So What's Coming Next?

[Azarias]

Hello all. Just had a thought now about what's coming out in the Horus Heresy next, which led to other considerations. First off, what's coming out next in terms of full-length novels? I remember when Know No Fear came out, I could see Fear to Tread on the horizon. Same thing with Angel Exterminatus, which was soon followed by Betrayer. But I can't find anything on what's supposed to come out next. Any news I might have missed?

 

Which leads me to my next point: what can come out next? Narratively, I divide the Horus Heresy series into two categories: prologue, which involves setting the stage for the universe (both in terms of the context and the characters), and the first few moments of the Heresy (which is more focused on the turn, or even the peripateia, that almost everything undergoes after Istvaan). We know, roughly, the end of the whole story. I suppose my question is "How are we going to go from here to the climax?"

 

Take the development of Fulgrim as a kind of miscroscopic example: we're introduced to the character and the way in which he relates to the Imperial status quo. Then we follow him as he descends into madness, into possession, then (in a really fuzzily-explained moment) his freedom, and then finally to the events of Angel Exterminatus. To quickly summarize the point I'm trying to make, these books represent a two-step path: the first step is the establishment of a character that can be contrasted with what comes next (let's say the first half of Fulgrim itself); the second step is the transition from that first figure (so, everything else). Presumably there will be a third step that will complete the transformation - but how are they going to do it? I can understand the conventional structure of a fall from grace into a kind of selfish spurning of conventional moral values (i.e.,

Fulgrim's willingness to sacrifice Perturabo for Daemonhood

). So, given that they've already reached a pinnacle, what's the third act going to be? 

 

Of course, that's an example. Some characters haven't even had a first act yet (Hi Jaghetai!). But, as is frequently becoming the case, the introductory arcs for every new character introduced have kept up with the general chronology of the Heresy Series itself. Perturabo's first arc comes mostly through flashbacks in Angel Exterminatus, while the rest of the novel sets the stage for the second part that is his paranoid ossification. So we aren't going to constantly get a new round of "hellos" independent  the overall action. Instead, we'll get something (hopefully) thematically cohesive. But how will that play out?

 

I realize the first question is more immediately answerable than the second. At best, the latter will lead to intelligent speculation regarding story development and thematic teleology; at worst, I have written nothing but confusing nonsense. 

 

So, after this ugly, rambling bit of text, any thoughts?

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

I think Black Library and Forge World are keeping their powder dry on HH for their joint event in May. I'm not sure how ticket sales are going, but I'm sure that so who attend will be given plenty of new information on forthcoming releases etc. not that I'm bitter ans twisted that I cannot go you understand...

[Veteran Sergeant]

I don't know if we can really organize the Horus Heresy series in the Three Act format except very loosely. I mean, the story has three acts, more or less. Humanity conquers the galaxy and things look good, Horus and the other traitors are tricked and converted by Chaos, Final battle at Terra.

However, the novel series is really just going to keep going and going and going, like that pink bunny with the drum. It has a small stable of authors churning out new work, and what appears to be a fairly consistent customer base buying the novels. There's no need to keep the story moving, so long as you keep the stories moving.

Istvaan V was the climax of the story of the Heresy. It's the end of Act 2, and they got there in three novels. There are now, what, 24? I mean, a few of those 21 extra novels are showing the details of how different primarchs reached the end of Act 2. However, the series has abandoned any intention of reaching the end of the story for now. If you look at the events of Betrayer, the series is now officially just inventing new material. Nothing that occured in that novel was ever part of the previous Horus Heresy lore.

I imagine the Battle of Terra won't happen until sales of the books drops off, lol. Once that happens, they'll kick in the Battle of Terra to renew interest in the series.

And then it will take another ten or twelve novels for it to finish.

[Vesper]

"Tricked" in breaking free from an indoctrinated slave army. You would've loved communism.

 

I think we're still years away from the siege. I don't really mind, because it doesn't prevent authors from writing on another stuff, like the Abaddon series for A-DB.

[Veteran Sergeant]

I know that some of you play Chaos armies.  I had a Chaos army back in the day too.  Try to divorce your game playing preferences from discussions rooted in reality, logic, and reasoning.  Otherwise you'll start saying some really silly stuff.

 

Look, regardless of what your favorite tabletop faction is, at no point was turning to Chaos and attempting to destroy the galaxy "breaking free".  And good lord, using some kind of inflated trope about Communism?  Are you one of those guys that shares stupid political Internet memes about socialism on Facebook too?  ;)  Because you definitely don't know the first thing about Communism if you'd make so ridiculously stupid of an analogy.  Please take a history or political science class or ten before you start bandying about things you don't understand.

Despite the rather "gray" area occupied by the Imperium, at all times, and in every case, Chaos is black.  It's the bad guy, and those traitor legions were fools who gave up one yoke for another.  If the Emperor's methods were not always good, Chaos's were still always bad.  This is just fact.  The fluff tells us so.  We know that Chaos exists solely to consume humanity and the rest of the galaxy.  So even if the Imperium does bad things, everything Chaos does is worse.  And every follower of Chaos is a slave.  So it isn't like they escaped the "slave army" of the Imperium to something better.  They simply traded one master for another. 

 

Except this time, instead of being on some "Great Crusade" for humanity, where they served some kind of grander purpose, even if narrow minded and xenophobic, now they simply murder and enslave for the sake of murdering and enslaving.  Once again, Imperium not necessarily good.  Chaos definitely bad.

[Vesper]

I don't have a Facebook account. And I know quite well about communism and its multiple flavours. And hell, the actual government of my country is socialist ! You bet I know what it is.

 

The fluff tells us about the Sensei. Who are uncorruptible by design. Yet, grey sensei chose to join Chaos, not by being corrupted by it, but seeing it as the future of mankind. Realm of Chaos stuff. Then, you'll notice that Chaos is pretty much mankind's projection in the Warp. Mankind is Chaos. The Emperor tried to change mankind (which is the main goal of communism, being involved in the private lives of people, considering them a whole) into something that he thinks is better.

We could say that Chaos and the imperium revolves around Rousseau's theory of the State of Nature, considering that men are good by nature and that society corrupts him, when 40k would say that he's evil no matter what. There are without a doubt planets in the Eye that have nothing to be ashamed of considering what happens in the imperium. Chaos is about the human (self destructive) nature. The imperium just wants to overcome it by another kind of slavery. In every way, mankind is screwed. That's the point of 40k.

[Kurgan the Lurker]

Alright folks, first, last and only warning. Knock off the political rants or the thread gets shut down and warnings will be issued.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

Edit - original comments deleted as the mod has covered my concerns.

[marshal seanisi]

Hmmm.. @Vesper... I Can't really agree with the connection of Chaos being a Human entity. I would more over consider it an emotional entity. We are led to believe it feeds of of emotions and that the gods are created by said emotions, whether they are Xenos or human. I would say that during this particular time span that the humans were the ones found wanting and they were basically easy pickings for the Chaos gods. And the background for 40k can really be related to mankind's eternal quest for war hence the phrase bellum omnium contra omnes and I believe that we as humans feel that all life forms would ultimately have the same perception and that leads the people who write the fluff to consider all intelligent life as survival of the fittest.

[Vesper]

Yeah, but you have to consider Humanity's impact on the warp, as the main provider of emotions to the Chaos Gods, shaping them the way they are. If Mankind was less crappy, the Chaos Gods could be awesome to the max. But no, they are evil because Mankind is.

The ethnocentrism of the lore isn't surprising. We're human, so we only care in humanity. Even eldars, orks, tau, tyranids, all that stuff talks to us in human words, it tells something about our humanity. But it's the same for every piece of fiction / art / stuff.

War is the main thing of the franchise. It's not surprising either. The game was made by British guys during the 20th century. In Europe, WWII is something that was still quite present, thanks to the tension of the Cold War. The despair of war, war as the extinction event of Humanity, all that stuff were pretty common tropes by the second part of the last century. The grim darkness of a far future is in fact very european.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Humanity still hasn't caused the creation of a Warp god via anything, though ... major contributors we are, but not that major...

[Vesper]

We awakened three of them from a millenia long slumber. Humanity is special in that regard. The emperor knew it, and that is why he tried to change it.

[Arachnid99]

We awakened three of them from a millenia long slumber. Humanity is special in that regard. The emperor knew it, and that is why he tried to change it.

 

We woke Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle? In what piece of fluff was that.

[Vesper]

Realm of Chaos.

Khorne was the first to wake up, IIRC.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Guess we invented genesperm too

oh wait

[Peter the Hermit]

Realm of Chaos.

Khorne was the first to wake up, IIRC.

Which is funny 'cause I think granpa Nurgle should be first...

[Vesper]

Quoting time !

Where the energies of nature were harmonious and benign, those of man were often disharmonious and dangerous. Power, ambition, greed, lust and a thousand other human feelings took root in the warp and began to grow... etc.

Realm of Chaos : The Lost and the Damned - p 174.

 

Khorne was the first of the Great Powers to wake fully, and an era of wars and conflict raged across the globe. Tzeentch was the next, and nations and politics grew to adulthood with all their implicit intrigues and double-dealings. Nurgle was the third to awake and plagues swept across continents, claiming many souls for the Lord of Decay. By the end of the Middle Ages all three of these Chaos Powers had awoken to full consciousness. The fourth Power, Slaanesh, still slumbered.

Realm of Chaos : The Lost and the Damned - p 176.

[Arachnid99]

Fair enough, though that is from 1990.

[Brother_Thorus]

Back on topic on what we might expect from the horus heresy books in the future...well... most legions are moving to terra, calth is, what 50% done, night lords are rejoinging horus for the major push, so a book or two on calth, one on space wolfs and what they are up to, the scars should have one, salamanders one or two, then i only know of the batte for tallarn to be the only major battle befor terra, dont get me wrong, i would love for another 24 books, but i dont think terra are that far away, unfortunately :(

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Quote time!

1988 WD

Chapter Ultra-Marine of the Legiones Astartes was founded during the inter-legionary wars of the thirty second millennium. Tradition places the date at 4001001.M32 - the very first day of the millennium. Teh chapter is therefore over eight thousand years old, making it a chapter of the third founding. Upon its inception, the Emperor gave the chapter the number 13 - formerly the number of one of the treacher-legions now banished to the Eye of Terror 'without number and name with all honours erased'. Along with their their number, the new chapter receieved the gene-sperm, implant zygotes, rituals, and other paraphenalia of indoctrination previously entrusted to the banished 13th legion. The chapter's founder was Roboute Guilliman whose bones now lie in the Reclusiam on Macragge. 

...

lol

[Vesper]

Realm of Chaos is still rock hard canon. Nothing ever retconed those.

lol.

[Lord Lorne Walkier]

Realm of Chaos is still rock hard canon. Nothing ever retconed those.

lol.

You are right but it never gets old when this pops up again.   The Alpha Legion PR is powerful.

[Azarias]

I don't know if we can really organize the Horus Heresy series in the Three Act format except very loosely.  I mean, the story has three acts, more or less.  Humanity conquers the galaxy and things look good, Horus and the other traitors are tricked and converted by Chaos, Final battle at Terra.

 

True. I'll admit, I am being reductive in portraying it as having a Three Act format - but it's mostly a result of how I look at the Heresy series. You have an initial context where everything's not exactly hunky-dory, but at the very least, stable. Then come the moments that reveal that the system was never truly stable to begin with, that it was riddled with cracks since its very beginning. For example, the darker side of a crusade to unite humanity under one banner is that it's merely a new form of colonialism, where all other cultures and viewpoints are supplanted or annihilated in favor of a homogenous, united front. Or that this antitheist dogma is plain wrong, that there are Gods, great and terrible, who do reward worship. I recognize that this understanding is not entirely appropriate, as Horus, arguably, is plain tempted into falling with a not-inaccurate vision of the truth (though here I would argue that we are entering into the territory of Greek Tragedy - but that's for another time). I like to think that, had they been armed with the knowledge of where the Heresy series was going at the very beginning of the endeavor, they would have taken the event in a different direction - but again, digression.

 

But at the same time as the cracks are showing, we are given the vantage point of those who would seek to preserve the Imperium despite its flaws. Or perhaps they don't even see the flaws at all, as they have somehow managed to mitigate them - think of Guilliman and his administrative Eden. Their vantage point is just as compelling.

 

Now, as the series goes on, we keep expanding these two perspectives. While the sins of the Imperium have returned from the harvest with a legitimate sense of righteous indignation, so to have those who rebelled become unjust tyrants in their own right. Similarly, those who seek to protect the established order are forced to rely upon a more rigid and unforgiving system, while nonetheless preserving what made the Imperium good in the first place. Now, to varying extents, this part is played out. How much farther can Horus or the Lion go? We've seen the hyperbole of Fulgrim and the moment when Dorn understands just how far he must go. 

 

So these ends must meet again, on Terra. I recognize now that I won't be able to judge precisely how well they pull this off until they pull it off, but I'm hoping that we'll get a clear sense of justification from both sides. That Angron's question will finally be answered, even as he has become a monster; that the Lion's apparent duplicity is addressed, despite its justification. I suppose I'm merely expressing the hope that the series will maintain its thematic complexity as it descends into the third act in a kind of thesis-antithesis-synthesis model. But it'll be a few years before we get to that.

[Deathwatch/Grey knight]

What about the fith god you know the god Malice

Or also known malal and only one traitor war band worships him : the sons of malice

 

the exalted Malice, the Renegade God, the Outcast, the Lost, the Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror.

[Vesper]

What about the fith god you know the god Malice

Or also known malal and only one traitor war band worships him : the sons of malice

 

the exalted Malice, the Renegade God, the Outcast, the Lost, the Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror.

 

Other Chaos Powers sometimes achieve temporary consciousness, but their existence is less stable because they are smaller ; they may be likened to slumbering gods whose dreams sometimes achieve a passing solidity and who will perhaps one day awake to full awareness.

Realm of Chaos - The Lost and the Damned - page 7.