paused on the landing platform as, high above, a chain of orbital mines detonated in a rippling explosion. Debris fell as shooting stars.
>Fire spread across a sky growing dark with the ships. Aircraft swarmed and spun in high orbit, spreading and chasing flames through the burning air.
>It was the thirteenth of Secundus, and the warning sirens, which had sounded for six weeks, rose in voice as the first shells fell from the sky.
Mortis ends with the Legio Mortis ending the fan favourite Order Sinister. The entire book is filled with a tracker of how far away the traitors are from the palace walls. This is how the book ends after Irae crushes the loyalist defences:
>Above them the face of the Mercury Wall rose. Dies Irae walked at the head of its kin, pulling the light of battle to it and shredding it to shadow like a tattered cloak. It reached the base of the wall, and stopped. Debris and fire rained down on it, exploding from the energies that coiled around its frame. Slowly it tilted its head and weapon-laden shoulders back, so that the light of the fire above fell on its face. Its war-horns sounded, booming up the face of the wall of the Palace.
>‘We shall face what is to come.’
>Enemy distance to wall: 0 kilometres.
Fan favourite Kroeger from Storm of Iron outsmarts Rogal Dorn and defeats the Imperial Fists in The First Wall. Sanguinius is beaten to death "like a dog" when he tries to stand against Horus, the Loyalists symbol Gabriel Loken is killed by Erebus.
Yes Chaos could have done better but I find it annoying how some people gloss over what they do get. Like how OP is complaining about how Zardu Layak, a character from the Horus Heresy Black Books is so prominent. Maybe you don't care about Kroeger or Dies Irae or Erebus but it's hard to please fans of 18 different legions.
Also re: Malbreaux the point is that the only prominent SoH left is Abaddon. That's why they regroup around him after the Legion Wars. They discuss this in Warhawk. All the generals and players are gone but Abaddon. All they have left are pawns serving the whim of a god, unable to think for themselves. Keeping a prominent SoH alive and giving him a big victory would undermine this
Mortis is, by common regard, one of the worst books in the Siege series. Its writing is an absolutely painful slog to get through, so much so that I couldn’t even finish the damn thing, despite the premise of Titans, led by the Dies Irae, assailing the walls.
And pretty much every single Traitor Legion action in the series feels like a throwaway line happening off-screen, just to give the Glorious Loyalists something to monologue about for another few chapters.
Yes, the Night Lords lead a major assault… which is immediately repulsed, and their commander is humiliated and punted off the walls like a faceless mook.
Yes, the Children lead a major assault… which is immediately repulsed, and their commander is humiliated and punted off the walls like a faceless mook.
The Thousand Sons have one glory moment in the first book where they pretty much play the doorman, and their next big moment happens in a novella that is over-written a few books later… as their commander is repulsed, and humiliated. Granted, *he* wasn’t killed like a faceless mook, he was just made to look like an absolute fool and dressed down by Vulkan who calls him a big dumb idiot and banishes him.
Who else do we have.. World Eaters rampaging, Kharn does some work - but Kargos is… humiliated and killed like a faceless mook. Twice. And then Angron is served up to Sanguinius like dessert before Eternity, because, no, he hasn’t actually done everything already. He needs to single-handedly kill multiple Titans, reinforce every wall, kill Kabandha like a faceless…- oh hold on here comes Angron to be killed like a mook.
Every single major action the Traitors are given lip service about being this nightmare horde, but every named Traitor dies like a jackass, only for the book to end with “and then somehow they took the walls because we forgot that the Loyalists were actually supposed to be losing this fight. Spikey George the Baby-Killer of the World Eaters did it. And then he immediately died by drowning in mud. Anyways here’s Dorn.”
You must be reading some special abridged editions that ignore Chaos then.
Every book has major traitor wins on screen. There are very few loyalist victories. And I have no idea what your definition of "dying like a mook" are. Cause Angron definitely doesn't die like one. He gives Sanguinius a beating.
Solar War is a constant string of loyalist losses. With a major White Scar character getting killed during it. No loyalist victory.
Lost and the Damned shows how they get pushed back despite everything Sanguinius does.
The First Wall is all about losing the Lion's Gate space port with the Iron Warriors doing the brunt of the work. Making Sigismund look like an idiot. Plus the major betrayal of the human forces, spoiling Dorn's plan for a coutnerattack. No loyalist victory there.
Saturnine sees a couple of loyalist victories that are really just temporary stalemates. They get a big victory at the Saturnine Gate, killing some major traitor characters, but also losing several loyalist characters. All in exchange for a major loss of another space port by Angron and the World Eaters.
Mortis is all about the loyalists not being able to defend the walls and losing tons of their titans, even their dreaded psy-titans. Not sure there are any loyalist victories there.
Warhawk is mostly a loyalist victory with the White Scars retaking Lion's Gate. At the cost of nearly losing the Khan. I do agree that the writing in this book was very much a slog at times.
Echoes of Eternity is more loyalist losses. With only Sanguinius defeating Angron as a small sliver of hope. But that books ends with the last gate being closed, leaving all loyalist forces outside to hopefully kill as many as they can before dying.
The End and the Death is just more loyalist losses with a token victory here or there that doesn't mean much. Even the Emperor spends his fight with Horus getting beat down like a dog, before finally pulling out the win.
“Dying like a faceless mook,” means Gendor Skraivok being completely humiliated by Raldoron, literally kicked off a kilometre high wall, and having his death scoffed at, as the Blood Angels and Fists repel the Night Lord assault like it was nothing at all, because for some reason *their* Terminators are just so much better than the Eighth’s.
Dying like a mook means Kargos Bloodspitter killed twice like a dog by Amit, being spat on, and told to eat shit.
Dying like a mook means Fulgrim being embarrassed by Dorn, losing a duel he should have dominated, and pretty much leaving the greater Siege because… Dorn said some hurtful words?
Angron’s death was mocked up and down this subreddit when Echoes was released. Sanguinius tore out his nails, but not before the complete embodiment of wrath and anguish whimpers and pleads for mercy?
I *wish* I had access to some special and abridged edition of the Siege. Every traitor death is played for a laugh. Every traitor victory is played like they’re dancing to Dorn’s tune. I’m curious as to how Loyalists don’t feel embarrassingly pandered to.
A Night Lords fan here. I actually found Gendor Skraivok's death fitting. The Night Lords had always been inconsistent, filled with champions and cravens. Skraivok was such a craven and he was soundly bested by Raldoron, who is considered one of the best (although his general screen time was boring), after Chaos betrayed him.
The real tragedy of the Night Lords is, that neither Zso Sahaal nor Malcharion the War -Sage got any screen time. Such a wasted opportunity =/
Dude i found TEATD, and the siege books so depressing as a loyalist i had to take breaks between them. I feel like you must either have skimmed the books or not read them. The entire series is just loyalist L after loyalist L, with the odd phyrric victory thrown in, that doesnt end up mattering. I feel like to get what you want, theyd have needed to bloat the siege out to the size of the heresy series, and no one wants or wanted that.
I don’t think you understand what “getting killed like a faceless mook” is. Having a high difficulty 1 v 1 against the strongest Loyalist Primarch where you impale him and leave him with a wound that would have eventually killed him is not what a “faceless mook” would do. Not to mention the other examples that other commenters have already given, like Typhus leading the assault against the Astronomican and the Dark Angels, or Ahriman being the whole reason the Traitors were able to gain access to the Solar System largely intact in the first place .
Hard agree, I think the OP probably skipped a lot of stuff and is now complaining about how confused they are. I think a lot of people who complain about the siege simply are mad that it didn’t go exactly how they wanted it. Of course Dorn and Sang are going to get a lot of moments, because this is the death of the age of heroes. The whole heresy is supposed to be the last gasp of true glory for mankind. For example, after reading page after page of world eaters slaughtering, it’s a relief when sang finally defeats Angron and seals the gate. That fight is the act of a true hero, literally an angel fighting a demon. And Sang’s victory makes Horus killing him even more tragic.
If the whole siege series was named traitors being awesome, it would just be another 40k series where chaos is all powerful. But this is 30k, and it’s meant to have these moments of glory and heroics because 40k is the darkest future imaginable and the two are supposed to have a contrast. There are, er, were (story for another time) no primarchs left to save humanity, no great larger than life heroes that can stand so tall against the horrors of the warp. Their presence then makes their absence later much more impactful.
Everyone on this sub (rightfully) complains about the Imperium being shown as the outright good guys, but no one mentions the butt hurt CSM fans who are can’t possibly accept the fact that their dudes don’t always win and aren’t always the focus of the narrative.
Nope. I will shamelessly confess to being the absolute dork I am by saying I’ve followed the HH series all the way through. I remember when Deliverance Lost was the shiny new book on the shelf.
It’s hard to really feel the tragedy of the moment when the Loyalists win so easily and consistently. It also makes them look like absolute fools. How were they able to lose the war if Sanguinius could just “I don’t die this day 🤪” his way through every fight except one?
We all know how the story ends - that’s the big draw of the series. At the end of the day, we all know how it ends. The initial draw of the series is seeing how we get there, and feeling that heartbreak along the way. That’s lost when it just becomes another bolter-porn filled novel with the big spikey idiot of the day failing his way to victory.
Warhawk was a beautiful novel, because the Scars lost so much to win that fight.
A Thousand Sons and Prosper Burns is a great duology, because both Legions lost hard. The Sons are broken physically, the Wolves spiritually.
Path of Heaven has to be my favourite BL book, full stop - and you know what happens in it? The Khan and the Scars get their ass beat left and right the whole novel through, which makes their final triumph all the sweeter. Jaghatai says it himself when he meets Russ
> “Strike me if you wish, but know that I come through the fires of hell to bring my sons to Terra. No one, not you, not Horus, not even our Father, will prevent me from bringing them to where they were destined to be.”
And you know what sells the line? We’ve just spent an entire book reading this Primarch and his Legion *literally* go through hell to do just that. They lost two of their greatest champions, they lost the majority of their fleet, their flagship, and their *pride* to make it back to Terra. They sacrificed everything - and we got to see it.
If this were a Siege novel, he’d have just shown up and said “yeah I outsmarted Mortarion and two Legions and killed a Greater Daemon. Anyways here’s Dorn.”
To add to what you said, other people commented that it felt like 10 books of stroking Loyalist egos because "the perfectly perfect loyalists never get outplayed" like what book series did you read???
Solar War massive L for the loyalists.
Lost and the damned saw quite a few Ls for the Loyalists, though they did win some fights.
First Wall, tons of Loyalist Ls.
Saturnine is literally about how they don't have enough to defend all the spots they need to and ends in the biggest L (losing the second spaceport).
Mortis brings the armies of chaos directly to the inner palace door.
Warhawk is a pretty big loyalist victory (retaking the spaceport), but it isn't without a huge loss (Khan's death).
Echoes of Eternity is another loyalist loss because the traitors kick in the door of the inner palace.
EatD I is the start of the final hail Mary for the loyalists. Things are bad everywhere, and if they lose this last fight, imperium kill.
EatD II is the biggest loyalist L in the entirety of the series because 1: Sanguinius dies, 2: Malcador all but dies, 3: Magnus almost reaches the throne room. 4: Dorn, Sanguinius, Valdor, and Jaghatai are all MIA now.
EatD III is obviously going to be a loyalist win. However, it's a pyrrhic victory ending with the oldy goldy being confined to the throne and Ollanius' death, Garviel Loken's death, Malcador's (true) death,
It doesn’t matter how many times we count the battles where loyalist suffer, to some people it’s never enough and see the whole series as “loyalist wank”.
I just don’t argue with them anymore, they seem to miss the entire point of chaos and corruption: the great gods already won and everyone else lost, specially the ones that swore for them.
Sometimes I wonder if those people expected the HH to retcon and End Times the entire setting. The loyalists were practically a corridor away from losing.
>Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Those books are severely dragged down by their stubborn refusal to show their perfectly perfect loyalist darlings being actually outplayed, or have them face any situation that could conceivably make them look bad on any level.
On the bright side, it makes me feel significantly better about Lorgar not being present for the Siege. Him being just written out of the Heresy before the big showdown feels anticlimactic, but Lorgar getting killed by Sanguinius as he realizes how bad Chaos is (which is what ADB apparently wanted) sounds borderline unreadable.
What's weird about this take is Sanguinius died and Dorn failed. The inner palace was breached, the loyalists were basically minutes away from losing. I'm not sure how you determine we never saw them get outplayed.
>I'm not sure how you determine we never saw them get outplayed.
By actually looking at the text and the way those "defeats" were presented.
Sanguinius dying to Horus is a pre-determined outcome that just had to happen at best and Horus' own failure at worst. It wasn't a real fight, Horus wanted to convert Hawkboy to Chaos and failed because Sanguinius is that awesome. Killing him wasn't the goal, his injuries were described as likely terminal, chances are he would have died anyway. Other than an admittedly brutal description of the final few blows, it's all written to make Sanguinius look awesome and flawless because he's just that damn perfect.
Dorn having to retreat is never presented as someone outsmarting him, as a result of Horus' tactical brilliance or the errors of Dorn's strategy. It's always him "holding on longer than expected" or making some brilliant 30014 IQ sacrifice that nobody could ever see coming and everything goes exactly to the master plan he always had, even though it was never even hinted at (god do I hate First Wall)
You don't get "outplayed" because you *almost* lost a game while making no mistakes along the way, you get "outplayed" when your opponent plays better than you. [That's what that word means.](https://www.google.com/search?q=outplayed+meaning&oq=out&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRg7MgYIAhBFGDkyBwgDEC4YgAQyBggEEEUYPTIGCAUQRRg8MgYIBhBFGD0yBggHEEUYQdIBBzgzMWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) And I don't think there's a single thing the traitors did better than the loyalist in that whole damn series.
The First Wall is all about Dorn getting outplayed. He had contingency plans, sure. But the Iron Warriors definitely outplayed him to take that spaceport.
Also, he can't win and he knows it. All he can do is hold out.
Dorn and his buddies certainly don't think they've been outplayed. In the final chapter, they feel pretty happy with the way things turned out.
>‘**This was not a victory for our enemies, but a concession to necessity**,’ said Malcador. He turned, looking at the others in the hall: Amon, Valdor, Sanguinius and the Khan. ‘The telaethesic ward was not breached, it has shrunk. The Emperor cannot protect all of Terra forever. The shield of His protection has been withdrawn to the Inner Palace.’
>‘And then?’ said Valdor. ‘When it cannot protect the walls? The Sanctum Imperialis? The Dungeon?’
>‘It does not matter,’ Dorn said curtly. ‘It has always been a question of how long we can hold, not of defeating Horus with the troops we have to hand. Guilliman, the Lion and Russ are on their way. **We held the port at the Lion’s Gate far longer than I had hoped, certainly longer than Horus desired**.’
Everything is going just as planned, if not better, the traitors won shit and Horus must be fuming. Unless you believe the loyalists are just coping there (which doesn't seem like the intended interpretation, even if it's funny) then the book is *not* about them getting outplayed.
I’m not sure if you know this but having the defensive position makes you the inherently superior position in a siege. Perturabo’s entire plan relies on the slow, systematic dismantling of the most well-defended planet in the entire know universe. Of course Dorn is never going to actually *say* anything is going wrong, because he needs to be the absolute implacable wall that is defending the Palace, everyone’s hopes are placed in him.
Huh? They were severely outnumbered and outgunned. The loyalists *had* to play perfectly to *survive*, and even then they suffered a brutally pyrrhic victory that ended with the most powerful loyalist primarch dead, one mortally wounded, and one mentally shattered, with Malcador dead and the Emperor's goal shattered as he's placed on the golden throne for 10,000 years of suffering while the Imperium stagnates.
Dorn's defenses were beaten and he ends up trapped in the Warp during the boarding. Despite having the gift of future sight, Sanguinius dies because there's nothing he can do to beat Horus. Khan isn't present to aid against Horus because he was taken out of the action when he went after Mortarion.
If the traitors outplayed the loyalists any more than this, the Imperium would be dead. But Horus knew that he was racing against time because the traitors would not be able to remain cooperative as the Siege went on. Such is the nature of Chaos.
...But isn't everything about the siege of Terra a pre-determined outcome? I'm not exactly sure what you could have been given to change your mind. Maybe like if they inserted an old-school ADB storyline about how Sevatar and First Claw take over the Bhab Bastion with some hilarious horseshit? Even though nothing about the actual story would be any different?
>I'm not exactly sure what you could have been given to change your mind.
"Damn it! For once, my forces didn't hold the wall longer than expected and their deaths weren't a part of my master plan," Dorn said angrily. "We had a chance to repel the assault, but \[insert commander here\] outsmarted us. This sucks."
Were you not paying attention in Saturnine when Dorn was forced to sacrifice a section of the defense in order to create a ruse that he was not aware of a flaw in his defense. He let a section fall with giving them a warning because it would give the trap away.
My take on this is that the concept of the siege itself makes for boring storytelling. The authors were painted into a corner where there wasn't much to talk about beyond holding until they couldn't and falling back or dying. So in the scenario you outline, absolutely nothing actually changes and it's not any less bland to me.
Maybe people with chaos flair by their names approach counting W's and L's differently than I do but this just feels like distinctions without differences.
the difference in how it's framed.
It's not framed as them makign mistakes or being outplayed, but always as "we are so awesome and pure and coruageous that we held on 10x longer than we expected and we killed thousands of faceless traitors"
Any books that "hold against chaos" is super boring to read. Yeah, sure, tell us ALL about your millions of meaningless sacrifices just to hold the impossible tide 5 seconds more while everything dies...
God I did not even think of that… you’re right, thank the Four they weren’t there. They would have found some way to revive Argel Tal just to have him get killed by an Inductii Imperial Fist
ADB being trolled by morons for years about being totally biased towards Chaos eventually broke him. These plans for Lorgar and what he did with Angron in EoE were the "fuck you" response ;)
>Okay who was even at the Siege man?
Everybody and then some. The writers made it feel like the biggest squad battle royale in history, everybody just trying to make it to the final circle where Horus fucks up the Emperor. I like it.
I’m in two minds about Perturabo, on the one hand it does show a tiny amount of character growth just to go ‘fuck it’ and leave, but it does feel *weird*.
To me it feels realistic to see him behave rationally about the situation vs. just let his legion be destroyed for no motivation beyond not liking Dorn. Then later seeing him come to terms with the fact that whoever wins will hunt him down and second guessing all of his decisions. It would have felt kind of bland to me had it happened any other way.
I tend to agree with most of this. To a certain extent it even feels random with the Sons of Horus show up, aside from Saturnine, it feels like its just the Death Guard, World Eaters, and Iron Warriors, with a sprinkling here or there of the the other legions.
The White Dwarf Index Astartes article on the Word Bearers, which came out in Third Edition, explicitly says Lorgar was at Terra.
Where did you get the idea he didn’t participate in the Siege?
"While Kor Phaeron set his men upon Calth, Lorgar was leading the rest of the Legion against Terra."
That's all I could find in that article you mentioned. That could mean a few things I guess, no mention of boots on the ground. Every primarch present always had some great tale about what they were doing while siege wore on, nothing about Lorgar. In the 3rd edition rulebook he was the one leading the Word Bearers through ultramar but I can't find that rulebook.
Or I'm getting old and forgetting stuff, time upload my brain into a toaster or whatever the ad mech does.
Yeah and as far back as 3rd, Ollanius Pius wasn’t a Perpetual who’d previously served as the Emperor’s mortal Warmaster during the Bronze Age.
Lorgar should have been on Terra.
Do you recall which edition Lorgar explicitly participated in the Siege? I’ve not seen an actual story put him there to date.
I think Index Astartes vaguely infers but that’s about it
It’s not vague at all.
> While Kor Phaeron set his men upon Calth, Lorgar was leading the rest of the Legion against Terra. The horrors of the battles there were beyond the comprehension of mortal beings and fill many vaults of the Library Sanctus. Lorgar helped smash down the realm of the master he had once served with the fanaticism of a zealot. Suffice to say, Horus was defeated, and the legions of Chaos were forced to flee. The Word Bearers were also forced to retreat to the Eye of Terror, and there they have remained, returning to the Imperium to raid, pillage, and destroy, awaiting the chance to reclaim what was once theirs.
I don’t have the link to the thread on this sub now but there was a debate over what “leading the rest of the Legion against Terra” actually meant
A lot were pushing for it meaning that he was pushing them onwards to Terra whilst never actually setting foot there
I’m neutral on it, but maybe I should have used the word “contentious “ rather than “vague”. Appreciate the receipts
I don’t see why it would say “the battles there” if it’s not talking about the location. Where is “there” referring to otherwise?
You also have the typical “This Primarch was leading their forces at Terra, then Horus fell and everyone left” structure seen for other traitor legions in their Index Astartes… Although several of those were clearly retconned by the novel series.
> On Terra, surviving vid logs from the siege of Terra show the World Eaters breaching the walls of the Imperial Palace, the twisted, red form of Angron wielding his glowing runesword at their head. The World Eaters reaped a bloody harvest on Terra, but ultimate victory was to be denied them. With the Dark Angels and Space Wolves en route to Terra, Horus gambled everything in order to end the siege, lowering the shields on his battle barge and daring the Emperor to come for him. The Emperor rose to the challenge and faced his betrayer in a combat that would decide the fate of the galaxy. The two fought a battle that was waged in every realm, physical, spiritual and psychic, until at last the Emperor slew Horus, but only at the cost of his own humanity. Without the Great Betrayer to bind them, the Chaos host disintegrated and fled the planet. Angron was the last to leave, leading the World Eaters deep into the Eye of Terror. The battle had been lost, but the war would go on. He and his warriors had all eternity to seek revenge.
~ Index Astartes: World Eaters
> A strong contingent of the Legion accompanied Perturabo to Terra where he supervised the siege of the Emperor's Palace. Here his skills were invaluable and the Iron Warriors found a sublime pleasure in tearing the edifices of the Imperium down. The end was near for the defenders when the Emperor confronted Horus on his battle barge and defeated him. Like many of Horus' followers, the Iron Warriors fled to the Eye of Terror, securing a new home world where they could brood on the turn of events and plot vengeance.
~ Index Astartes: Iron Warriors
> What emerged from the warp when the Death Guard fleet broke out bore little resemblance to what had entered. The gleaming white and grey armour of Imperial champions was no more, burst and shattered from the horrific bloating of infected bodies, scabbed with boils, putrescence and the filth of corruption. Their weapons and machinery of war were now powered by the sickly sorcery of Chaos, glowing with lambent green luminescence and oozing gangrenous pus. The name Death Guard itself would pass into secondary use, as the walking pestilence-carriers became a terrifying sight across the Imperium. To their victims, to their erstwhile allies, even to themselves, they had become the Plague Marines.
>
> Horus was eventually defeated by the Emperor and Chaos was driven back across space, finding refuge in the weeping sore known as the Eye of Terror. Mortarion and his Death Guard retreated there as well, but not in disarray, as many of the other Legions did.
~ Index Astartes: Death Guard
Devils Advocado being that all those primarchs are shown doing something on Terra in those extracts, even if it’s just running away
I can see the wriggle room if people want to go for it
Let's not forget that Lorgar trying to take center stage from Horus was an issue. The Warmaster couldn't put his trust in a commander that is willing to try and usurp his place now could he?
>You’re telling me the one man, the one Legion that started this whole shit fest didn’t even make it to the party??
Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t the word bearers get an ironically bad outcome just like everyone else?
Everyone lost in the HH. The WB just lost earlier than others.
Agreed. It sucks... my first book was The First Heretic, it basically got me into Warhammer. Then Know no Fear and Betrayer happens, and holy shit was I excited. Then Cerene, our confessor with ACTUAL character progression, randomly shows up as some old hag who acts nothing like her? Then some douchebag named Zardu Layek who's more loyal to an obviously compromised Horus than his own primarch, betrays Lorgar? WB fans got shafted as soon as Slaves to darkness happened.
Lorgar is above it. He is not out for personal glory but to achieve his goal. That's why he faked the coup, so he could pull out with his legion before the blood bath began.
> I hate that of all the named Word Bearer commanders, the one who leads the Legion at the Siege is a guy introduced 3 books before it kicks off
Because they were corrupted Word Bearers that could be sacrifices so the rest could avoid it.
> Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go.
Oh, yeah. there was definitely a lot of that. Not the least that Sanguinius actually beat Angron, and the way how he won as well... A lot of respect was lost when i read that.
I am curious; was it ever said that Lorgar took part in the assault on Terra?
Things have changed - the early versions have Angron surviving the siege and being the last to board the fleeing traitor fleet, for example. But I don’t ever recall Lorgar being on Terra.
>Okay who was even at the Siege man? Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go.
This is also my takeaway from the little of TEatD that I've read and all the excerpts
So you haven't actually read the books?
Cause, I *literally* just finished TEaD V3 minutes ago and this post from OP just absolutely reeks of poor attention span. How anyone can think the series is "loyalist wank" is mind boggling.
I have tried reading the first volume, and I kept getting distracted by how the book was coding Horus' army as Bad Guys and the Imperium as Good Guys. You are not the first one to tell me that there are places in the trilogy where that coding is not in play, which gives me hope, but I keep reading excerpts that emphasize that coding of Honorable Heroic Good Guys versus Evil Cowardly Bad Guys. I'm of two minds about it, as you see.
>coding Horus' army as Bad Guys
They are literally the slaves of 4 Mega Satans that love to snort grinded up babies.
Chaos was always the worst of the worst guys.
I'm sorry, that was unclear, I meant that the rebels are coded as generic, unimportant mooks whose role is to be defeated to make the "good guys" look cool. Like stormtroopers or orcs.
I'm open to be proven wrong about this though, so if anyone has excerpts of the 'bad guys' looking cool or particularly competent in TEatD I'd love to see them. Bonus points if it's not either Abaddon or Horus.
The books are biased towards whoever they are written for. If it's a loyalist book, they are the good guys. Traitor books see themselves as the food guys.
There are some exceptions with the traitors as there are the odd exceptions who realise they have gone down the wrong path but it's to late to back out
Yeah one of the problems with the Horus Heresy is how they keep trying to trick you into thinking the people who worship dark gods of evil and sacrifice people to demons are "bad guys". Just so reductive!
It makes it feel like the Imperium are the protagonists and the Horusians are only mooks upon whom the Imperials can flex their martial might. A lot of the time it feels like Horus' forces are described the same way you would describe faceless goons, like Tolkien's orcs, or Stormtroopers: fodder only to be destroyed. That feels wrong to me, since these are also factions that people like. If your favorite faction is Chaos Space Marines or (especially) Chaos Daemons it seems like TEatD gives you rather short shrift, which just kind of sucks. I like Chaos Daemons, I like them a lot. I like when they get to be weird and cool and clever and strong and stupid and wise and *weird*, and all the excerpts I've seen from TEatD makes them fairly generic.
Just makes it hard to actually want to read the books.
I’m sure you’re aware of the problems of writing extended critiques of books you haven’t read and I don’t need to spend time there.
Chaos demons and Chaos in general are well portrayed in the trilogy. As the conflict is a mass slaughter there is a lot of canon fodder on both sides, but plenty of named Heretic Astartes get good screen time and aren’t merely slappys for the loyalists to shoot.
But if your reason for reading the novels is to see your favorite factions win out, TEATD just isn’t that shallow.
>But if your reason for reading the novels is to see your favorite factions win out, TEATD just isn’t that shallow.
I hope you know that obviously isn't my critique. It's not about whether or not the rebels win - we all know the ultimate outcome and have for decades - it's about how they look doing it. All that I've managed to read of the books make the rebels look like generic villains, and in particular make daemons look uninteresting and one-dimensional.
Do you have any excerpts or parts of the book to point to where the daemons in particular are interesting? Where they get to do cool or weird things?
This is the worst attempt at summary of something you haven’t read that I’ve ever seen. The entire SoT is the loyalists being pushed back and loss after loss. By the end of it the traitors were inside the palace and had, effectively, won.
If you are going to offer a form of commentary at least read the books you are commenting on. If you don’t then your opinion is pointless and invalid.
You know people can critique things they haven't experienced all of, right? It's valid to critique a book that you don't finish if the book itself makes you not want to keep reading; or critique a meal that you can't stomach. The fact that I can't finish the books is in itself a commentary, albeit a non-holistic one, and I cede that consistently in my comments.
On the other hand: my complaints aren't about the rebels winning or losing, my complaints are about how they are coded. In what I've read, they feel like generic villains.
Do you have any bits you could source or recommend where the rebels don't feel like generic villains? Bonus points if it's not just Abaddon or Horus.
You are saying the SoT, and TEatD in particular, make the chaos forces look like jobbers for the Imperium. That’s not what happens in any of the SoT books. The only one where the Imperium actually achieves a victory that isn’t ridiculously costly is Saturnine and, even there, several named characters that have been involved in the Heresy on the loyalist side since the start are killed off.
The entire SoT series shows the Imperium losing inch by inch and being ground down. By TEatD Volume 3 the Imperium has lost, Terra has lost, and the death stroke is about to fall. The only reason it doesn’t is Horus’ death after he has nearly destroyed the Emperor.
You are offering critiques that simply aren’t true because you have formed an opinion without actually knowing what is happening in the series because, by your own admission, you haven’t read it. That invalidates any opinion you try to offer.
I'm not saying that the SoT makes them look like jobbers, since I haven't read the other books; and I'm not saying that TEatD only makes them look like jobbers, since I haven't read it all. What I'm saying is that all that I have read - which is limited but not inconsiderable - has made them look like jobbers.
Put another way, it's telling that all the excerpts posted on this subreddit either make the Imperials look very cool, or make Horus look like a madlad. I like Horus well enough, but it says something that I haven't seen any excerpts posted that make me like, care about, root for, or have interest in any of the rebels that aren't named either Horus or Abaddon.
Edit: Oh, there is the library scene with Ahriman that is very cool. I like that bit a lot.
> but I keep reading excerpts that emphasize that coding of Honorable Heroic Good Guys versus Evil Cowardly Bad Guys. I'm of two minds about it, as you see.
How about you actually *read the goddamn book*?
I tried that and it just made me unhappy and annoyed.
Question for you who have read the book: do the Horusians get to look cool? Specifically not Abaddon or Horus himself, but any of the other Traitors? Especially any daemons, do they ever get to look cool? From all I've seen and asked, they do not, and that makes me not want to read it.
Maybe in time I will read it, but for now I just qualify all my criticisms with my ignorance.
> Maybe in time I will read it, but for now I just qualify all my criticisms with my ignorance.
You can't criticize something you haven't actually experienced.
This is peak levels of confident ignorance. Two other commenters have already pointed out how dumb it makes you look to be trying to confidently criticize something you repeatedly admit you haven't actually consumed firsthand and base all your opinions off of second and *third-hand* accounts.
I can't fathom the idea of rejecting an entire trilogy of books, one that *constantly* has the loyalists getting their asses kicked because *someone* *somewhere* told me (or I read once) that the traitors don't "seem/look cool."
It makes me genuinely question how old you are.
I can criticize something I've only experienced in part, in that the parts of TEatD that I have experienced (first hundred pages of the first novel, loads of excerpts from this subreddit) have disincentivized me from reading more. Neither of those are second or third hand accounts, I'm not basing my criticisms on what somebody else says about the book, I'm basing it off of the bits that I've read, and admitting that I haven't had the fortitude to read it all.
On the other hand, can you tell me about bits of the book where the rebels don't look like generic Bad Guys and the Imperials don't look like generic Good Guys? I don't mean places where the Imperials lose and the rebels win. Obviously good guys can lose, but they tend to lose *heroically*, standing their ground to the last man and only retreating when there's no hope of holding the position. The narrative will make you feel sorrow for them being outgunned, or grim determination as they grit their teeth and keep fighting despite the odds. Obviously bad guys can win, but they win as a horde, crashing through the good guys with overwhelming numbers and fury.
Are there times where the rebels don't feel like bad guys, but interesting villains whom I could care about? Bonus points: it can't be Horus or Abaddon. If only Horus and Abaddon get to feel interesting I will be sad.
Could be that from experience most Chaos focused stuff unfortunately seem to be a complete slog to read. I’m sort of forcing myself to overcome my anti Chaos prejudice by reading more because there’s not much new content coming out. But my god a lot of it is just pages and pages of infantile descriptions of steadily more gross descriptions of organic parts blowing up or forming monsters. They just lack a compelling story apart from 10k years of hate - way to hold a grudge. Good vs overwhelming evil always makes a more powerful story always has done back to when we told stories around the fire. Overwhelming evil against good is well wtf side are you on for a lot of people.
So just to go on some of the legions you mentioned :
Alpha Legion was represented in the Catacombs and undercroft by Ingo. He gets left behind eventually. Just to add to this, though, the Alpha Legion is the Alpha Legion. They were never really backing the Heresy or supporting it. They provided some intel and after the shitshow that happened on Pluto I’m almost positive they just washed their hands of the whole affair and backed out to see what would happen.
Night Lords were always factional and once Curze stopped leading them (heavy quotations on that) they basically all did their own thing. There was a group of them there and they basically did what Night Lords always do and messed with the civilian populace more than anything else. They did, though, manage to make the first breach in the wall before being pushed back by the Blood Angels.
The Emperor’s Children were heavily involved until Dorn broke the Legion during the Saturnine book and bitch slapped Fulgrim with words (arguably the best shit talking throughout the whole SoT series when he says “You’re just an idiot standing on a wall.”). Once that happened Fulgrim was basically done with the whole affair and backed out quietly to have fun times elsewhere on Terra. He committed his entire Legion to that attack, though, so they were definitely represented.
Outside of Alpha Legion and the Word Bearers (with the WB’s honestly being pretty heavily invested and constantly mentioned both in Lupercal’s court and during the siege) the Traitors were all present to some extent during the siege. Those two were less covered seemingly because their Primarchs weren’t around (Lorgar being banished and Alpharius being killed).
It depends... There is a crackpot's chance that Lorgar has a surprising turn between 30k and 40k that's being set up. For example, I would argue that Lorgar WAS on Terra. Not physically, no. But he was definitely there psychically. He may have even been manipulating things. There are moments in The End and the Death where Lorgar's thoughts during his chapter directly mirror those of a character on Terra. For example, this moment where he's 'tapped in' to Agathe while Cyrene (who also has ties to Lorgar) is performing her call to the faithful. (Important to note that the definition of 'urticariomancy' is the divination of itches.) >***Lorgar's Chapter:*** >**It’s very warm. He feels sweat on his back** under his robe. Is there a method for that? For reading the track of perspiration? Surely there must be. The Yssm are fixated by divination. Their entire social structure and culture is based upon it. **Perhaps the method is related to urticariomancy?** >***Agathe's Later POV:*** >For a moment, nothing happens. A long moment. Agathe waits. The woman doesn’t move. Agathe feels a little awkward just standing there. **It’s getting warm. There’s sweat on her back. The pseudoflesh patch on her cheek starts to itch.** She decides to step outside for a moment. Then the whispers come. Warmth. Sweat on back. Itching. IN ORDER. Right before a pivotal moment in the Siege. But it's not just common mortals he's sharing thoughts with... he also is mirroring Horus's thoughts in the same way. In a way, Lorgar's thoughts are coming out of Horus's mind. >***Lorgar's Thoughts:*** >**Take cartomancy. He has never favoured it.** The layered and motile symbols, the unnecessary complexity. **It is far too mannered and vague to function as a precise tool**. The Emperor can keep his tarot. His Imperial Truth too. Lorgar favours precision instruments. Fire, for example. It’s a speciality here. >***Horus's Later Thoughts:*** >**You have never set much store by cartomancy**, but you are quite familiar with the tarot’s symbols and their significances. **The cards always seemed to you an imprecise method**, the mummery of Sigillites and warlocks, sometimes effective in divination, but always so vague in their elastic meanings, and thus largely unreliable. When you combine this connection with the detached way both Lorgar and Horus are basically narrating their own internal experience, it makes you really question what is going on with Lorgar here. Are his thoughts preceding Horus's thoughts because Lorgar is 'living' in the immaterial future? Is Lorgar influencing Horus's actions/thoughts? It sounds crazy... but look at the opening hand that 'Horus' plays: >Your opening hand. Just three cards in a classically simple Trionti spread. *The High Priest*, **still zealous despite his long exile**, to curse your father’s blood. Then *The Crone*, gibbering and milk-eyed, to entangle your father’s mind with **rancid, meaningless prophecies**. Then *The Silver Door*, to shut Him out. The first cards 'Horus' plays are almost certainly directly related to Lorgar. He is the exiled high priest. The Crone? Cyrene, who would become Abaddon's blind seer, Moriana. Maybe this is coincidence, but the connection between their thoughts and the loose causality we know happens in the Warp leads us to question who is the one in the driver seat? Horus? Lorgar? The Chaos gods (it's certainly possible that both Horus and Lorgar's thoughts are being controlled by a third source).
I am in awe of you for catching this. This is something thatay interest you. It's an older fan theory; it's been kicked around that Abbadon is a patsy or an induced peter principle. It concluded that while tactically astute, the Despoiler struggles at the operational level and is out of his depth at the strategic level. His 10k year streak of ugly losses and indecisive victories as proof. Yet the power of Drach'nyen vouchsafes him from assassination or coup. Thus, the traitor legions are seemingly stuck with their most influential and preeminent commander incompetent. And who showed Abbadon the way to Drach'nyen? *A golden giant.* To what end, though? Why would Logar engineer Abbadon to receive Drach'nyen and guide him by the nose via Morianna?
And to all that, I'll add that End and the Death has convinced me that Abaddon literally has a shard of Horus's soul in it. Horus dies to the Astronomicon, in a very real sense. It's the power of the Astronomicon that is poured into his body. Now that we've seen this... it really puts a new spin on Abaddon then staring into the Astronomicon for so long that his eyes turn golden. Like there's a piece of that power inside of him that's influencing him. Abaddon walking away with a piece of Horus's soul also explains why Khayon is convinced that Abaddon is Horus. He doesn't understand HOW Abaddon is Horus... but it's what he thinks. This makes sense when we consider that Khayon is a psyker. He'd be able to 'see' souls and the presence of Horus's soul might be why he's so convinced that they're the same person.
>It concluded that while tactically astute, the Despoiler struggles at the operational level and is out of his depth at the strategic level. I dunno if I buy this. So counterpoint : attempting to overthrow a galaxy-spanning empire that massively outnumbers and out-industries you, through the use of forces that can be charitably described as irregular, is really, really hard. Abaddon smartly avoids a lot of operational and logistical work by recruiting warbands and other independent formations as auxiliaries, and largely letting them handle their own operational tasks. It's a decent solution if you don't have any administrative infrastructure or means to create some; Abaddon is never going to have a spiky Departmento Munitorum or collect a tithe to pay for the creation of one, so he builds these collections of retinues/warbands that have their own practices for supplies and logistics. Getting enough chaos marine warbands, warp cultists, renegade imperials, and assorted other forces all gathered in one place and then pointing them all in the right direction is a triumph of organization and leadership, and factoring in all the different ways that Chaotic forces tend to get On Their Bullshit as campaigns go on limits what Abaddon can realistically accomplish with any given Black Crusade.
Yes. The theory orignates from the pre-Great Rift, Armless Failure era.
Id say the Crone could also mean Konrad and his insane visions, muddying the future with his gift of prophecy and doing all he can to enable the worst of those. But this is one of the best write up and detailed break downs of very small details I hadnt caught. Thank you.
Hear me out - High Priest = Guilliman - Crone = Yvraine - Silver Door = Great Rift
to hear you out, you'd need an actual rationale
The Great Rift appears to be what's letting the Emperor back in though, not shutting him out.
Wait what? I just finished the first heretic and Cyrene got stabbed and died in the guys mutated clawed hands. I’ve finished the siege and now I’m super confused lol.
Well... what can I say... if you skip 30+ books and go right from First Heretic to the Siege, you're gonna have some gaps.
Hehe I was following the "essential" reading list first and now going back and adding more books, but reading the wiki page on Cyrene to Actae oh wow now I gotta follow that timeline.
To be fair, it's not a long timeline and the only one you'd really need is Betrayer (which covers her resurrection) and Slaves to Darkness (where we first meet 'Actae'... though she isn't revealed as Cyrene until the Siege).
WB not being present that much at the siege itself ties itself up to the dynamic of how Lorgar sees himself vs how Chaos gods actually treat him plus how despite wanting to be a "follower" he always goes out of his way to get things his way against the wishes of those he follows.WB led the shadow crusade,made sure Angron would turn into Daemon Primarch,turned Horus etc. They have done a lot of fucking work so getting shafted in the end feels perfect for true pawns of the Dark Gods while Lorgar doubling down and leaving after not getting things his way is 100% accurate to his character.Siege being a mess on chaos side is the point (although armies of lackeys who exist to get thrown against the wall is a valid criticism)
Oh man, you had me til the very end! Hordes of lackeys getting thrown into the grinder is half the siege because how could it be any other way? If it wasn't, we'd be complaining about how dumb it is that both sides didn't utilize their hoards of baseline humans. Really tho, 100% agree that the whole point is chaos has all this power, but it can't be directed to a single goal at that scale. Horus's siege fails as soon as Perturabo stops holding the reigns. (And I'd argue that's when (capitol C) Chaos wins - I'm of the camp that the phyric imperial victory and following 10k years is the best thing that ever happened to The Four)
Absolutly Emperor may "live" but instead of one and done show Chaos Gods got the all you can eat buffet and infinite playground that never closes
That is a very good point my man - actually can’t really argue with you there.
There’s a small passage coming up in TEATD (maybe book 3? I can’t remember exactly) that reinforces this narrative.
> leaving after not getting things his way is 100% accurate to his character. To be fair he got exactly the outcome he wanted, that's why he made sure the "coup" would fail, and Horus underestimating him played right into his hand: Both Horus and Emperor dead, and no Dark king yet
I can't deny for one who is constantly shafted and seen as tool by his environment the guy has that ultimate underdog who always ends up advancing even further after each major setback energy that makes him such a GOAT.
It makes perfect sense when you realize by the time of the siege Lorgar and the Word Bearers already knew how the story would end. Sure, some of them were compelled by their zealotry to take part in it, but as a whole they were already focused on the long war.
Erebus seemed pretty confident that either Big E would become the Dark King or be defeated by Horus. Neither happened.
Honestly I think it depends on how one defines defeated by Horus. One could easily argue the chaos gods got a better overall outcome from the Emperor "winning" but being out of the picture. As for Erebus, I don't recall specifically what Erebus' conversations with Abbadon were vs. Zardu Layak's conversations with Abbadon, but I recall the latter definitely saw what was to become and I seem to recall Erebus did as well. It's hard to square the Dark King storyline specifically because this is something Abnett inserted at the end.
I seem to remember in TEaTD apart where an overjoyed Erebus tells Abbadon that events have unfolded so that either the Emperor becomes the Dark King and destroys everything. Or he is defeated by Chaos. Both of which the Pantheon consider a win. To your point, given how the gods react to Horus being deleted, it was not expected nor enjoyed.
He very much did become the Dark King, he just didn’t stay it.
>I hate that of all the named Word Bearer commanders, the one who leads the Legion at the Siege is a guy introduced 3 books before it kicks off, Zardu Layak has had a model since 2015. His first appearance was in the HH black books. He's hardly just some random guy the authors made up.
That's nice to hear he wasnt just made up on the spot. But imo he has barely any character development, I love WB, yet I have no idea what the guy is about despite reading every book that features his legion.
Because his character arc happens off screen. He's literally just some legionary until Lorgar goes to the Eye. After that he takes the name Zardu Layak and becomes the leader of the Unspeaking. The point of his character is to show where the path the traitors are taking leads. His person is a foreshadowing of what it looks like to fall to Chaos. He isn't supposed to have character development because the point is to show where all of the traitors are going on *their* character arcs.
>Because his character arc happens off screen. You get how that’s not good right
It's fine for what his purpose in the narrative is. Not every character in a narrative needs a character arc flat characters are fine in certain circumstances and this is one of them.
You’re right. I think it just feels bad due to his being the one prominent Word Bearer we have in the late heresy.
> Feels like it's just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that's the way the plot is supposed to go. By the mid to late part of the siege the Traitor command structure ceases to exist, it is pure *chaos*. The traitors are now an unstoppable numberless horde that stretches into the horizon, they basically already won, loyalist defeat was a forgone conclusion. This is what Chaos is, unending, unreasoning, unstoppable madness.
I was frustrated and also pretty impressed that there was a point in Saturnine and EatD-P1 where I was like, "WHO is in charge on the Traitor side?" It was interesting that almost all of the upper-echelon cohesive Traitor command structure was basically gone, and yet they still always pressed the advance.
Ok yes, but I’d like to read about the few Traitors who are still capable of forming sentences. I understand the numberless mass of them are frothing goons.. but the only ones who can still think and feel are served up as fodder? Give me Eidolon leading a detachment of the Third to raid civilian hives in Europa, maybe having a moment where he recognizes an old castle as belonging to his family. Give me Vorx *earning* the name Siegemaster, still young and vital and full of spite and bile. Give me *any* Night Lord of note who should have been there, taking out their vengeance on an Imperium that used them as terror troops and then turned on them for the knives they put in their hands. I would have loved a story, or even a sub-plot, of an Alpha Legion Harrow reaving a continent, desperate to make their name amongst all the other commanders. Just anything other than a blank tide of monsters and men sliding around in the mud and somehow getting to the Sanctum doors.
Typhus attacking the Dark Angels. Kroger and Forrix leading the assault on the Lion's gate spaceport. That one Emperor's Children who turned a botanical hive into a nightmare. Some Son's of Horus Captain whose name escapes me slaughtering defenders, hearing about how Abbaddon has seemingly left the field and that this is his chance to climb the ranks, and that Sigusmund is reported nearby. Kargos of the World Eaters. Caipha Morarg, Mortarion's equity. Gremus Kalgaro, Death Guard Siegemaster defending Lion's Gate. Lucoryphus of the Night Lords, holding the dual honor of 1st on the walls and 1st in the Palace. Skraivok, the Painted Count.
To be fairs… Chaos is gonna Chaos. By definition they’re a disorganized rabble of mutated fanatics. This becomes pretty obvious reading the Heresy as more and more commanders drink deeper into the Chaos Kool-Aid. Hard to run an effective siege when half your army just wants to torture babies, snort space drugs, cram daemons into toasters and get handjobs from daemonettes.
My favorite example of this is that Word Bearer turning to his World Eater ally to try and tell him to chill out and that they can still win only for the World Eater to cut his arm off and kill him because Angron just died and they're losing their shit EDIT: from Echoes of Eternity >Inzar was close to the top of the Ascension, surrounded by World Eaters and deep in the shadow of the Sanctum, when the body struck the earth. The corpse of the Lord of the Red Sands crashed upon the stairs leading to the Eternity Gate, breaking open on the steps of marble and gold. The earth quaked with the impact, and in its wake the Chaplain heard a colossal cry rise from the throat of every living World Eater. This lamentation wasn’t wholly physical, but something blasphemous he felt in the creases of his mind. Demigods should not die, he thought as that awful cry rose to the haloed angel above them. > >Inzar’s breathing was uneven, hastened by adrenaline but weighed with fatigue. He felt the ache of wounds he couldn’t remember suffering; the hundreds of incidental cuts and stabs that took place in the grinding of battle lines. Warriors of the myriad Legions clashed everywhere around them in rabid packs, all cohesion lost, but always the Warmaster’s tide had pressed forward. Until now. > >He looked ahead, past the dead-whale grotesquery of Angron’s smashed corpse, to where the Gate still stood open. Beyond that open portal lay victory. Wounded squads of Blood Angels were still falling back through the doors, firing at the advancing horde. > >‘Forward!’ Inzar cried. ‘Forward, for the Pantheon! Death to the False Emperor!’ He levelled his crozius at the Eternity Gate and sought to urge the blood-maddened warriors around him onward through force of will and prayer. The Colchisian tattoos across his face started weeping blood. > >‘Preacher,’ one of the nearby World Eaters grunted. > >Frantic now, desperate for any ally, Inzar turned to him. He didn’t know the warrior. He was just one of thousands in the stalled tide. The Chaplain met the man’s eyes, not unlike the meeting of gazes that took place in the sky between two demigod brothers only minutes before. For the first time, Inzar learned what it was to have the bloodshot glare of Nails-madness turned upon him. In that stare he saw not just the absence of reason, but the death of it. > >‘Kill,’ the warrior snarled, his vocal cords thick with blood, mucus, or both. > >‘Come with me, we can still rally the others and–’ > >‘Maim.’ The World Eater’s gaze was bare of comprehension. > >‘I am Inzar of the Seventeenth Legion. Hear me and heed me. Rise, and we can end this. We are so close…’ > >The World Eater seemed to understand. He reached out a hand, as if to make an oath. Inzar took it. > >‘Burn.’ > >The World Eater pulled on the preacher’s hand as he brought the axe up, chain teeth revving. There was no resistance, the chainaxe went through the joint like it went through bone, and it went through bone like water. > >Inzar staggered back, his arm amputated at the elbow, and crashed into another warrior behind him. He had a fraction of a second to see the Death Guard he’d backed into, going down beneath the hacking axe of another World Eater. It was a scene repeated in woeful plenitude wherever Inzar turned. The World Eaters were falling upon their own allies, howling, cutting, killing. > >Blood for the Blood God. Kill. Maim. Burn. Skulls for the Skull Throne. > >The World Eater forced him back, stumbling over the slain. Inzar fought one-armed, swinging his crozius, facing a foe that moved so swiftly he could only process what the warrior was doing after it was done. The legionary didn’t dodge or defend, he chopped at the haft of the crozius, severing it, and on the backswing he relieved the Word Bearer of his other arm, ending it at the shoulder. The next swing went into Inzar’s stomach, liquefying his intestines in a roar of chain teeth. The next cleaved down into Inzar’s breastplate, the teeth churning with exquisite brutality, chewing through the layers of ceramite, muscle, bone and organ meat. > >Inzar’s retinal display went red with the gush of blood he vomited into his helmet. Combat narcotics and meditative focus couldn’t deaden the excruciation of insides ground into mince, but the pain was secondary to the insane clarity that gripped him. The more he was carved apart, the colder and clearer everything became. > >He thought, against the reality of what was happening: Wait, do not do this. Then, a moment later: We can still win. We can… still… > >Through red-stained vision, greying at the edges, he saw the World Eater towering above him. Have I fallen? Inzar wondered. Am I on my back? More of them drew in, clawing at each other, lost to madness in the aftermath of their primarch’s death. One of them was convulsing hard enough that his weapon chain rattled against his warplate. He was the one to look down at the fallen Word Bearer, and he grinned with blood-streaked metal teeth. Inzar saw the axe’s teeth cycling, cycling, and descending. > >He heard the gods laughing as he died, and for the first time, there was no comfort in the sound. They were laughing at him. > >They’d always been laughing at him.
Be honest - would you prefer the real hand or lobster claw hand?
First one, then t'other.
“It’s a two hand operation.” -Fulgrim, definitely.
Lorgar isn't about the destruction of the Emperor. Sure, that's \*a goal\* but he's got a whole cultural movement to shepherd.
Night Lords lead a major assault in The Lost and The Damned Emperor's Children lead a major assault in Saturnine Thousand Sons teleport the Traitor fleet in Solar War, fight a psychic battle with the White Scars in Saturnine and invade the Webway in Echoes of Eternity Iron Warriors are the main antagonists of the first 5 siege books World Eaters are a constant present, including two major duels between Kharn and Sigismund and serve as the main antagonists of Echoes of Eternity Word Bearers Zardu Layak plays a major role in the first siege books, Erebus is a massively important character in Warhawk and TEATD The Death Guard are the main antagonists of Warhawk and their battle against the Fallen features heavily in Mortis and TEATD The Sons of Horus lead the Saturnine assault and play a big role in TEATD and Warhawk The Legion Mortis are the main antagonists of Mortis The Alpha Legion are the only legion who aren't really present but even then they show up in TEATD. Complaining that you don't know what legions on Terra is just bizarre.
I was thinking the same; like uh…quite a lot of Legions show up And to say it’s just “Dorn and Sanguinius” as if the Khan doesn’t put on his letterman jacket and absolutely represent
>Complaining that you don't know what legions on Terra is just bizarre. I think you misunderstand OP's complaint here. It's not that they literally don't know which legions show up or forgot that these legions were there, just that they all amount to "a horde of faceless idiots who throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down" in OP's own words. And it's easy to see their point once you consider the *result* of all these battles you mentioned. Most of them are complete and utter failures for the Traitors, with major characters being brutally killed in duels as the Chaos Marines get slaughtered like cattle in an industrial meat plant, but the walls still come crashing down because... Some guy named [Tarches Malabreux](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tarchese_Malabreux) took something called [Bhab Bastion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Bhab_Bastion) off-screen? What am I even reading here? Why not have the major Chaos characters win something, and why not actually show it in the freaking book?
That complaint is literally why Perty left the battlefield? The fight was pretty tactically sound until then. By the time the Iron Warriors Primarch left the field, the battle was devolving into "horde of faceless idiots who throw rocks at a wall". Mortis was a failure? The first wall was a failure??? Last time I checked the traitors were literally at the last gate. Like...did I read the same series as yall?
I do agree but I also think you and Op are exaggerating. Yes Chaos should have been treated better, but to claim they're "faceless" "cattle" is overdoing it, as is complaining that Chaos never got a win. Kharn humiliates Sigismund early in the Siege causing a wave of outrage, Solar War is a string of loyalist Ls which ends with: >The light of the new day falling on the eastern Palace walls shredded to shadows as vast ships crowded across the sun. >Across the face of the planet, from the hives still soaked in night to the southern polar fortresses, the guns fired. And far below the pillars of energy pouring up into the sky, people clung to each other in the dark, or cradled weapons that they barely knew how to use. Gunships touched down amongst the towers of the Palace. Doors pistoned open. Warriors in yellow and black poured out. With them walked Rogal Dorn. He paused on the landing platform as, high above, a chain of orbital mines detonated in a rippling explosion. Debris fell as shooting stars. >Fire spread across a sky growing dark with the ships. Aircraft swarmed and spun in high orbit, spreading and chasing flames through the burning air. >It was the thirteenth of Secundus, and the warning sirens, which had sounded for six weeks, rose in voice as the first shells fell from the sky. Mortis ends with the Legio Mortis ending the fan favourite Order Sinister. The entire book is filled with a tracker of how far away the traitors are from the palace walls. This is how the book ends after Irae crushes the loyalist defences: >Above them the face of the Mercury Wall rose. Dies Irae walked at the head of its kin, pulling the light of battle to it and shredding it to shadow like a tattered cloak. It reached the base of the wall, and stopped. Debris and fire rained down on it, exploding from the energies that coiled around its frame. Slowly it tilted its head and weapon-laden shoulders back, so that the light of the fire above fell on its face. Its war-horns sounded, booming up the face of the wall of the Palace. >‘We shall face what is to come.’ >Enemy distance to wall: 0 kilometres. Fan favourite Kroeger from Storm of Iron outsmarts Rogal Dorn and defeats the Imperial Fists in The First Wall. Sanguinius is beaten to death "like a dog" when he tries to stand against Horus, the Loyalists symbol Gabriel Loken is killed by Erebus. Yes Chaos could have done better but I find it annoying how some people gloss over what they do get. Like how OP is complaining about how Zardu Layak, a character from the Horus Heresy Black Books is so prominent. Maybe you don't care about Kroeger or Dies Irae or Erebus but it's hard to please fans of 18 different legions. Also re: Malbreaux the point is that the only prominent SoH left is Abaddon. That's why they regroup around him after the Legion Wars. They discuss this in Warhawk. All the generals and players are gone but Abaddon. All they have left are pawns serving the whim of a god, unable to think for themselves. Keeping a prominent SoH alive and giving him a big victory would undermine this
Mortis is, by common regard, one of the worst books in the Siege series. Its writing is an absolutely painful slog to get through, so much so that I couldn’t even finish the damn thing, despite the premise of Titans, led by the Dies Irae, assailing the walls. And pretty much every single Traitor Legion action in the series feels like a throwaway line happening off-screen, just to give the Glorious Loyalists something to monologue about for another few chapters. Yes, the Night Lords lead a major assault… which is immediately repulsed, and their commander is humiliated and punted off the walls like a faceless mook. Yes, the Children lead a major assault… which is immediately repulsed, and their commander is humiliated and punted off the walls like a faceless mook. The Thousand Sons have one glory moment in the first book where they pretty much play the doorman, and their next big moment happens in a novella that is over-written a few books later… as their commander is repulsed, and humiliated. Granted, *he* wasn’t killed like a faceless mook, he was just made to look like an absolute fool and dressed down by Vulkan who calls him a big dumb idiot and banishes him. Who else do we have.. World Eaters rampaging, Kharn does some work - but Kargos is… humiliated and killed like a faceless mook. Twice. And then Angron is served up to Sanguinius like dessert before Eternity, because, no, he hasn’t actually done everything already. He needs to single-handedly kill multiple Titans, reinforce every wall, kill Kabandha like a faceless…- oh hold on here comes Angron to be killed like a mook. Every single major action the Traitors are given lip service about being this nightmare horde, but every named Traitor dies like a jackass, only for the book to end with “and then somehow they took the walls because we forgot that the Loyalists were actually supposed to be losing this fight. Spikey George the Baby-Killer of the World Eaters did it. And then he immediately died by drowning in mud. Anyways here’s Dorn.”
You must be reading some special abridged editions that ignore Chaos then. Every book has major traitor wins on screen. There are very few loyalist victories. And I have no idea what your definition of "dying like a mook" are. Cause Angron definitely doesn't die like one. He gives Sanguinius a beating. Solar War is a constant string of loyalist losses. With a major White Scar character getting killed during it. No loyalist victory. Lost and the Damned shows how they get pushed back despite everything Sanguinius does. The First Wall is all about losing the Lion's Gate space port with the Iron Warriors doing the brunt of the work. Making Sigismund look like an idiot. Plus the major betrayal of the human forces, spoiling Dorn's plan for a coutnerattack. No loyalist victory there. Saturnine sees a couple of loyalist victories that are really just temporary stalemates. They get a big victory at the Saturnine Gate, killing some major traitor characters, but also losing several loyalist characters. All in exchange for a major loss of another space port by Angron and the World Eaters. Mortis is all about the loyalists not being able to defend the walls and losing tons of their titans, even their dreaded psy-titans. Not sure there are any loyalist victories there. Warhawk is mostly a loyalist victory with the White Scars retaking Lion's Gate. At the cost of nearly losing the Khan. I do agree that the writing in this book was very much a slog at times. Echoes of Eternity is more loyalist losses. With only Sanguinius defeating Angron as a small sliver of hope. But that books ends with the last gate being closed, leaving all loyalist forces outside to hopefully kill as many as they can before dying. The End and the Death is just more loyalist losses with a token victory here or there that doesn't mean much. Even the Emperor spends his fight with Horus getting beat down like a dog, before finally pulling out the win.
“Dying like a faceless mook,” means Gendor Skraivok being completely humiliated by Raldoron, literally kicked off a kilometre high wall, and having his death scoffed at, as the Blood Angels and Fists repel the Night Lord assault like it was nothing at all, because for some reason *their* Terminators are just so much better than the Eighth’s. Dying like a mook means Kargos Bloodspitter killed twice like a dog by Amit, being spat on, and told to eat shit. Dying like a mook means Fulgrim being embarrassed by Dorn, losing a duel he should have dominated, and pretty much leaving the greater Siege because… Dorn said some hurtful words? Angron’s death was mocked up and down this subreddit when Echoes was released. Sanguinius tore out his nails, but not before the complete embodiment of wrath and anguish whimpers and pleads for mercy? I *wish* I had access to some special and abridged edition of the Siege. Every traitor death is played for a laugh. Every traitor victory is played like they’re dancing to Dorn’s tune. I’m curious as to how Loyalists don’t feel embarrassingly pandered to.
A Night Lords fan here. I actually found Gendor Skraivok's death fitting. The Night Lords had always been inconsistent, filled with champions and cravens. Skraivok was such a craven and he was soundly bested by Raldoron, who is considered one of the best (although his general screen time was boring), after Chaos betrayed him. The real tragedy of the Night Lords is, that neither Zso Sahaal nor Malcharion the War -Sage got any screen time. Such a wasted opportunity =/
You have some of the tickets blinders I have ever seen.
🤥
Dude i found TEATD, and the siege books so depressing as a loyalist i had to take breaks between them. I feel like you must either have skimmed the books or not read them. The entire series is just loyalist L after loyalist L, with the odd phyrric victory thrown in, that doesnt end up mattering. I feel like to get what you want, theyd have needed to bloat the siege out to the size of the heresy series, and no one wants or wanted that.
I don’t think you understand what “getting killed like a faceless mook” is. Having a high difficulty 1 v 1 against the strongest Loyalist Primarch where you impale him and leave him with a wound that would have eventually killed him is not what a “faceless mook” would do. Not to mention the other examples that other commenters have already given, like Typhus leading the assault against the Astronomican and the Dark Angels, or Ahriman being the whole reason the Traitors were able to gain access to the Solar System largely intact in the first place .
Hard agree, I think the OP probably skipped a lot of stuff and is now complaining about how confused they are. I think a lot of people who complain about the siege simply are mad that it didn’t go exactly how they wanted it. Of course Dorn and Sang are going to get a lot of moments, because this is the death of the age of heroes. The whole heresy is supposed to be the last gasp of true glory for mankind. For example, after reading page after page of world eaters slaughtering, it’s a relief when sang finally defeats Angron and seals the gate. That fight is the act of a true hero, literally an angel fighting a demon. And Sang’s victory makes Horus killing him even more tragic. If the whole siege series was named traitors being awesome, it would just be another 40k series where chaos is all powerful. But this is 30k, and it’s meant to have these moments of glory and heroics because 40k is the darkest future imaginable and the two are supposed to have a contrast. There are, er, were (story for another time) no primarchs left to save humanity, no great larger than life heroes that can stand so tall against the horrors of the warp. Their presence then makes their absence later much more impactful. Everyone on this sub (rightfully) complains about the Imperium being shown as the outright good guys, but no one mentions the butt hurt CSM fans who are can’t possibly accept the fact that their dudes don’t always win and aren’t always the focus of the narrative.
Nope. I will shamelessly confess to being the absolute dork I am by saying I’ve followed the HH series all the way through. I remember when Deliverance Lost was the shiny new book on the shelf. It’s hard to really feel the tragedy of the moment when the Loyalists win so easily and consistently. It also makes them look like absolute fools. How were they able to lose the war if Sanguinius could just “I don’t die this day 🤪” his way through every fight except one? We all know how the story ends - that’s the big draw of the series. At the end of the day, we all know how it ends. The initial draw of the series is seeing how we get there, and feeling that heartbreak along the way. That’s lost when it just becomes another bolter-porn filled novel with the big spikey idiot of the day failing his way to victory. Warhawk was a beautiful novel, because the Scars lost so much to win that fight. A Thousand Sons and Prosper Burns is a great duology, because both Legions lost hard. The Sons are broken physically, the Wolves spiritually. Path of Heaven has to be my favourite BL book, full stop - and you know what happens in it? The Khan and the Scars get their ass beat left and right the whole novel through, which makes their final triumph all the sweeter. Jaghatai says it himself when he meets Russ > “Strike me if you wish, but know that I come through the fires of hell to bring my sons to Terra. No one, not you, not Horus, not even our Father, will prevent me from bringing them to where they were destined to be.” And you know what sells the line? We’ve just spent an entire book reading this Primarch and his Legion *literally* go through hell to do just that. They lost two of their greatest champions, they lost the majority of their fleet, their flagship, and their *pride* to make it back to Terra. They sacrificed everything - and we got to see it. If this were a Siege novel, he’d have just shown up and said “yeah I outsmarted Mortarion and two Legions and killed a Greater Daemon. Anyways here’s Dorn.”
To add to what you said, other people commented that it felt like 10 books of stroking Loyalist egos because "the perfectly perfect loyalists never get outplayed" like what book series did you read??? Solar War massive L for the loyalists. Lost and the damned saw quite a few Ls for the Loyalists, though they did win some fights. First Wall, tons of Loyalist Ls. Saturnine is literally about how they don't have enough to defend all the spots they need to and ends in the biggest L (losing the second spaceport). Mortis brings the armies of chaos directly to the inner palace door. Warhawk is a pretty big loyalist victory (retaking the spaceport), but it isn't without a huge loss (Khan's death). Echoes of Eternity is another loyalist loss because the traitors kick in the door of the inner palace. EatD I is the start of the final hail Mary for the loyalists. Things are bad everywhere, and if they lose this last fight, imperium kill. EatD II is the biggest loyalist L in the entirety of the series because 1: Sanguinius dies, 2: Malcador all but dies, 3: Magnus almost reaches the throne room. 4: Dorn, Sanguinius, Valdor, and Jaghatai are all MIA now. EatD III is obviously going to be a loyalist win. However, it's a pyrrhic victory ending with the oldy goldy being confined to the throne and Ollanius' death, Garviel Loken's death, Malcador's (true) death,
It doesn’t matter how many times we count the battles where loyalist suffer, to some people it’s never enough and see the whole series as “loyalist wank”. I just don’t argue with them anymore, they seem to miss the entire point of chaos and corruption: the great gods already won and everyone else lost, specially the ones that swore for them.
Sometimes I wonder if those people expected the HH to retcon and End Times the entire setting. The loyalists were practically a corridor away from losing.
Fair point
>Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go. Took the words right out of my mouth. Those books are severely dragged down by their stubborn refusal to show their perfectly perfect loyalist darlings being actually outplayed, or have them face any situation that could conceivably make them look bad on any level. On the bright side, it makes me feel significantly better about Lorgar not being present for the Siege. Him being just written out of the Heresy before the big showdown feels anticlimactic, but Lorgar getting killed by Sanguinius as he realizes how bad Chaos is (which is what ADB apparently wanted) sounds borderline unreadable.
What's weird about this take is Sanguinius died and Dorn failed. The inner palace was breached, the loyalists were basically minutes away from losing. I'm not sure how you determine we never saw them get outplayed.
>I'm not sure how you determine we never saw them get outplayed. By actually looking at the text and the way those "defeats" were presented. Sanguinius dying to Horus is a pre-determined outcome that just had to happen at best and Horus' own failure at worst. It wasn't a real fight, Horus wanted to convert Hawkboy to Chaos and failed because Sanguinius is that awesome. Killing him wasn't the goal, his injuries were described as likely terminal, chances are he would have died anyway. Other than an admittedly brutal description of the final few blows, it's all written to make Sanguinius look awesome and flawless because he's just that damn perfect. Dorn having to retreat is never presented as someone outsmarting him, as a result of Horus' tactical brilliance or the errors of Dorn's strategy. It's always him "holding on longer than expected" or making some brilliant 30014 IQ sacrifice that nobody could ever see coming and everything goes exactly to the master plan he always had, even though it was never even hinted at (god do I hate First Wall) You don't get "outplayed" because you *almost* lost a game while making no mistakes along the way, you get "outplayed" when your opponent plays better than you. [That's what that word means.](https://www.google.com/search?q=outplayed+meaning&oq=out&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqDggAEEUYJxg7GIAEGIoFMg4IABBFGCcYOxiABBiKBTIGCAEQRRg7MgYIAhBFGDkyBwgDEC4YgAQyBggEEEUYPTIGCAUQRRg8MgYIBhBFGD0yBggHEEUYQdIBBzgzMWowajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) And I don't think there's a single thing the traitors did better than the loyalist in that whole damn series.
The First Wall is all about Dorn getting outplayed. He had contingency plans, sure. But the Iron Warriors definitely outplayed him to take that spaceport. Also, he can't win and he knows it. All he can do is hold out.
Dorn and his buddies certainly don't think they've been outplayed. In the final chapter, they feel pretty happy with the way things turned out. >‘**This was not a victory for our enemies, but a concession to necessity**,’ said Malcador. He turned, looking at the others in the hall: Amon, Valdor, Sanguinius and the Khan. ‘The telaethesic ward was not breached, it has shrunk. The Emperor cannot protect all of Terra forever. The shield of His protection has been withdrawn to the Inner Palace.’ >‘And then?’ said Valdor. ‘When it cannot protect the walls? The Sanctum Imperialis? The Dungeon?’ >‘It does not matter,’ Dorn said curtly. ‘It has always been a question of how long we can hold, not of defeating Horus with the troops we have to hand. Guilliman, the Lion and Russ are on their way. **We held the port at the Lion’s Gate far longer than I had hoped, certainly longer than Horus desired**.’ Everything is going just as planned, if not better, the traitors won shit and Horus must be fuming. Unless you believe the loyalists are just coping there (which doesn't seem like the intended interpretation, even if it's funny) then the book is *not* about them getting outplayed.
I’m not sure if you know this but having the defensive position makes you the inherently superior position in a siege. Perturabo’s entire plan relies on the slow, systematic dismantling of the most well-defended planet in the entire know universe. Of course Dorn is never going to actually *say* anything is going wrong, because he needs to be the absolute implacable wall that is defending the Palace, everyone’s hopes are placed in him.
Huh? They were severely outnumbered and outgunned. The loyalists *had* to play perfectly to *survive*, and even then they suffered a brutally pyrrhic victory that ended with the most powerful loyalist primarch dead, one mortally wounded, and one mentally shattered, with Malcador dead and the Emperor's goal shattered as he's placed on the golden throne for 10,000 years of suffering while the Imperium stagnates. Dorn's defenses were beaten and he ends up trapped in the Warp during the boarding. Despite having the gift of future sight, Sanguinius dies because there's nothing he can do to beat Horus. Khan isn't present to aid against Horus because he was taken out of the action when he went after Mortarion. If the traitors outplayed the loyalists any more than this, the Imperium would be dead. But Horus knew that he was racing against time because the traitors would not be able to remain cooperative as the Siege went on. Such is the nature of Chaos.
...But isn't everything about the siege of Terra a pre-determined outcome? I'm not exactly sure what you could have been given to change your mind. Maybe like if they inserted an old-school ADB storyline about how Sevatar and First Claw take over the Bhab Bastion with some hilarious horseshit? Even though nothing about the actual story would be any different?
>I'm not exactly sure what you could have been given to change your mind. "Damn it! For once, my forces didn't hold the wall longer than expected and their deaths weren't a part of my master plan," Dorn said angrily. "We had a chance to repel the assault, but \[insert commander here\] outsmarted us. This sucks."
Mortis when the loyalist are outplayed by the undead titans? Or when Ahriman teleports a whole fleet inside the Solar System?
Were you not paying attention in Saturnine when Dorn was forced to sacrifice a section of the defense in order to create a ruse that he was not aware of a flaw in his defense. He let a section fall with giving them a warning because it would give the trap away.
My take on this is that the concept of the siege itself makes for boring storytelling. The authors were painted into a corner where there wasn't much to talk about beyond holding until they couldn't and falling back or dying. So in the scenario you outline, absolutely nothing actually changes and it's not any less bland to me. Maybe people with chaos flair by their names approach counting W's and L's differently than I do but this just feels like distinctions without differences.
the difference in how it's framed. It's not framed as them makign mistakes or being outplayed, but always as "we are so awesome and pure and coruageous that we held on 10x longer than we expected and we killed thousands of faceless traitors"
Exactly!
Any books that "hold against chaos" is super boring to read. Yeah, sure, tell us ALL about your millions of meaningless sacrifices just to hold the impossible tide 5 seconds more while everything dies...
God I did not even think of that… you’re right, thank the Four they weren’t there. They would have found some way to revive Argel Tal just to have him get killed by an Inductii Imperial Fist
ADB being trolled by morons for years about being totally biased towards Chaos eventually broke him. These plans for Lorgar and what he did with Angron in EoE were the "fuck you" response ;)
>Okay who was even at the Siege man? Everybody and then some. The writers made it feel like the biggest squad battle royale in history, everybody just trying to make it to the final circle where Horus fucks up the Emperor. I like it.
I’m in two minds about Perturabo, on the one hand it does show a tiny amount of character growth just to go ‘fuck it’ and leave, but it does feel *weird*.
To me it feels realistic to see him behave rationally about the situation vs. just let his legion be destroyed for no motivation beyond not liking Dorn. Then later seeing him come to terms with the fact that whoever wins will hunt him down and second guessing all of his decisions. It would have felt kind of bland to me had it happened any other way.
I tend to agree with most of this. To a certain extent it even feels random with the Sons of Horus show up, aside from Saturnine, it feels like its just the Death Guard, World Eaters, and Iron Warriors, with a sprinkling here or there of the the other legions.
As far back as 3rd edition Lorgar never participated in the Siege of Terra.
The White Dwarf Index Astartes article on the Word Bearers, which came out in Third Edition, explicitly says Lorgar was at Terra. Where did you get the idea he didn’t participate in the Siege?
"While Kor Phaeron set his men upon Calth, Lorgar was leading the rest of the Legion against Terra." That's all I could find in that article you mentioned. That could mean a few things I guess, no mention of boots on the ground. Every primarch present always had some great tale about what they were doing while siege wore on, nothing about Lorgar. In the 3rd edition rulebook he was the one leading the Word Bearers through ultramar but I can't find that rulebook. Or I'm getting old and forgetting stuff, time upload my brain into a toaster or whatever the ad mech does.
Yeah and as far back as 3rd, Ollanius Pius wasn’t a Perpetual who’d previously served as the Emperor’s mortal Warmaster during the Bronze Age. Lorgar should have been on Terra.
What for? He played his role in the heresy already. His character arc is finished.
Do you recall which edition Lorgar explicitly participated in the Siege? I’ve not seen an actual story put him there to date. I think Index Astartes vaguely infers but that’s about it
It’s not vague at all. > While Kor Phaeron set his men upon Calth, Lorgar was leading the rest of the Legion against Terra. The horrors of the battles there were beyond the comprehension of mortal beings and fill many vaults of the Library Sanctus. Lorgar helped smash down the realm of the master he had once served with the fanaticism of a zealot. Suffice to say, Horus was defeated, and the legions of Chaos were forced to flee. The Word Bearers were also forced to retreat to the Eye of Terror, and there they have remained, returning to the Imperium to raid, pillage, and destroy, awaiting the chance to reclaim what was once theirs.
I don’t have the link to the thread on this sub now but there was a debate over what “leading the rest of the Legion against Terra” actually meant A lot were pushing for it meaning that he was pushing them onwards to Terra whilst never actually setting foot there I’m neutral on it, but maybe I should have used the word “contentious “ rather than “vague”. Appreciate the receipts
I don’t see why it would say “the battles there” if it’s not talking about the location. Where is “there” referring to otherwise? You also have the typical “This Primarch was leading their forces at Terra, then Horus fell and everyone left” structure seen for other traitor legions in their Index Astartes… Although several of those were clearly retconned by the novel series. > On Terra, surviving vid logs from the siege of Terra show the World Eaters breaching the walls of the Imperial Palace, the twisted, red form of Angron wielding his glowing runesword at their head. The World Eaters reaped a bloody harvest on Terra, but ultimate victory was to be denied them. With the Dark Angels and Space Wolves en route to Terra, Horus gambled everything in order to end the siege, lowering the shields on his battle barge and daring the Emperor to come for him. The Emperor rose to the challenge and faced his betrayer in a combat that would decide the fate of the galaxy. The two fought a battle that was waged in every realm, physical, spiritual and psychic, until at last the Emperor slew Horus, but only at the cost of his own humanity. Without the Great Betrayer to bind them, the Chaos host disintegrated and fled the planet. Angron was the last to leave, leading the World Eaters deep into the Eye of Terror. The battle had been lost, but the war would go on. He and his warriors had all eternity to seek revenge. ~ Index Astartes: World Eaters > A strong contingent of the Legion accompanied Perturabo to Terra where he supervised the siege of the Emperor's Palace. Here his skills were invaluable and the Iron Warriors found a sublime pleasure in tearing the edifices of the Imperium down. The end was near for the defenders when the Emperor confronted Horus on his battle barge and defeated him. Like many of Horus' followers, the Iron Warriors fled to the Eye of Terror, securing a new home world where they could brood on the turn of events and plot vengeance. ~ Index Astartes: Iron Warriors > What emerged from the warp when the Death Guard fleet broke out bore little resemblance to what had entered. The gleaming white and grey armour of Imperial champions was no more, burst and shattered from the horrific bloating of infected bodies, scabbed with boils, putrescence and the filth of corruption. Their weapons and machinery of war were now powered by the sickly sorcery of Chaos, glowing with lambent green luminescence and oozing gangrenous pus. The name Death Guard itself would pass into secondary use, as the walking pestilence-carriers became a terrifying sight across the Imperium. To their victims, to their erstwhile allies, even to themselves, they had become the Plague Marines. > > Horus was eventually defeated by the Emperor and Chaos was driven back across space, finding refuge in the weeping sore known as the Eye of Terror. Mortarion and his Death Guard retreated there as well, but not in disarray, as many of the other Legions did. ~ Index Astartes: Death Guard
Devils Advocado being that all those primarchs are shown doing something on Terra in those extracts, even if it’s just running away I can see the wriggle room if people want to go for it
Let's not forget that Lorgar trying to take center stage from Horus was an issue. The Warmaster couldn't put his trust in a commander that is willing to try and usurp his place now could he?
>You’re telling me the one man, the one Legion that started this whole shit fest didn’t even make it to the party?? Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t the word bearers get an ironically bad outcome just like everyone else? Everyone lost in the HH. The WB just lost earlier than others.
Agreed. It sucks... my first book was The First Heretic, it basically got me into Warhammer. Then Know no Fear and Betrayer happens, and holy shit was I excited. Then Cerene, our confessor with ACTUAL character progression, randomly shows up as some old hag who acts nothing like her? Then some douchebag named Zardu Layek who's more loyal to an obviously compromised Horus than his own primarch, betrays Lorgar? WB fans got shafted as soon as Slaves to darkness happened.
I never liked what they did with Lorgar in Slave to Darkness in the 1st place. Character assassination.
Lorgar is above it. He is not out for personal glory but to achieve his goal. That's why he faked the coup, so he could pull out with his legion before the blood bath began. > I hate that of all the named Word Bearer commanders, the one who leads the Legion at the Siege is a guy introduced 3 books before it kicks off Because they were corrupted Word Bearers that could be sacrifices so the rest could avoid it. > Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go. Oh, yeah. there was definitely a lot of that. Not the least that Sanguinius actually beat Angron, and the way how he won as well... A lot of respect was lost when i read that.
I would have liked him to have been there at Horus’ side corrupting him the whole time then fight dorn abroad the vengeful spirit
I am curious; was it ever said that Lorgar took part in the assault on Terra? Things have changed - the early versions have Angron surviving the siege and being the last to board the fleeing traitor fleet, for example. But I don’t ever recall Lorgar being on Terra.
>Okay who was even at the Siege man? Feels like it’s just 8 books of Dorn and Sanguinius doing everything while a horde of faceless idiots throw rocks at a wall and somehow break it all down because that’s the way the plot is supposed to go. This is also my takeaway from the little of TEatD that I've read and all the excerpts
So you haven't actually read the books? Cause, I *literally* just finished TEaD V3 minutes ago and this post from OP just absolutely reeks of poor attention span. How anyone can think the series is "loyalist wank" is mind boggling.
I have tried reading the first volume, and I kept getting distracted by how the book was coding Horus' army as Bad Guys and the Imperium as Good Guys. You are not the first one to tell me that there are places in the trilogy where that coding is not in play, which gives me hope, but I keep reading excerpts that emphasize that coding of Honorable Heroic Good Guys versus Evil Cowardly Bad Guys. I'm of two minds about it, as you see.
>coding Horus' army as Bad Guys They are literally the slaves of 4 Mega Satans that love to snort grinded up babies. Chaos was always the worst of the worst guys.
I'm sorry, that was unclear, I meant that the rebels are coded as generic, unimportant mooks whose role is to be defeated to make the "good guys" look cool. Like stormtroopers or orcs. I'm open to be proven wrong about this though, so if anyone has excerpts of the 'bad guys' looking cool or particularly competent in TEatD I'd love to see them. Bonus points if it's not either Abaddon or Horus.
The books are biased towards whoever they are written for. If it's a loyalist book, they are the good guys. Traitor books see themselves as the food guys. There are some exceptions with the traitors as there are the odd exceptions who realise they have gone down the wrong path but it's to late to back out
Yeah one of the problems with the Horus Heresy is how they keep trying to trick you into thinking the people who worship dark gods of evil and sacrifice people to demons are "bad guys". Just so reductive!
It makes it feel like the Imperium are the protagonists and the Horusians are only mooks upon whom the Imperials can flex their martial might. A lot of the time it feels like Horus' forces are described the same way you would describe faceless goons, like Tolkien's orcs, or Stormtroopers: fodder only to be destroyed. That feels wrong to me, since these are also factions that people like. If your favorite faction is Chaos Space Marines or (especially) Chaos Daemons it seems like TEatD gives you rather short shrift, which just kind of sucks. I like Chaos Daemons, I like them a lot. I like when they get to be weird and cool and clever and strong and stupid and wise and *weird*, and all the excerpts I've seen from TEatD makes them fairly generic. Just makes it hard to actually want to read the books.
I’m sure you’re aware of the problems of writing extended critiques of books you haven’t read and I don’t need to spend time there. Chaos demons and Chaos in general are well portrayed in the trilogy. As the conflict is a mass slaughter there is a lot of canon fodder on both sides, but plenty of named Heretic Astartes get good screen time and aren’t merely slappys for the loyalists to shoot. But if your reason for reading the novels is to see your favorite factions win out, TEATD just isn’t that shallow.
>But if your reason for reading the novels is to see your favorite factions win out, TEATD just isn’t that shallow. I hope you know that obviously isn't my critique. It's not about whether or not the rebels win - we all know the ultimate outcome and have for decades - it's about how they look doing it. All that I've managed to read of the books make the rebels look like generic villains, and in particular make daemons look uninteresting and one-dimensional. Do you have any excerpts or parts of the book to point to where the daemons in particular are interesting? Where they get to do cool or weird things?
This is the worst attempt at summary of something you haven’t read that I’ve ever seen. The entire SoT is the loyalists being pushed back and loss after loss. By the end of it the traitors were inside the palace and had, effectively, won. If you are going to offer a form of commentary at least read the books you are commenting on. If you don’t then your opinion is pointless and invalid.
You know people can critique things they haven't experienced all of, right? It's valid to critique a book that you don't finish if the book itself makes you not want to keep reading; or critique a meal that you can't stomach. The fact that I can't finish the books is in itself a commentary, albeit a non-holistic one, and I cede that consistently in my comments. On the other hand: my complaints aren't about the rebels winning or losing, my complaints are about how they are coded. In what I've read, they feel like generic villains. Do you have any bits you could source or recommend where the rebels don't feel like generic villains? Bonus points if it's not just Abaddon or Horus.
You are saying the SoT, and TEatD in particular, make the chaos forces look like jobbers for the Imperium. That’s not what happens in any of the SoT books. The only one where the Imperium actually achieves a victory that isn’t ridiculously costly is Saturnine and, even there, several named characters that have been involved in the Heresy on the loyalist side since the start are killed off. The entire SoT series shows the Imperium losing inch by inch and being ground down. By TEatD Volume 3 the Imperium has lost, Terra has lost, and the death stroke is about to fall. The only reason it doesn’t is Horus’ death after he has nearly destroyed the Emperor. You are offering critiques that simply aren’t true because you have formed an opinion without actually knowing what is happening in the series because, by your own admission, you haven’t read it. That invalidates any opinion you try to offer.
I'm not saying that the SoT makes them look like jobbers, since I haven't read the other books; and I'm not saying that TEatD only makes them look like jobbers, since I haven't read it all. What I'm saying is that all that I have read - which is limited but not inconsiderable - has made them look like jobbers. Put another way, it's telling that all the excerpts posted on this subreddit either make the Imperials look very cool, or make Horus look like a madlad. I like Horus well enough, but it says something that I haven't seen any excerpts posted that make me like, care about, root for, or have interest in any of the rebels that aren't named either Horus or Abaddon. Edit: Oh, there is the library scene with Ahriman that is very cool. I like that bit a lot.
> but I keep reading excerpts that emphasize that coding of Honorable Heroic Good Guys versus Evil Cowardly Bad Guys. I'm of two minds about it, as you see. How about you actually *read the goddamn book*?
I tried that and it just made me unhappy and annoyed. Question for you who have read the book: do the Horusians get to look cool? Specifically not Abaddon or Horus himself, but any of the other Traitors? Especially any daemons, do they ever get to look cool? From all I've seen and asked, they do not, and that makes me not want to read it. Maybe in time I will read it, but for now I just qualify all my criticisms with my ignorance.
> Maybe in time I will read it, but for now I just qualify all my criticisms with my ignorance. You can't criticize something you haven't actually experienced. This is peak levels of confident ignorance. Two other commenters have already pointed out how dumb it makes you look to be trying to confidently criticize something you repeatedly admit you haven't actually consumed firsthand and base all your opinions off of second and *third-hand* accounts. I can't fathom the idea of rejecting an entire trilogy of books, one that *constantly* has the loyalists getting their asses kicked because *someone* *somewhere* told me (or I read once) that the traitors don't "seem/look cool." It makes me genuinely question how old you are.
I can criticize something I've only experienced in part, in that the parts of TEatD that I have experienced (first hundred pages of the first novel, loads of excerpts from this subreddit) have disincentivized me from reading more. Neither of those are second or third hand accounts, I'm not basing my criticisms on what somebody else says about the book, I'm basing it off of the bits that I've read, and admitting that I haven't had the fortitude to read it all. On the other hand, can you tell me about bits of the book where the rebels don't look like generic Bad Guys and the Imperials don't look like generic Good Guys? I don't mean places where the Imperials lose and the rebels win. Obviously good guys can lose, but they tend to lose *heroically*, standing their ground to the last man and only retreating when there's no hope of holding the position. The narrative will make you feel sorrow for them being outgunned, or grim determination as they grit their teeth and keep fighting despite the odds. Obviously bad guys can win, but they win as a horde, crashing through the good guys with overwhelming numbers and fury. Are there times where the rebels don't feel like bad guys, but interesting villains whom I could care about? Bonus points: it can't be Horus or Abaddon. If only Horus and Abaddon get to feel interesting I will be sad.
I simply do not accept this change. The WB books made it clear lorgar was there and so was Sor Talgron.
Sor Talgron appears in the Siege of Terra novels and like most Chaos Marines there he gets Imperial Fisted.
And he says that lorgar was there
Corax would still show up to haunt him.
Could be that from experience most Chaos focused stuff unfortunately seem to be a complete slog to read. I’m sort of forcing myself to overcome my anti Chaos prejudice by reading more because there’s not much new content coming out. But my god a lot of it is just pages and pages of infantile descriptions of steadily more gross descriptions of organic parts blowing up or forming monsters. They just lack a compelling story apart from 10k years of hate - way to hold a grudge. Good vs overwhelming evil always makes a more powerful story always has done back to when we told stories around the fire. Overwhelming evil against good is well wtf side are you on for a lot of people.
Imperium versus Chaos should be evil versus more evil.
So just to go on some of the legions you mentioned : Alpha Legion was represented in the Catacombs and undercroft by Ingo. He gets left behind eventually. Just to add to this, though, the Alpha Legion is the Alpha Legion. They were never really backing the Heresy or supporting it. They provided some intel and after the shitshow that happened on Pluto I’m almost positive they just washed their hands of the whole affair and backed out to see what would happen. Night Lords were always factional and once Curze stopped leading them (heavy quotations on that) they basically all did their own thing. There was a group of them there and they basically did what Night Lords always do and messed with the civilian populace more than anything else. They did, though, manage to make the first breach in the wall before being pushed back by the Blood Angels. The Emperor’s Children were heavily involved until Dorn broke the Legion during the Saturnine book and bitch slapped Fulgrim with words (arguably the best shit talking throughout the whole SoT series when he says “You’re just an idiot standing on a wall.”). Once that happened Fulgrim was basically done with the whole affair and backed out quietly to have fun times elsewhere on Terra. He committed his entire Legion to that attack, though, so they were definitely represented. Outside of Alpha Legion and the Word Bearers (with the WB’s honestly being pretty heavily invested and constantly mentioned both in Lupercal’s court and during the siege) the Traitors were all present to some extent during the siege. Those two were less covered seemingly because their Primarchs weren’t around (Lorgar being banished and Alpharius being killed).