What happened between Kurze and Vulkan?

[MuGGzy]

I THINK I have read/listened to every HH novel and "audio drama", but I just finished Unremembered Empire and I am left scratching my head.

 

There is vague reference to what transpired between Konrad Kurze and Vulkan after Istvaan and before the events that transpire in Unremembered Empire. 

 

What book or audio covers these events, or has it not been addressed as yet?

[Perrin]

The novel Vulkan Lives. Surely you've read that though? Otherwise half of Unremembered Empire makes no sense.

[MuGGzy]

Doh, I had them both and apparently am reading them out of order. Vulkan lives is what I am about to start. Thanks for the clarification!

[Conn Eremon]

Honestly, I did just fine with UE, having not read VL. Considering the massive amount of criticism it has gotten, it is on my extreme low priority pile. Most of what alludes to VL in UE gives enough information on its own to not need the details in VL.

[Daddywarcrimes]

I'd agree.  Vulkan Lives gives context to Unremembered Empire, but UE does well enough catching the reader up that you aren't missing anything by skipping VL.

[marshal seanisi]

I THINK I have read/listened to every HH novel and "audio drama", but I just finished Unremembered Empire and I am left scratching my head.

 

There is vague reference to what transpired between Konrad Kurze and Vulkan after Istvaan and before the events that transpire in Unremembered Empire. 

 

What book or audio covers these events, or has it not been addressed as yet?

 

Spoiler below!!! My spoiler tag doesn't seem to be working!!

 

 

 

Curze spends the entire novel trying to kill the Immortal Vulkan in a bad rendition of a "Saw Movie Remake"

[Veteran Sergeant]

If you have already purchased Vulkan Lives, or you're desperate for some Salamanders action, I guess you could read it. Otherwise, it's fairly skippable. It and its prequel of sorts, Promethean Sun are... eh.  Basically a long, convoluted, disjointed combination of bad characterization, bizarre first person narration, and flashbacks that leads to the improbable and inexplicable change of venue to Party Planet Macragge just in time for all the primarch battle porn in Unremembered Novel.

[Phoebus]

That's... a more blunt version of basically what I thought of it, Veteran Sergeant.

[Deus Imperator Vult]

Really, people didn't like Vulkan Lives? I just finished it and thought it was brilliant. I mean it was no Betrayer but it was no way near as bad as Outcast Dead or Battle for the Abyss. The only thing I didn't like was

John fugging Grammaticus

... I cannot tollerate him.

[betrayer41]

i got 3/4 of the way through it an had to stop, i felt like i was wasting my time. is there anything specific from the ending i should know before i start UE

[Deus Imperator Vult]

Yeah Vulkan is a boss. Nah, each to their own personally I struggle with any book with alpha legion in cause I just find them irritating. Not really but the scene when Vulkan finally beats Curze to a bloody pulp was very enjoyable to read. Tbh any book in the serise that isn't a whitewash traitor victory I like at this point.

[Wade Garrett]

Meh.

 

"Yessss, Vulkan. Let the hate flow through you. Kill me, and you'll be just like me...a killer!"

 

"NO! I WON'T DO IT, KONRAD! I'LL NEVER BE A KILLER LIKE YOU! Except for all those people I killed in the Great Crusade...and the Traitor Marines I killed on Isstvan...and...huh. I guess I will just kill you. THIS IS A HAMMER!"

 

*Howitshouldhaveended.gif*

 

Not to mention that for all his clinging to the non Curze killing moral high ground in VL, the Drake is right back to "VULKAN SMASH NIGHT HAUNTER!" rage zombie mode when he turns up in UE.

 

Which makes all the handwringing in the first book rather pointless, no?

[Emperor's Scourge]

Which makes all the handwringing in the first book rather pointless, no?

Only if you choose to believe that the pointlessness of the handwringing wasn't a point in of itself.

 

Vulkan's been saddled with the rep of being more compassionate than the next guy. Kind of hard to depict that when he's still probably responsible for killing billions and billions of humans and xenos.

[Phoebus]

What really hurt Vulkan Lives, in my humble opinion, was all the ham-fisted moral equivalency that Nick Kyme tried to inject.

 

Curze comes off as absolutely laughable when he tries to compare the horrific crimes against humanity he has committed to the things Vulkan has done.  That's not to say that Vulkan couldn't have had deep-seated remorse over his role in the Great Crusade.  Assuming a primarch raised in the 31st millennium would have developed the same moral sensibilities as a reader from the 21st century, then yes, Curze could have certainly tugged at his heartstrings by pointing out how the Drake had brutally conquered so many cultures at the cost of countless lives.  The examples he uses, though, are simply silly.

 

"Vulkan, remember when you lost control and killed a teenage Eldar psyker after she killed countless innocent civilians and killed a bunch of your gene-sons in an attempt to save her own skin!"  

 

How awful, indeed!  That totally compares to setting up "skinning pits" and mutilating millions of known innocents simply to make a point to other prospective worlds (whose populations he would mutilate and massacre regardless, because that's what the Night Lords did - and not because they thought it was the path to law-abiding utopia).

 

Bottom line, the concept was interesting, but the execution was botched.  Unfortunately, that's the meat of Vulkan Lives.

 

And then you have to deal with its aftermath in what would have been a far finer novel, had that particular angle just been banished to a novella, instead.

[Emperor's Scourge]

I agree it was ham fisted and could have been executed more competently, but I thought the idea was sound.

 

Why IS Vulkan a hero and Curze a villain? Because Curze tortured people to death while Vulkan merely tore people apart quickly? Kind of 40k in a nutshell.

[Phoebus]

You simply can't inject 21st century morals into the 41st millennium anymore than you can into the 4th century B.C.  Is Alexander the Great a hero by today's standards?  Of course not!  Besides a semi-justifiable war against an empire that had routinely invaded Greece, he and his father intimidated or violently forced every other Greek state into his "alliance" and then carried on his conquests to places that had never even heard of Greece before.  But by the morals of his day, a "heroic" was about scale - not necessarily morality.  Alexander was a hero for centuries afterwards because of his genius, his courage, his daring, and his vision.

Vulkan could have been the most humane of the twenty primarchs, but under our moral standards, he's an aggressive warmonger whose father's questionable/dubious goal doesn't justify the mind-boggling, galactic-scale death toll of the Great Crusade.

 

Even with those caveats, though, the fact remains that Vulkan consciously seeks to minimize collateral damage and wages wars with a hope that what comes after the violence will be a better, peaceful society.  Curze doesn't even have to fall back on.  That's what makes Sevatar's rebuke in "Prince of Crows" so delicious:  he dismantles in short order Curze's disingenuous pretense at committing atrocities for the sake of justice.

As such, Kyme was always going to have his work cut out for him with a plot that centered on Curze preaching down to Vulkan.  And, unfortunately, he didn't pull it off.

[Wade Garrett]

That's what makes Sevatar's rebuke in "Prince of Crows" so delicious: he dismantles in short order Curze's disingenuous pretense at committing atrocities for the sake of justice.

 

Really? Because what I read was "Dad, let's not commit atrocities for great justice-let's do it because atrocities are FUN!"

 

As far Sev's "But the other Primarchs didn't have to commit atrocities to rule their worlds!" he's either mistaken or flat out lying.

 

Lorgar launched a world wide war on Colchis, as did the Khan on Choggoris.

 

Russ, Ferrus, and Sanguinus landed on worlds that were monster infested hellholes racked by tribal warfare, and left them essentially unchanged. (Albeit the guy with wings murdered every man, woman, and child on Baal whose DNA wasn't human enough).

 

Corax nuked cities in his war with the tech guilds.

 

Magnus, Fulgrim, Mortarion, (edit: forgot Lion El Johnson) and Vulkan are the only ones who (according to current lore) both improved their homeworlds and didn't kill millions to do it.

 

Guilliman and Perturabo fought wars of conquest, although those don't seem to have been genocidal purges like Sanguinus, Khan, or Lorgar's, while we don't have enough information about Dorn or Alpharius to make judgements on how they took care of business.

[Memento Of Prospero]

You should add The Lion to the goodly conquest. He rid the planet of the Great Beasts, united it's people and rooted out what turned out to be chaos worshipers in the Knights of Lupus.

[Wade Garrett]

Good point.

[Valkyrion]

Really, people didn't like Vulkan Lives? I just finished it and thought it was brilliant. I mean it was no Betrayer but it was no way near as bad as Outcast Dead or Battle for the Abyss. The only thing I didn't like was

John fugging Grammaticus

... I cannot tollerate him.

 

I think the spoiler is the only thing that saved the book. He's one of the best characters in the entire series.

[Deus Imperator Vult]

Each to their own brother I just cannot abide back-stabbing trecherous characters. It's why I can't keep reading Game of Thrones or any Heresy book with the Alpha Legion and its why the whole end scene with him just left a bad taste in my mouth. I liked Numeon damn it!

[Perrin]

You realise it isn't real right? Each to their own I guess, just seems odd that you would refuse to read any novel just because it has treacherous characters, especially as ASOIAF is probably the best fantasy series around. As a 40k fan you must be okay with all of the murder, xenophobia, daemon worshipping, war and lack of liberty that goes on? Just not the backstabbing

Surely the entire Horus Heresy series should be off limits to you, as the whole story is about how Horus betrayed/back-stabbed the Emperor.

I jest though, I was gutted about what happened to Numeon.

[Augustus]

I don't read Twilight for obvious reasons. Tastes. I can understand why he doesn't like novels that center around or have a large part of treachery or backstabbing--for him it's annoying. I can't stand amnesia centered fiction.

 

You're right that the Heresy itself is about treachery. I guess it's just different shades. I feel a slight difference between "I betray the imperium" to "why did you betray me???I didn't you and I switched identies and in fact it is you who betrayed everything...hrm?" (Exaggeration)

[Perrin]

Didn't think of it like that. It's the GoT fanboy coming out in me

Back-stabbing and betrayal just seem such a common occurrence in any form of entertainment media for it to put someone completely off of reading a book. The amnesia centred fiction that you don't like, in my experience is a relatively rare theme, or at least it isn't something that I have come across in the books that I read. The same for the Twilight books (which I admit are a guilty pleasure of mine), although the whole supernatural love story is becoming a cliché these days, it isn't traditionally a common theme in fiction.

Betrayal on the other hand happens in everything, throughout time and space. Even playing Halo I get betrayed by crazies.

My post was meant to be more of an engaging jest to try and find out why DIV doesn't like that particular theme, though re-reading I think it does seem more aggressive than I meant and for that I must apologise

I was also jumping at the chance to try and gain another convert to the cult of G.R.R Martin so ya know.

[Deus Imperator Vult]

I didn't read it as agressive, brother, I've just been too busy to respond. The thing I just don't like seeing evil or cowardice go unpunished just like I can't watch a film where the bad guy wins (unless their an anti hero) yes I know the Heresy doesn't really have a possitive outcome BUT it doesn't end up with the traitors winning Erebus and Typon becoming lovers and John Grammaticus killing them all and surrendering all of humanity to the eldar which, I feel, is how it would go if George R R Martin was the writer. I need my villians to get their come uppance and I'm not saying that John won't get that but until he does I'm not going to like him. It's like I know Erebus survives but only because he Betrayer spoilers

runs from Khârn like a coward

and there is that whole scene when he shows his true colours to Horus and... well y'know. Same with Lorgar yes he lives but only cause one of his brothers saves him. That's ambiguious enough not to need a spoiler right?

 

As for the Cult of Martin, brother, I was a stallwart member before he ruined his charactersiation of Robb and turned him into a blind fool then killed him off. Now not so much. If book four was called 'Robb Stark kills everyone' I would still be reading. But if we are talking GoT just for a moment I think I can better explain my issue with John to you. He is the Littlefinger of the HH universe.

 

Now to the unpleasentness. I respect you for voicing your opinions brother and for being a Game of Thrones fan but Twilight is heresy in book form! I would rather go skinny dipping with plague marines than subject my eyes to that taint. Vampires do not sparkle. The Inquisition have been informed.