Fallen Angels

[Spaniard]

Brothers, I have just finished reading the fallen angels novel. I am left disappointing with the ending. What book can i read next to ease my mind of what happens next, is there anything about the battle for Caliban and the dual between Luther and Jonson besides the dark angels codex? 

[facmanpob]

Basically, you are now into the land of Horus Heresy short stories (which are actually much. much better than the HH Dark Angels novels).

 

Try:

 

Call of the Lion (Tales of Heresy) - Gav Thorpe

Savage Weapons (Age of Darkness anthology) - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The Lion (The Primarchs anthology) - Gav Thorpe

Prince of Crows (Shadows of Treachery anthology) - Aaron Dembski-Bowden ...... mainly Night Lords but the DA do make an appearance

 

As for the battle between Luther and Jonson and the fall of Caliban .... the Heresy novels haven't reached that point in the story yet.

[Rizara]

I have to agree its ending sort of sucks and just leaves you asking...what next.

 

However, as you read the codex, it says that after the battle of Diamat, Jonson got word that something was wrong on caliban, he returned to the homeworld and they were attacked.  He teleported downt to the rock, which by the way is shielded from heavy bombardment.  While he was their, he knew where luthor would be, probably inthe grandmasters room, or in the vaulted library.  The fleet bombarded the rest of caliban so heavily that its structure fell apart.  Remember it was tainted, so the planets core was already weakened by chaos, plus the imperium pretty much rushed to dig out minerals, so they were diging pretty deep and in a hurry, not your average stip mining.  Plus all those bombardment cannons from battle barges and strike cruisers, those are pretty nasty.  Chaos eventually opened a warp rift as the planet exploded and sucked in most of the peices of the planet, however the rock itself was spared.  It was shielded, so the shield permeated the mountain that it was build on which is why their is that huge chunk of a planet left to become the floating fortress of the dark angels.

 

My only guess is he got the news after he returned to the shield worlds where the rest of the legion was at, and after the shield world battles, he headed back home to deal with caliban.   Luther must have finished digging deeper into the forbidden knowledge, and united calibans defenses, as they wanted to be separate from the imperium.  Not completely fallen to chaos, but come on, he did want to control the powers that be, so that is falling to chaos, even if you aren't going willing, he fell blindly. 

 

still the book leaves you empty.  I just finished reading both descent of angels and fallen angels ove rthe past week and a half, couldn't put them down.   Now I think I will take a break before I pick up the short stories in primarch.  I will have to look into those other ones as well.

[facmanpob]

Just a quick note re the last post:

 

the Diamat battles occurred very early on in the Heresy, around the time of the Istvaan V Drop Site Massacre. The subsequent Thramas campaign against the Night Lords took at least 3 years to prosecute, and at some time after that the Dark Angels began to make their way back to Terra. Only after this point (and iirc after Horus had attacked Terra) did the Legion return to Caliban, so there is a big old gap of time for Luther to make his pacts with the Dark Powers.

[Haranin]

You missed the five years between the end of the Thramas Crusade, the DA's march on Terra and later return to Caliban.

 

One of the short stories has the lion throw Caliban under the bus, when he tells a watcher he knows Caliban has problems, but he needs to deal with the larger ones in the Empire first... even if the legion is destroyed.

[Brother Immolator]

I found angels of darkness to be one of the best BL novels. The writer literally plays with the reader.

 

Guys I read decent of angels recently, and I have not yet the rest but...As far as I understood the watchers were on Caliban for ages but there was nothing to implicate them to the order. Does anybody know how they got interconnected to the Legion?

[Bryan Blaire]

Most likely el'Johnson himself, Brother Immolator. Aside from the scene with Zahariel, the only other place I recall seeing them in the HH books is accompanying the Lion.

[lothlorienmoon]

The ending is a little bit of an odd one, and my gaming crew have been bouncing ideas about what happens after for a few weeks now. We have a few ideas/theories that are related to HH stuff regarding Dark Angels, and Watchers in general:

 

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed. Remember, he was a thinker, planner, but not a people person. He survived on a Chaos tainted death world, alone. Also, he wasn't an idealist in the same sense as Luther was. From a literary stand point the differences between Luther and the Lion are echoed in Zahariel and his cousin. Zahariel does his duty, just as the Lion does. He does what is needed for order to survive. The Lion didn't think of Chaos being evil in his choice to side with the Emperor, but rather who would bring order to the chaos of the Imperium.

 

(2) Caliban is chaos-tainted. Lord Cypher, being a Knight of Lupus, knows some theories and ideas about sorcery and tapping into the Warp for power, but like the rest of mankind, isn't clued into the Chaos gods as evil entities. Like Magnus, Luther saw a source of power to utilize to save his world. If the word of the warp taint were to spread from Caliban, his homeworld was at risk for destruction. Even if they didn't understand the reasoning, Luther knew that other planets were destroyed for any number of problems. Obvious warp entites would be a problem to the Imperium. Grasping at straws, he turned to a method that he though would save his planted. Ignorant of the cost, he is seduced by Chaos that way, eating at the pain he felt from being second best.

 

(3) As for the Watchers, I have long held that they are not Xenos creatures. Remember, the xenos must be purged. If that were the case, the Dark Angels consort with xenos and are tainted for that reason. Even in the HH stuff, the xenos is to be purged. I've always thought of them to be the positive side of the Warp. If strong negative emotions feed "bad" Chaos gods, then strong positive emotions must give birth to postive warp beings. The Watchers are just one manifestation of beings, perhaps representing a sense of duty or honor, as they were bound to try and contain an evil they couldn't defeat, but stood against any how. A being of duty/honor.

[facmanpob]

The ending is a little bit of an odd one, and my gaming crew have been bouncing ideas about what happens after for a few weeks now. We have a few ideas/theories that are related to HH stuff regarding Dark Angels, and Watchers in general:

 

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed.

This point is addressed in several of the short stories from the later Heresy anthologies, most notably The Lion in The Primarchs. In short, Jonson is fervently loyal to the Emperor, but can't extract his Legion from Thramas due to the activity of the Night Lords. There is no fence-sitting in the newer fluff. :)

[elphilo]

The ending is a little bit of an odd one, and my gaming crew have been bouncing ideas about what happens after for a few weeks now. We have a few ideas/theories that are related to HH stuff regarding Dark Angels, and Watchers in general:

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed.

This point is addressed in several of the short stories from the later Heresy anthologies, most notably The Lion in The Primarchs. In short, Jonson is fervently loyal to the Emperor, but can't extract his Legion from Thramas due to the activity of the Night Lords. There is no fence-sitting in the newer fluff.

This. I love Gav Thorpe's writing most of the time, but that one sentence has sparked a flame that will never die out :(

[Brother Immolator]

1)Dont make the mistake Astelan did. It has been confirmed many times (although that is a short of a spoiler) that the speculation of Astelan for the Lion is based on Astelans lunacy and his hatred for the Lion. Not due to any conflicting Interests. Plus it is confirmed that the delay was both engineered in part due to chaos / the Warmasters(due to warp storms and the rebellions inbetween and the possition of the DA at the time), and out of the Lions hands. Also dont forget that the DA were accompanied with SW also. Do we account Russ as been a pragmatist too?

 

2)Agreed on everything. Though as I read in decent of angels Luther almost let the Lion die due to his jealusy. If it wasnt for Zahariel he most certainly would be dead now. My personal belief is that his jealusy would eventualy take the best of him and turn, chaos found that weak point and mignified it ten fold.

 

3)Again from decent the watcher speaking to Zahariel named the watchers as a race bent on combating the evils of the warp.

Now whether its a xenos race, a warp race (they exist its not all daemons in there) or something else we know not. The only things I know that are anathema to the warp are the C'tan but i doubt it has to do anything with that.

 

Just some food for thought brother :)

[facmanpob]

The ending is a little bit of an odd one, and my gaming crew have been bouncing ideas about what happens after for a few weeks now. We have a few ideas/theories that are related to HH stuff regarding Dark Angels, and Watchers in general:

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed.

This point is addressed in several of the short stories from the later Heresy anthologies, most notably The Lion in The Primarchs. In short, Jonson is fervently loyal to the Emperor, but can't extract his Legion from Thramas due to the activity of the Night Lords. There is no fence-sitting in the newer fluff.

This. I love Gav Thorpe's writing most of the time, but that one sentence has sparked a flame that will never die out

Yep, it has, even though Gav Thorpe himself has said that Astelan is an "unreliable narrator" in the literary sense, and nothing he says should be taken as face value! Still, some people will never be convinced :)

[Phoebus]

My thoughts/theories...

 

I imagine that, sometime during the Crusade on Caliban, the Lion realized there was a connection between the Beasts and Caliban itself... and that the Knights of Lupus had some knowledge on the matter.  Following the siege of Sangrula, the Lion secured its libraries and made a Lupus survivor the new Lord Cypher - the intent being to have a trusted lieutenant who could assist him with studying the secret lore of Caliban.

 

The Emperor arrived very soon after the destruction of the Knights of Lupus, though, and so the Lion never really had a chance to study the libraries of the destroyed order.  This was probably a good thing, since they were full of sorcerous material (as seen in 'Fallen Angels') and probably would have led to his corruption.  With the revelation of a galactic war, the reconquest of humanity, etc., Caliban in all likelihood wasn't the Lion's top priority anymore.

 

During the events of Sarosh, the Lion figured out that Luther almost allowed him to be assassinated - and that Zahariel lied to him about it.  The Lion couldn't kill Luther, as the two had once been like brothers.  He couldn't trust him anymore, though, and so he sent him home.  The story about improving their recruiting efforts was just a story so that the morale of the Legion wouldn't drop.

 

Later, as the situation in Caliban deteriorated, I think Cypher stepped up and presented his knowledge to Luther as a means to combat the evil infecting their homeworld.  Unfortunately, Luther didn't have the strength of will to resist corruption and fell to Chaos.

 

The Watchers in the Dark are, in my humble opinion, part of the Cabal shown in 'Legion'.  They didn't interact with the Lion at first because, like the Cabal mentions to Alpharius, they didn't trust the older Legions.  I'm going to guess that, by the events of 'The Lion' (where we see them attending to the Lion), the Watchers had realized that Alpharius and Omegon were no longer working together.  That meant they had to start looking at alternatives.  In their eyes, I think the Lion was the right combination of pragmatic and committed to fight the forces of Chaos.  By pragmatic, I mean he was willing to work with xenos to achieve his aims - much like Fulgrim (and the Council of Terra) didn't think extermination was the only solution for all xenos.

 

The question that's left in my mind is whether the Lion realized that Luther had completely turned before he returned to Caliban.  

[Azoriel]

One glaring problem with the Watchers in the Dark being the Cabal - the Watchers don't appear to use (or even need?) the fancy flying saucer that the Cabal used in Legion.  They just show up anywhere they need to.  (Tuchulcha maybe?)  And, for some reason, they let themselves be seen at random by Zahariel on Caliban, which is something the extremely meticulous Cabal from Legion wouldn't have just allowed to happen.  Nor do the Watchers appear to demonstrate the same racial diversity.  Either this is an inconsistency on how the Cabal operates, or they're two unrelated groups - I'm leaning more towards the latter.

[[TA]Typher]

 

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed. Remember, he was a thinker, planner, but not a people person. He survived on a Chaos tainted death world, alone. Also, he wasn't an idealist in the same sense as Luther was. From a literary stand point the differences between Luther and the Lion are echoed in Zahariel and his cousin. Zahariel does his duty, just as the Lion does. He does what is needed for order to survive. The Lion didn't think of Chaos being evil in his choice to side with the Emperor, but rather who would bring order to the chaos of the Imperium.

 

I think it's the ending of 'Prince of Crows' that gives a quiet definitive on the idea on the Lions train of thought. He isn't delaying to get a clearer pictures. He wants his brothers to wear each other down before he makes his move. He wants their legions to crack under the strain of hard fightiing before he smashes them. He says that only the Emperor should rule. He's really wary of Guilliman's empire building and sees him as a threat. He may not be a great brother but he is quite clearly a loyalist.

[Bryan Blaire]

One glaring problem with the Watchers in the Dark being the Cabal - the Watchers don't appear to use (or even need?) the fancy flying saucer that the Cabal used in Legion.  They just show up anywhere they need to.  (Tuchulcha maybe?)  And, for some reason, they let themselves be seen at random by Zahariel on Caliban, which is something the extremely meticulous Cabal from Legion wouldn't have just allowed to happen.  Nor do the Watchers appear to demonstrate the same racial diversity.  Either this is an inconsistency on how the Cabal operates, or they're two unrelated groups - I'm leaning more towards the latter.

They are likely a member "species" of the Cabal, IMO, and this one quite clearly doesn't need a space ship. Also, I'm not entirely sure their appearance to Zahariel was necessarily random. Their actions in that scene don't say "Oops, we let a human see us" to me, more of that they may have actually been watching Zahariel, and possibly all the Knights that hunted the Beasts of Caliban for evaluation. Just like the Inquisition is not a single-minded monolithic entity with only one set of thoughts on how to get a single subject done, I don't actually believe that a likely multi-species cabal against the forces of Chaos wouldn't necessarily have some differing opinions on how to combat said forces. I think it is very possible that any member of the Cabal could have their own side bets going if the main game falls apart. I think it very likely that the Dark Angels could possibly be the side bet for the Watchers, both because they show strong signs of anti-Chaos sentiment, but also because anything that closely associated with Chaotic taint needs to be watched for signs of slipping.

[Brother-Sergeant Bohemond]

 

 

(1) The Lion didn't know which side would win. Ever the pragmatist, he delayed his return to Terra to get a clearer picture, so that his choice was informed. Remember, he was a thinker, planner, but not a people person. He survived on a Chaos tainted death world, alone. Also, he wasn't an idealist in the same sense as Luther was. From a literary stand point the differences between Luther and the Lion are echoed in Zahariel and his cousin. Zahariel does his duty, just as the Lion does. He does what is needed for order to survive. The Lion didn't think of Chaos being evil in his choice to side with the Emperor, but rather who would bring order to the chaos of the Imperium.

I think it's the ending of 'Prince of Crows' that gives a quiet definitive on the idea on the Lions train of thought. He isn't delaying to get a clearer pictures. He wants his brothers to wear each other down before he makes his move. He wants their legions to crack under the strain of hard fightiing before he smashes them. He says that only the Emperor should rule. He's really wary of Guilliman's empire building and sees him as a threat. He may not be a great brother but he is quite clearly a loyalist.

 

Its in The Lion from The Primarchs and he mentions that he wants to see a war of attrition as that would force Horus to come to the bargaining table and surrender, at this stage he is still unaware that the Heresy is actually Chaos fueled rather than merely an ambition led revolt. Hes not waiting, though, because he wants to but because the warp storms are blocking him leaving and he cannot leave the Night Lords behind him. At one point it is clear that part of him fears the Emperor is already dead and when a Daemon informs him the Emperor still lives, inadvertently, mind you, it is a boost to his own morale. This shows that he was still loyal until he knew for sure that the Emperor was dead, and even then he may be loyal beyond that.