Betrayer - A review with an Ultramarines slant

[Wade Garrett]

An Empire that only functions because it incorporates the PRIESTHOOD of Mars, who revere the Emperor as the Omnissiah of the Machine GOD.

 

It's not Lorgar's fault his gene sire is very passive aggressive on the subject of religion.

 

And neither Horus, Argel Tal, or the guy who drew the daemon sword ascended to daemonhood, they were possesed, which is not the same thing at all (and possession is arguable in Horus's case).

 

Possession is having an outside entity in the driver's seat (except when it isn't, see Burias-Drak'Shal)

actually becoming a daemon is a different kettle of fish.

[Marshall Bretton]

to be fair, argal tal is sort of a 3rd type here, he is not really posessed, more like he has a symbiotic relationship with the creature, he is still in control of his actions, but the deamon in his head helps him and gives him certain abilities which are quite cool

[Hellrender]

Let's take Vandred then from ADB's night lord books. He might have been happy with his ascension to the Exalted in the beginning, but he most definetly wasnt at the end, which reinforces the idea, that even though thye might enjoy the new found power, in the end they always regret the daemonhood.

[Wade Garrett]

Again, was Vandred a true daemon or a possesed? It seems clear from the narrative that he and the Exalted are two separate beings, like Argel Tal and Raum, given the Exalted's diving within Vandred's memories so it can wage void war.

 

Acerbus, on the other hand, seems quite happy with how things turned out and also seems to have retained his personality, given that he refers to himself by his Astartes name and Sahaal instantly recognizes him in spite of the change.

 

Another argument against Vandred being a daemon ascending is that he doesn't replicate the effects Barban Falk, Ingethel, or Acerbus are noted as having on everyone in their presence.

[Captain Idaho]

To be honest, this is mostly anecdotal as all these characters are going to react differently. The key issue is Angron. We know many people can hate what they've become, and it seems a little early to tell whether Angron even understands it.

 

However one thing is certain is Angron despised tyranny (funny right?) and being forced into servitude, and there's no greater domination or dependence than Daemons, their gods and the Warp.

 

And being chained to the bowels of a ship doesn't sound like he was liberated either (though likely a good thing considering it's Angron) and just goes to show that his Nails causing irrational rage have been replaced by an existance even more irresistible (likely to change?).

[Emperors Immortals]

Im loving this discussion, you guys have nailed it all so far. (pun /boomtish).

 

I would add though that I feel Angron despised the idea of his own servitude betraying a weakness of character - while the servitude of others might be a situational problem. The replacing of his nails with Khornes mark could perhaps be a transformation from something controlling him to something changing within himself- how much this affects him negativly is somethign I feel can only be answered after the fact, its too early.

 

One thign I do feel however is that Daemonhood is a very costly gift, and that dealing with the nature of souls is a thing unimaginable to us.

[A D-B]

This is one of the coolest and loretastic discussions I think I've ever seen.

[Marshall Bretton]

its all the books fault :p

[The Emperor's Champion]

Unless I'm missing something -


I'd say it's largely debatable if there's any difference at all between possession and being a Daemon Prince, aside from the level of power involved.

It's been shown that the Warp can't actually physically transform reality. It can interact with it physically (burn it, freeze it, break it, push it, levitate it, etc), but it has seemingly never just suddenly turned the earth it water, for example.
The APPEARANCE and effects of something like that have surely been replicated, but not the actual action.

For example, The Emperor aboard the daemonically transformed Vengeful Spirit could blink his psychic might and purge the area around him of daemonic infestation/power, and it would leave the ship looking just like it did before the Sons Of Horus fell to Chaos, aside from whatever Chaos iconography, skulls, corpses, etc were physically put there. All the random daemonic eyes staring out of the walls, tentacles and claws coming out of the floor, mouths in the ceiling, or whatever else, those would all suddenly be gone as if they never existed.

A Chaos Marine Possessed with big bat wings, horns, and tentacles suddenly thrown into a powerful enough anti-Warp area would find himself flailing his regular arms as he falls out of the sky.

Daemons are prone to destabilizing and popping out of reality when they encounter anti-Warp effects.


Given that a Possessed Marine is possessed by a daemon, say this is a Nurgle Possessed Marine with a Nurgle daemon.
That daemon, like every other daemon, and the Marine's psychic ability (if he has any), should pop out of existence should it encounter an area that the Warp cannot exist in. The Marine would find himself just an evil Marine.


Now, it's been explained that every daemon is a piece of the god that it serves. A Bloodthirster is just an independently functioning piece of Khorne.
Daemonic magic and daemonic power, likewise, are just parts of the god they come from.
A Chaos Sorceror of Tzeentch is just channeling Tzeentch's energy through himself and has learned how to make it do different stuff.
Using Chaos magic, or using Chaos granted powers, is corrupting. Users get voices in their head, compulsions to do stuff and feel the will of the Chaos God the power comes from.
Shooting someone with "Chaos lightning" is, apparently, basically just blasting a lightning-shaped daemon-esque force through them.

Some possessed things, like Plague Marines, may actually eventually end up relying on the daemon power granted to them to survive. So while the original Deathguard Marine's body might have long ago had its bones shattered and flesh shredded by bullets and shrapnel, the daemonic power simply knits right over that and allows the Deathguard Marine to go right on acting like the rigid structure in his leg that holds him up is still his bones, and his insides aren't pooling on the ground because he still has cohesive muscle and skin. And he's probably not even aware that that's not the case.
Or the aforementioned winged Possessed Marine, it's possible that the Warp fabricated wing structure originated INSIDE his back and actually ruptured out of his flesh into position, and this was all perfectly fine as the Possessed's "Warpflesh" just grew along with the wings and patched together the Marine and the wings as if two giant holes hadn't just been ripped through his back.
Chaos Marines and Possessed, and many many other's "blessed" by Chaos like this, as far as I can tell, would suddenly and dramatically die a horrific death if they were to become trapped in a Warp-free zone. The Deathguard suddenly collapsing sideways as his leg's true meatloaf form discovers it can't bear weight, and blood and organs just going everywhere without Warpflesh to hold them in place.
The Possessed suddenly discovering two massive cavities where he thought wings used to be...


Chaos power and magic are more or less the same thing as a daemon, just without a cohesive form or a fully sentient mind.



So, if even Chaos artifacts, the most minor Chaos magic, and Chaos' regular "blessings" are all part of the same malevolent, sentient or semi-sentient energy that constitutes the Chaos Gods, why in the world would we assume that the large quantities of this power granted to a person that becomes as "Daemon Prince" would be significantly different from them just being possessed by a powerful daemon???
All a powerful daemon is is a large quantity of a Chaos God's power given independent form...

The only real difference I can discern is that the Warp energy attached to a Daemon Prince is so thoroughly woven throughout his physical form that Warp destabilization/banishment/anti-Warp zones results in the Daemon Prince's physical body being ripped right into the Warp along with his Warp-flesh.




To honestly believe that Angron or ANY of the Daemon Primarchs is in true control...well, it just seems a bit like you're missing the point of the nature of Chaos and what it does to people.

Chaos may offer "blessings", but whatever "blessings" it granted have a a whole spider colony's worth of strings attached. Strings of mind games, thoughts in your head that you don't realize aren't your own, feelings of hate/rage/paranoia towards things for reasons that have nothing to do with you, delusions, and eventual enslavement to the will of the god(s) from which the "blessings" come.





That's my $.02

[Wade Garrett]

I'm...confused.

 

First you talk about the warp being unable to change reality...but that's the whole point of Chaos! It changes (corrupts? Violates? Desecrate?) everything it touches, in ways that make dirt into water look tame. (Ex: Betrayer, bulkhead into human flesh.) You say it isn't a real change because if we take, say, a plague marine and cut him off from the Warp and he will die. But if you take a normal Marine and cut him off from oxygen, he'll die. (Probably three days later, because Space Marines are hardcore like that).

 

So..does that mean he's not "real" because he needs oxygen for his body to function? If not, how does the plague marine needing Warp energy to function make him an illusion?

 

(Also, in 40k almost every human bar Pariahs needs the Warp to function. Look what happens when the Necrons sever the Warp in the third Dark Disciple book, not just Word Bearers but Guardsmen and White Consuls drop dead because they're cut off from the materimmaterial.)

[The Emperor's Champion]

No, I'm not saying a Chaos Marine is illusional, I'm saying the mutations, warping, demonic components, etc consist of Warp energy that functionally exists melded into the person/place/thing in question, but when you sever the connection between the real world and the Warp to a degree that Warp energy can't maintain stability, the parts consisting of Warp energy will vanish back to the Warp and leave behind the physical form of the "host".

For a Plague Marine, who relies on the persistence of his demonic flesh in the real world for keeping his guts inside, and relies on his demonic flesh to replace the mutilated spots in his real flesh, the sudden disappearance of the Warp energy based components of his body would be catastrophic.

+++++What follows beyond this point is a series of explanations that are either incomprehensible or fantastic, depending on how well you can follow them. I just ran with it, and in the end I was pretty surprised by how accurately you can depict the multiverse in stationary format... +++++

Explaining Realspace and the Warp's interaction in analogous D&D terms:

Odds are that this won't help explain anything if you don't understand the fundamentals/complexities of planar cosmologies:

The only other way I could describe it would be D&D terms.
The Prime Material and Ethereal Planes are congruent. Things are echoed between them.
Ghosts exist on the Ethereal Plane, but they have the ability to appear on the Prime Material plane.

So, if there was a character who had a ghostly arm, he could touch ghosts and other stuff on the Ethereal Plane, and things on the Prime Material. For most purposes he'd just have a semi-transparent semi-solid arm.

In reality, his arm exists on the Ethereal Plane while he exists on the Prime Material.
Only through congruencey of the two planes of existence, combined with the cross-planar nature of ghosts does this character still functionally have an arm.
Should the two planes of existence become incongruent (AKA stop sharing the same space), or should the ghostly abilities of his arm lose their cross-planar properties, the ghostly arm will still exist on the Ethereal Plane and the character will still exist on the Prime Material, but the arm no longer exists on the Prime Material Plane, which means the two are no longer connected, and the character now has a stump.

The Prime Material and Ethereal Plane explained as sheets of paper:

The Ethereal Plane is like a sheet of tracing paper, and the Material Plane is a sheet of printer paper below it.
All the humans, animals, and planets and stuff are drawn on the bottom sheet in pencil.
Spirits and stuff are drawn on the tracing paper.
Cross-Planar spirits are drawn on both sides of the tracing paper.

When you look at the two together from above (i.e. the Ethereal Plane) you can see everything drawn on the tracing paper (i.e. everything IN the Ethereal Plane) clearly, and you can see a muted, less well-defined version of the stuff on the Prime Material printer paper.
Normally, the things on the Prime paper can't see the things drawn on the Ethereal tracing paper.
The exception is when they're cross-planar, which would be if the same image was drawn on both sides of the Ethereal tracing paper.
Then, when the two sheets are layered on top of each other, the Prime paper's people can see the entity that can cross to their side of the Ethereal tracing paper.
And, since their "graphite" occupies the same layer, they can interact.

If you remove the Ethereal tracing paper, they can't interact. The Prime paper guy who had his Ethereal arm traced on suddenly has a stump because, while the graphite of the character and his arm were sharing the same space under the tracing paper, the arm was, in fact, always on the tracing paper while the character was on the printer paper.
The two planes of existence have been separated.

Paper 40k:

Essentially, the Warp is just a hellscape version of the Ethereal Plane, and most of the spirits are daemons.

• Daemons that appear in the real world are the ones drawn on both sides of the tracing paper.
• Daemonic instability is when something threatens to separate the to pieces of paper so far apart that they can't interact.
• Banishment or "killing" a daemon in the real world would be like if something on the printer paper erased the image on the underside of the tracing paper. The daemon is still there on top of the paper, and it's only a matter of time before he gets redrawn on the underside.
• The only way to kill a daemon would be to destroy it in the Warp and erase the daemon from the top side of the tracing paper (which would remove it from both sides permanently).
• Something cutting off the Warp in an area would be like if a third piece of interfering paper got jammed in between the two pages and made it so that they couldn't touch.
• Cutting off the Warp entirely would be like if if you separated the pages entirely and took away all relation between the two.

So, a Plague Marine would be a Space Marine drawn on the printer paper. Say he's drawn full of bullet holes and missing half his torso. Part of him, however, are drawn on the tracing paper - mainly the missing half of his torso and all these chunks of flesh that patch the bullet holes, but also stuff like horns, claws, and a swarm of daemonic flys.
Under normal circumstances the two sheets are layered together and, for most purposes and all he knows, the Plague Marine's torso appears whole, and his bullet wounds all just appear to be spots of daemonic flesh.
Under circumstances where the "Warp connection" between the two sheets of paper gets less cohesive it becomes apparent that they're two separate things, and if the two planes of existence become totally disconnected the Plague Marine will suddenly suffer the consequences of his bullet wounds and half-missing torso. Likewise, his horns, claws, and the swarm of daemon flies would vanish.

In this crazy-ass paper universe, a Daemon Prince would seemingly be when a person originally drawn on the printer paper gets a whole bunch of stuff added to him that is drawn on both sides of the tracing paper, and the graphite of his image also somehow manages to transfer entirely from the printer paper to the underside of the tracing paper.
So, he becomes connected to the Warp powers traced onto him and vanishes with them from the material universe, but he still isn't truly a Warp creature drawn on the top of the tracing paper, though that's where all his daemonic traits originate.
It would presumably be possible for something (like The Emperor's psychic might?) to pull this character off of the underside of the tracing paper and back onto the printer paper, and then destroy the image on the tracing paper entirely. This would seemingly leave the character no longer a Daemon Prince.

This is how the 40k multiverse operates as best as I can tell.
(There's also the Webway wedged in between the sheets of paper, but I don't want to try and sort out what type of stationary that is.)

Honestly, for as messed up as 40k is, its planar cosmology is super simple.
I guess once you've wrapped your brain around The Great Wheel cosmology, the same could be said about every other cosmology.

[Wade Garrett]

So what happens if a Daemon Prince jumps into a Portable Hole?

[The Emperor's Champion]

Assuming the pocket dimension boarders the Warp too, I suppose he just ends up in a pocket dimension. Same as if he jumped in a regular hole, just spatially disjointed.
I guess that's like putting the tracing paper in your pocket.

So I suppose a paper shredder would be the end of the multiverse.



My question is what whiteout is, and how long would it take before Asmodeus had Tzeentch as a pet in a bird cage.

[RapatoR]

I would bring up one argument: when Horus was purged of chaos, gods abandoned his body and his true personality was revealed. However purging Angron resulted into him wanishing into warp. No personality surfacing back.

I would say, Angron was saved and finally became a thing that he was always intendet to be. He is no longer bemoaning deaths of his brothers and sisters at Nurceria. His World eaters are able to finally look at him with awe. And he cares for Lorgar, even calls him brother.

[Captain Idaho]

...And then he was chained to the bottom of a starship, fighting and killing his Legionaires in the process. And then the dependence of the Warp will be realised and he'll know his life is more servitude than ever before because he is slaved to the will of the blood-god now he can't even hope for death. Khorne isn't terribly compassionate.

 

So yeah, Angron was saved if you want to ignore that.

[Emperors Immortals]

TEC, I completely agree with you about the subsumed personality and I liken it to chemical dependancy (ie alcohol addiction) - in all but a very few cases the underlying reasons are emotional which then lead to behavioural problems, the actions continue because it offers a way to alter the emotional state without having to really acknowledge the cause (usually some form of emotional trauma).

 

Chaos is something that can never be controlled, it is a terrible idea to strike a pact but the new often gives a sense of immediacy. I feel Angron will perhaps "come to terms" with his new state as it offers an escape he feels from his fathers betrayal, he may even fight the idea of being returned to "normal" as it would deprive him of a special status - whatever A D-B has in store I feel this will be one of the best arcs because we have an anti-hero in the true sense - an in dividual living to a strict moral code (of debatable virtue to be true) leading to his eventual downfall and betrayed by both father and children, his only true patronage is offered by something truly unfeeling and thus incapable of harming him emotionally.

 

The idea of increased bondage to Khorne is something I dont feel Angron will ever have to truly grapple with, unlike say Fulgrims fleeting regret for what he could have been or Lorgars despair at what he could have made others.

 

Ennui is not for Angron, who is a creature driven wholly by a reason to be, not necessarily a reason to exist.

 

Unlike RL, I would promote a strict abstinance program - "Infernal pacts with aetheric personalities - JUST SAY NO!".

 

 

TL;DR - while realisiation of eternal servitude to a Chaos god would lead to existential despair, I dont feel Angron is capable of or cares about this fact. Like any addict it is the activity surrounding there indulgance and procuring its next dose that gives a sense of being. A truly tragic state and one ripe for thematic exploration. I will now retire to the peanut gallery.

 

 

p.s; lovely writeup on cosmological polemics, esp since I love office supplies (weird huh?) :)

[Wade Garrett]

So, if I understand the above post, Angron lacks the self analysis skills to be depressed about his current status as a thrall of Khorne. I can see that, given that it took Lorgar explicitly spelling it out, with short sentences of one syllable words, for him to grasp Russ's lesson.

 

Reflection, thy name is most definitely not Angron.

 

Something that occurred to me the other day was that Daemon Angron's status was similar to that of another character in Betrayer: Legion Master Lhorke.

 

Both of them have received a form far beyond that of a mere mortal, yet to get it they had to "die". Both are revered by the Legion, but at the same time set forever apart by their new status.

 

Both are of course locked in the belly of Conqueror and released only for war, and finally, just like Lhorke could only watch as the War Hounds became the World Eaters, so Angron can only watch as his Legion shatters into a thousand Warbands.

 

Although it will probably bother Angron a lot less.

[Emperors Immortals]

Yes, I think thats a better way to put it Wade :)

 

Nice comparison with Lhorke, and a fitting end for him at Angrons hands (his estranged Father and failed father-figure) as he attempts to save his brothers.

 

And to bring this wholly back to OP, its interesting to consider if his story within the legion says he attacked Lorgar out of an attempt to save Angron or because he sympathised with the UM view of chaos. Perhaps if were right there is no remembrance of him at all?.

[Captain Idaho]

I'd go the other way. Lhorke had duty to console and compel him. It was a great distraction to from the torture of his existance.

 

Angron would have only his thirst of bloodletting and whatever other justification for existance he can make up to lie to himself that his existance is one of liberation.

 

I know which one I'd find it easier to be.

 

Anyway I think we can all agree Angron will likely not be chained up forever and there could well be some control he can take of himself.

[Wade Garrett]

I for one am hoping this means we get a Daemon Angron/Sanguinus fight on Terra. After all, the Angel HAS to face off with some big red daemony thing, it'd be meh if it was the same Bloodthirster he's already slapped down, and Argel Tal is a bit indisposed. So why not Angron?

 

Train of thought switches rails:

 

Anyone else think there was a subtext of fathers and sons + the cycle of abuse in the novel?

Granted, that's every Horus Heresy novel to a degree, but it seemed pronounced in this one. For example, Angron had "his mind cut apart by carving knifes" by having the Butcher's Nails forcibly implanted by his parent culture. What was the first thing he did to his gene sons (well, when he got through randomly killing them?) Order them to take the Butcher's Nails implants.

 

Lorgar...in The First Heretic, he said of the Emperor "Father is a secretive, mistrustful being. I hate that about him." (I paraphrase, since my copy of TFH is elsewhere at present). And then we get to Betrayer, and oh look. Lorgar is keeping secrets from Erebus and Kor Phereon ("Sure, let's send them on their little crusade and let them take all the morons in the XVIIth with them. I wish you all the best, my foster father and closest friend, and am certainly not expecting you to make a complete dog's breakfast of Calth and die horribly".) not to mention the entire plan for Angron.

 

TFH:

"You could never order horrible things done with a smile like the Emperor, Lorgar."

Now pick up Betrayer, thumb throught it, and note all the times Lorgar is smiling when he describes how the suffering the World Eaters and Word Bearers are causing in Ultramar is resonating within the Warp. From a certain point of view, he's becoming even more like the Emperor than he ever was.

(In that like the Emperor, he has a grand plan for humanity's survival, in his case symbiosis with the Warp, in the Emperor's case...we're not quite sure, and to advance his grand plan he will embrace any tool or method, no matter how vile, and make any sacrifce, no matter how dear to him.)

[The Emperor's Champion]

Wade Garrett, on 21 Apr 2013 - 18:02, said:

I for one am hoping this means we get a Daemon Angron/Sanguinus fight on Terra. After all, the Angel HAS to face off with some big red daemony thing, it'd be meh if it was the same Bloodthirster he's already slapped down, and Argel Tal is a bit indisposed. So why not Angron?

We already know Sanguinius fights Ka'Bandha at Signus Prime and later again at Terra, where he snaps the Bloodthirster's back.

 

 

 

I suppose it should be noted that I find the villains' characterization and understanding of The Emperor to be obviously....skewed.

 

The Emperor is secretive, yes, but he's not mistrusting. The Emperor seems to generally operate on a "need to know" basis, which makes sense. It's not that he doesn't trust the Primarchs (hell, the amount of trust he apparently put in Horus is mind-boggling), so much as he simply doesn't think they need to know certain things. The Emperor puts tons of trust in a lot of people. At the top of the list are Malcador, the Primarchs, and his Custodes.

You don't become the ruler of the galaxy without the ability to trust the people that make it possible.

The Emperor has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years of experience in dealing with people. You could generally assume that he's figured out things about entrusting people with more than he has to.

 

And The Emperor has never been shown to be the type to smile when he had to do horrible things. He was the sort who accepted that sometimes he had to do horrible things, even if he very much rather not.

Where the Word Bearers imagine The Emperor and the Ultramarines taking pleasure in the destruction of Monarchia, for example, The Emperor simply saw it as harsh lesson he had to teach, and a necessary casualty to ensure that the worship of The Emperor and the idea of it never spread....and Guilliman and the Ultramarines simply saw it as a terrible, tragic action that was their duty to perform.

 

But then of course the villains would speak ill of The Emperor. They're trying to cloud the fact that they themselves are the villains, and drag their fellows down into corruption with the idea that they're somehow justified.

It's just what Chaos does.

Their beliefs and dealings with each other are just as filled with lies and betrayal as their dealings with anyone else.

As I said earlier, the followers of Chaos are just the ones who fall for the lies the hardest.

[Captain Idaho]

There is definitely a theme of tragic irony in Betrayer, even if we take the Emperor out of the equation.

 

Oh forgot to ask people, that Legion super warrior, name beginning with D (book not handy), wasn't he one of Abaddon's chosen post Heresy?

[Legatus]

I finally got my hands on the book (seriously, what's with the format?), and finished it today. And... it was not for me.

 

I guess I cannot really blame Aaron for that, since it was mostly just what he had to work with. Right from the start the book rubbed me the wrong way, since it was so heavily built on the "five hundred worlds of Ultramar" retcon. As some of you may recall, I did not appreciate this change to the lore at all when it was introduced in 'Know No Fear'. Guilliman as the "empire builder" the detractors had allways accused him of being. And now the Black Library made him into that. Gave the detractors what they wanted to hate, which did not exist before. And 'Betrayer' is heavily based on that.

 

Characterisation was good, I guess. One of Aaron's strengths. Here it was mainly my own unfamiliarity with the characters that lessened the impact for me. Of course I knew of Erebus and Argel Tal, even of Cyrene, but I have not really followed and read their previous exploits in the series. Though I have to admit that seeing the Primarchs constantly talk did not bother me as much as I thought it would. Maybe that was because here it was especially well done. Or maybe it is easier to get used to than I was expecting.

 

At least the book had a few cool scenes.

Things like "The World Eaters, they are cheering" or the Dreadnought being woken for the first time since before the start of the rebellion, being ordered to kill the Ultramarine boarders, replying "the what?".

 

 

But aside from such gems and the general good standard, I did not enjoy it that much in its entirety. The events took place on worlds of Ultramar that did not exist in previous lore, and described engagements that did not happen in previous lore. So to me in a way it did not carry much more weight than fan fiction. But I guess to followers of the Horus Heresy books, it was a welcome new chapter in the series.

 

 

But how did the Ultramarines fare in this book? Well...

 

 

 

I did not mind seeing the Ultramarines in the role of the loosing opposition in the battle for Armatura. It's all good, as long as the Ultramarines at least have some cool moments. And they had some cool moments. Captain Orfeo was interesting. Though unfortunately his death was a bit undignified. And opponents acknowledging the skill of the Ultramarines, such as Khârn respecting their defensive phalanxes or their ordered formation, are allways nice to read.

 

Unfortunately in the battle for Nuceria there were less cool moments. Here it seemed just like the Ultramarines were throwing their men and material into the fire, without really achieving anything at all. Their fleet bested by that superior World Eater Captain. Their Titans bested by the superior Warhound crews. Their Ultramarine companies slaughtered by World Eaters and Word Bearers.

 

But back to Armatura. I had no problem reading about the Ultramarine defenders being defeated by the invading World Eaters. But there was an underlying problem. What Armatura and the Word Bearer's attack here meant for the conflict between the Word Bearers and the Ultramarines at large. 'Know No Fear' had informed us that the Word Bearers had not actually come to Calth with the sole intention to destroy the Ultramarines Legion once and for all. No, they had other objectives, which they achieved. And now we learn that what had been sent to Calth had not been the main force of the Word Bearers. No, what had been sent to Calth had been the "unreliable" elements of the Legion, meant to be weeded out, much as the other traitor Legions had weeded out their own disloyal elements on Istvaan III. It would not have been a great loss if the Word Bearers at Calth had all died, as long as they had inflicted some damage. And not only that, Lorgar attacked Armatura with two super ships. Two ships he could have easily sent to Calth, which would have certainly sealed the Ultramarines' fate. But he had not sent them to Calth. Not only had the Word Bearers achieved their most important objective at Calth, the Legion and Primarch had not even really committed that much to that attack.

 

Instead, they had committed more to their Attack on Armatura. A world, as we learn, which is just as important to Ultramar and just as well defended as Calth or Macragge.

 

In previous lore, we were told that the Word Bearers had attacked Calth with the intention to wipe out the Ultramarines, but that the Ultramarines managed to beat them back.

 

In 'Know no Fear' we were told that actually the Word Bearers did not really just mean to wipe out the Ultramarines, but that they instead had other objectives, which they achieved.

 

And now in 'Betrayer' we are told that actually the Word Bearers did not even commit that much to the attack on Calth, and that they committed more to destroying that other world which is just as important as Calth.

 

 

So, overall, the book is not that good to the Ultramarines. Had they fought and lost on a random (but important) forge world, to Word Bearers without super ships, and without the plot about only the unreliable Word Bearers being sent to Calth, things would have been ok for the Ultramarines. Simply being used as the loosing Imperial oppositing in a story is not that bad. But as it stands, the book continues the trend of retconning events unfavourably for the Ultramarines that was started by 'Know No Fear'. They now are even worse off than after that book. But at least there is still hope that as a tradeoff the Ultramarines will get some very cool new development in return, doing or achieving something great in the coming stages of the Horus Heresy.

 

[The Emperor's Champion]

I still don't see an issue with the 500 worlds of Ultramar, or how that's even necessarily a retcon.
In fact, it actually makes perfect sense.

Ultramar has always been 8ish systems with an unspecified number of worlds.
And the people complaining about Guilliman being an empire builder are either idiots or misinformed, as far as I can tell.
It's not that he wasn't an empire builder before, he CLEARLY was. It's that there's nothing in the Codex Astartes that says a Space Marine Chapter can't have more than one world.

There are limits on Chapter size, limits on Marines controlling Imperial Guard, and stuff like that, but nothing on Marines controlling territory.

They're complaining about a problem that has no basis.

[Wade Garrett]

Was I the only one who read the bits in Betrayer where LORGAR (that would be the Primarch of the Word Bearers Lorgar) says things like:

 

"One must wonder just how triumphant Erebus and Kor Phereon really were, when their victory parade involved turning tail and running from the Legion they supposedly destroyed."

 

Or when he chews Erebus out for losing thousands of Astartes and mortal servants. Or...or....ye gods and wee fishes.

 

Of course the Ultramarines (Iron Hands, Space Wolves, Raven Guard, Imperial Fists, Salamanders, Blood Angels, White Scars, etc.) are taking a kicking at this point in the Heresy. THE BAD GUY ALWAYS WINS IN ACT 2.

 

I can only imagine if we applied some of the "logic" on display here to other series.

 

"George Lucas totally hates the Rebel Alliance, man. Like, they blew up the Death Star, but then it turns out the Empire has this whole fleet and stuff that would totally have changed the outcome of the battle if they'd sent it to Yavin along with the battle station. And the whole movie is based on the retcon that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. I hated that."

 

"J.R.R. Tolkien totally hates the Elves and the Men. I mean, they kill the Ringwraiths in the first book, but they just magically come back riding freaking dragon things? Like, if they'd sent those freaking dragon things to the Shire, they would have totally grabbed the Ring and won. And they do all that work to beat Saruman, and it turns out Sauron didn't even care, he had kajillions more orcs and stuff so it didn't matter how things went down at Isengard. Plus the whole series is based on a retcon where it turns out Bilbo's ring is that super evil artifact of doom."

 

Look, Ultramarines fans? Let me reassure you guys.

 

YOU WIN AT TERRA.

It happens, I promise. Horus dies, all the Traitors run away, and Roboute Guilliman re-orders the Imperium exactly the way he thinks it should be run. So...can we stop with the wailing and gnashing of teeth anytime the Ultramarines have battles that don't consist of them destroying three times their number in traitors without taking a single loss? Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?