Vengeful Spirit

[Vesper]

Haha yeah.

Quite sure Horus wasn't thinking that one day Abaddon could get his job.

[Conn Eremon]

Details, details. :D

[Vesper]

Oh, and he's also part of the Ezekarion (Abaddon's trusted inner circle) that we'll get introduced to with Talon of Horus, by AD-B.

They are the only allowed to call the Warmaster by his name.

Long story short : awesome Black Legion stuff.

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?s=394eae7c85044f20e2ba42cac91f5bdd&t=122786

[Blood Angel Scout]

Vesper

 

Horus recognises that Abaddon's ambition has been kindled, looking to be in control of a legion and with the power he has, he would be able to make legions for his sons, following in his footsteps.

 

As for Kibre, there are quite a few scenes between him and Abaddon that show the bond between them, one in particular is from Little Horus's point of view and he expects Abaddon to Hulk out but instead starts laughing/joking with Kibre to Aximand's surprise, reflecting the length of time they've fought together in the Justerin. Personally I think it's good foundation of his character that I suspect ADB may have had a hand in, with regard to background for the Talon

[Vesper]

That's a cool detail, not gonna lie.

Thanks for sharing !

[Scribe]

Interesting. Are the Ultramarines just cannon fodder, or do they contribute actively ?

Red Shirt Imperator. Don't say another dies. .. I actually want to Imperators kill things, not being harpoonedd, of all things, or betrayed in this book probably

The Imperator does its job, it falls in betrayal, but it does a lot of damage before it goes, which is a nice change. :]

[A D-B]

Oh, and he's also part of the Ezekarion (Abaddon's trusted inner circle) that we'll get introduced to with Talon of Horus, by AD-B.

They are the only allowed to call the Warmaster by his name.

Long story short : awesome Black Legion stuff.

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?s=394eae7c85044f20e2ba42cac91f5bdd&t=122786

 

I've not read Vengeful Spirit yet, and I'm sure by the time Falkus gets more HH air time I'll probably have finished The Black Legion by then, so I wouldn't expect any direct comparisons in regards to me calling back to Graham's work. I'd like to, though. It's not an avoidance issue, just a practical one.

 

After the Heresy, there's too much insane new stuff going on for them to be shaped much by the Heresy itself. The Thousand Sons stake a decent claim on that slice of woe and whimsy, but the other Legions are more occupied with what they're becoming, and why, and what it's like to live in Hell, and so on. The Heresy kicks things off for them, but they're past it, by and large, and no longer the same people. Like, no one's the same person they are at 16 - no matter how self-aware and intelligent - compared to the perspective and experience they have at 30. The Heresy is an intensely important defining moment, but to most Chaos Marines it's just that: a moment. One moment in a lifetime of madness, chaos, and eternal civil war. That, added to author preferences on everyone writing characters slightly differently, is why I'm not worried about whatever Graham wrote potentially conflicting (which is unlikely anyway, as he's a very broad and vague character in the Heresy). I like things to link where appropriate, and I usually go out of my way to do so, but the Heresy series is unlikely to explore Falkus all that deeply, and I've got huge plans for him later in the Black Legion series along those tracks.

 

tl;dr -- The Falkus Kibre of the Long War isn't the Falkus Kibre of the Heresy, so don't expect too many direct links. The Black Legion especially care absolutely nothing for the Heresy, and are founded on the concept of getting over the past. The Legion itself didn't even exist then.

 

To put it another way: Sharing characters is all about writing them your own way, from the same core concepts. See: any licensed fiction with different authors. Some of us do try to add in more consistency than others, though it's by no means mandatory (and not always even a good idea), and unless an author posts lots on his fave forum, 99.99999% of people would never be able to tell either way, and probably never even mention it.

 

Though in the past, I've seen a handful of examples of people assuming loads of communication happened when practically zero did, and accusations that authors ignored each other and avoided any links when they spent ages making sure it was as smooth a binding as possible. Often, what people bring to these situations with their own insight and expectation overrides what actually happens.

 

/end tedious process explanation.

[Rain]

It's kind of funny how much I'm looking forward to the Black Legion series given that I really don't like the Black Legion all that much, especially as the thing that drew me to CSM in the first place was the connection to the Heresy and even the Great Crusade, and how Chaos Legionnaires are the only ones around that were actually there to see it all happen and participate in it, instead of just hearing vague stories and legends.

Which paradoxically might be why I am expecting to really enjoy these books, since even though I don't always agree with his visions for/of factions that I've followed and loved for over a decade, ADB is without a doubt a very gifted and gripping writer, so it's nice to just get lost in the story and see where it goes instead of being the pedantic I am and going "Woah, cool...but would the Night Lords really do that?"

So yeah, I know we've gotten into some light forum scuffles before, but really looking forward to what you can make out of the Black Legion ADB, Chaos Gods forbid they actually become deep multifaceted characters instead of the Honda Accord of evil. Get to it!

[Vesper]

Oh, and he's also part of the Ezekarion (Abaddon's trusted inner circle) that we'll get introduced to with Talon of Horus, by AD-B.

They are the only allowed to call the Warmaster by his name.

Long story short : awesome Black Legion stuff.

http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?s=394eae7c85044f20e2ba42cac91f5bdd&t=122786

I've not read Vengeful Spirit yet, and I'm sure by the time Falkus gets more HH air time I'll probably have finished The Black Legion by then, so I wouldn't expect any direct comparisons in regards to me calling back to Graham's work. I'd like to, though. It's not an avoidance issue, just a practical one.

After the Heresy, there's too much insane new stuff going on for them to be shaped much by the Heresy itself. The Thousand Sons stake a decent claim on that slice of woe and whimsy, but the other Legions are more occupied with what they're becoming, and why, and what it's like to live in Hell, and so on. The Heresy kicks things off for them, but they're past it, by and large, and no longer the same people. Like, no one's the same person they are at 16 - no matter how self-aware and intelligent - compared to the perspective and experience they have at 30. The Heresy is an intensely important defining moment, but to most Chaos Marines it's just that: a moment. One moment in a lifetime of madness, chaos, and eternal civil war. That, added to author preferences on everyone writing characters slightly differently, is why I'm not worried about whatever Graham wrote potentially conflicting (which is unlikely anyway, as he's a very broad and vague character in the Heresy). I like things to link where appropriate, and I usually go out of my way to do so, but the Heresy series is unlikely to explore Falkus all that deeply, and I've got huge plans for him later in the Black Legion series along those tracks.

tl;dr -- The Falkus Kibre of the Long War isn't the Falkus Kibre of the Heresy, so don't expect too many direct links. The Black Legion especially care absolutely nothing for the Heresy, and are founded on the concept of getting over the past. The Legion itself didn't even exist then.

To put it another way: Sharing characters is all about writing them your own way, from the same core concepts. See: any licensed fiction with different authors. Some of us do try to add in more consistency than others, though it's by no means mandatory (and not always even a good idea), and unless an author posts lots on his fave forum, 99.99999% of people would never be able to tell either way, and probably never even mention it.

Though in the past, I've seen a handful of examples of people assuming loads of communication happened when practically zero did, and accusations that authors ignored each other and avoided any links when they spent ages making sure it was as smooth a binding as possible. Often, what people bring to these situations with their own insight and expectation overrides what actually happens.

/end tedious process explanation.

Oh yeah, I get that 10k years in hell change a man, and I expect to see great things from Falkus, just as I do for Abaddon.

And that's actually why I was asking. Those guys interest me (as do all of the Ezekarion (btw Lheor is an awesome name, wish I got it first !)).

Truth is, I have to admit that I simply cannot wait for the Black Legion series to start. And I'm a sucker for any information related to that subject.

So yeah, I'm really eager to read that book.

What's the name of the terminator elite of the Black Legion, by the way ? Just for the lore of my mighty warband !

[Marshal Rohr]

Aren't the Terminators of the Black Legion being the Anointed? 

[mc warhammer]

Is Ezekarion the...actual name?

 

I'm interested in seeing chaos marines who are over the heresy because from what I've read of 40k, for a "moment in time" nobody seems to be able to shut up about it.

[Scribe]

To me, its insanity to call it a moment. When you redefine the state of the universe, its tough to call it a 'moment', but thats just me.

[b1soul]

To me, its insanity to call it a moment. When you redefine the state of the universe, its tough to call it a 'moment', but thats just me.

 

"Defining moment" perhaps?

[Kol Saresk]

Aren't the Terminators of the Black Legion being the Anointed?

The Anointed were the Terminator cult from the Word Bearers series.....

 

I could be wrong, but if I had to guess, I'd say that since the Justearin make an appearance in Soul Hunter, it might be the Justaerin. Or it might not. Or they might just be one elite formation within the Black Legion. Since the Legions are nothing more than collections of warbands, nothing says they have to be identical in every shape and form.

[A D-B]

To me, its insanity to call it a moment. When you redefine the state of the universe, its tough to call it a 'moment', but thats just me.

 

On the surface, I can see that. But in context, not so much. "Moment" isn't a derisive or a diminishing term. Especially not when I said it as "an intensely important defining moment", but bear with me anyway, as it's an interesting angle worth considering for the Chaos Marine mindset. For a start, ignore the instinctive mindset we have as readers and fans and gamers, in that we're deeply aware of "The Heresy" and "The Dark Millennium" as essentially the two states of Warhammer 40,000. One happened as the largest civil war to wrack the Imperium, and it starts the tragic downslide into the eternal war and grim darkness that we have by the end of M41, where humanity is on the ropes and the final bell is about to ring from any one of a half-dozen external and internal threats.

 

But to the characters living in the setting, it's not just those two events that define and shape them. There've been events like the Nova Terra Interregnum with trillions and trillions and trillions dead, splitting the galaxy almost as much the Horus Heresy. Not to the same degree, but many of these cyclical events have approached it on the same terms for some parts of the galaxy. But even that's a footnote we can almost ignore - it's the reality of Chaos Marines we're talking about. After the Heresy, they didn't calmly sit around and brood on what went wrong. They moved into Hell. They went from the trenches of World War I (which was insanely, intensely bad) to the Underworld of human imagination. 

 

Admittedly, in the earliest book like The Talon of Horus, it's all about starting to illustrate the long process of becoming "Chaos Marines", but it's still a slice of living in a place where thinking the wrong thing in the wrong place will spawn a daemon that eats your brain. So let's go to specific examples. 

 

I had meningitis when I was 8, and almost died. I think about it a fair amount, and it changed me in plenty of ways. It still informs me, to some degree, now that I'm 33. But it's still just a moment in my life. It matters, but many more things matter a great deal more. Not at the time, of course. But it pales in significance as the years go on, despite always being immensely significant because, hey, it's a time when you almost died. That tends to stick with you, inside and out.

 

But we can do better, example-wise.

 

Let's say (to grab a fairly familiar religion for the purposes of it being a near-perfect example) that the Hell of Christianity is absolutely true. Now imagine you're tortured to death. Or you die in the trenches of World War I. Or a long and slow death over a year, from some awful degenerative disease.

 

So... you die. Your dying is the most insane, intense event that ever happens to you, because of course it is.

 

And then you spend an eternity in the Lake of Fire. You die from mortal pain, and then your soul spends forever immolating in a supernatural lake of fire. Dying was a moment. The moment that all of this started, so perhaps you seethe over it and dwell on it and it drives you just as insane as the pain of eternal burning does. It can be the moment you hate more than any other. But in context, it's just a moment.

 

Even the people in Purgatory or the slightly less eternal-pain-ish levels of Hell will view their death as one of the moments that defined them, but it's not ultimately what got them sent here. They died in that awful way, which can twist their mind and leave them eternally bitter, but they're in Hell because they sinned, not because they died. Dying was the bridge between their actions and the consequences. Their punishment in Hell is the consequence of their actions. If they want to hate the fact they're here in Hell, any reasonable intelligent soul will start to hate/regret/dwell on what it did to get here, added to the fact the punishments they're suffering may well be worse than the way they died, and that will overcome the trauma of their death. And still, they've got more important and appropriate things to worry about. No matter how much they hate all of the stuff of the past, they need to be more concerned (and will be more defined) by the fact they're being eternally tortured now.

 

A variation on this (as they're all good examples of the perspective, not the events - to put it another way, Sisyphus is partly defined by the trick he played in binding Hades and deceiving his wife (depending on the version of the story), but his torment, his afterlife, and his tragedy is in the fact that no matter how many times he rolls that insanely heavy boulder up the hill... after all that work, he just has to do it again, and again, and again. Prometheus is doomed to the Underworld for the fact he stole fire from the gods, and it's what we laymen know him for. However, he's probably more concerned by the fact that an eagle rips him open and eat his liver while he's chained up and feeling every moment of it, over and over, every single day. These things shape their daily lives and mindsets more than what they did in life. Just as, by the Dark Millennium, most Chaos Marines are more defined by their relationship with Chaos and the Eye of Terror than by the events of the Heresy.

 

Specifically, Chaos Marines in general are defined by the Heresy, but it's far from the only definition in their lives. It's one moment. One intensely important defining moment, but far from the reader-style continuum of Important-Event-then-End-Times. Abaddon, for example, is a character shaped not by the Heresy, but by everything that's come since. He's over Horus. He's surpassed the deceived Warmaster, with a far, far greater understanding of Chaos and the Powers That Be. The Black Legion itself is founded upon the principles of washing itself clean of the past, not making the same mistakes, and doing everything differently.

 

And the Traitor Legions (along with the city/world-states of Mechanicum and human and whatever else also living in the Eye of Terror) are absolutely defined by the moment they were shackled into living in a daemon-based un-reality halfway outside the universe. Some can't get over it. They dwell on it forever. They blame that moment for everything. But even those individuals recognise the Heresy was still just a moment, and they're just as defined/honed/changed in the eternity since, by fighting daemons; fighting their own madness; living through mutation over several thousand years; inventing new technology based on things that can't exist; travelling to worlds where entire armies are made of sins of violence and cowardice made manifest wading through oceans of hallucinogenic blood, and so on. Even at the rawest, bleedingest edge of "I can't get over the heresy"-ness, it's worth remembering that plenty of Chaos Marines cared so little about taking Terra that they didn't even go there (the Night Lords), or that once they were there, they completely ignored the war and went pillaging across an undefended world while all the fighting happened at the Palace (the Emperor's Children).

 

To use your exact words, Scribe, the Heresy "redefined the state of the universe" for the galaxy at large (even if a large chunk of the Imperium would consider it myth by the Dark Millennium). Individuals on either side won't view it the same way at all. To the Chaos Marines, it was just the first step (and not even a particularly proud one worth remembering) on a much longer, much more violent path. 

 

As I like to say, it's not black and white. The Heresy defined a lot of Chaos Marines, but as their first step, not as the crux of their lives. It was, ultimately, nothing but a moment in a long and twisted tale.

[Scribe]

I can buy that. Admittedly I knee jerked at 'a moment' even with it being an important, or the moment, or whatever, because any time I ever try and set the stage for a new person, or someone who isnt versed in this beloved setting, I roll it all back and start with "in the beginning....there was the heresy". :D

 

In the context of where I put 40K, it just all starts with the Heresy. Its my cornerstone, but I get that for those within, well life moves on, and it may be hard to look past the fact that your door just grew a face and is screaming at you to murder your brother...let alone all the world burning and growth as a character one would have to experience.

[Karthak]

Specifically, Chaos Marines in general are defined by the Heresy, but it's far from the only definition in their lives. It's one moment. One intensely important defining moment, but far from the reader-style continuum of Important-Event-then-End-Times. Abaddon, for example, is a character shaped not by the Heresy, but by everything that's come since. He's over Horus. He's surpassed the deceived Warmaster, with a far, far greater understanding of Chaos and the Powers That Be. The Black Legion itself is founded upon the principles of washing itself clean of the past, not making the same mistakes, and doing everything differently.

But...If the Black Legion doesn't give a diddly about the Heresy, why are they still fighting the Long War? Why do they call the Emperor False? Why does Abaddon want to topple the Master of Mankind? Sure, the Imperium is a pretty horrible place, but does Ezekyle honestly, truly, with sugar on top, believe it would be better for humanity if Chaos engulfed the entire galaxy?

 

Are there any survivors of the Long War who have come to consider the Heresy a mistake? Who, if they could do it all over again, would not betray the Emperor?

[A D-B]

 

Specifically, Chaos Marines in general are defined by the Heresy, but it's far from the only definition in their lives. It's one moment. One intensely important defining moment, but far from the reader-style continuum of Important-Event-then-End-Times. Abaddon, for example, is a character shaped not by the Heresy, but by everything that's come since. He's over Horus. He's surpassed the deceived Warmaster, with a far, far greater understanding of Chaos and the Powers That Be. The Black Legion itself is founded upon the principles of washing itself clean of the past, not making the same mistakes, and doing everything differently.

But...If the Black Legion doesn't give a diddly about the Heresy, why are they still fighting the Long War? Why do they call the Emperor False? Why does Abaddon want to topple the Master of Mankind? Sure, the Imperium is a pretty horrible place, but does Ezekyle honestly, truly, with sugar on top, believe it would be better for humanity if Chaos engulfed the entire galaxy?

 

Well, context. I've been careful - several times - to make it clear the Heresy's something immense and vital, not something they care nothing about. But that's the key: they're not rebels still fighting the Horus Heresy. They're Chaos Marines fighting the Long War. Different cultures, in a wildly different conflict.

 

Fighting the Long War, considering the Emperor false... Wanting to topple the Master of Mankind... You can do all of those things without it all being directly about the Heresy. It's not necessarily that black and white. They're doing those things because they want to, or they feel they should and it's their duty, or because they're bullied into it, or any one of a hundred reasons. The Heresy happened; the spark the started the fire, not the driving reason for everything else after it. Shades of grey, etc.

 

The Long War has very little directly to do with the Heresy, beyond the fact the Heresy was the spark that started the split, way back when. The Long War isn't Round II of the Heresy or anything like that - it's not even declared until after the Legion Wars in the Eye of Terror.

 

This is that whole "There's more to Chaos Marines than "Waaaaah! We lost the Heresy bajillions of years ago!" vibe.

 

The Heresy matters. Immensely. There's just also an eternity of other stuff that also matters, including new motives, new cultures, new societies, and new armies, that rise from the Heresy's loss. The Heresy starts the rockslide. It's not the whole avalanche.

[Plague Angel]

You also got factors like the Red Corsairs, who participate in the Long War without the Heresy being a factor for them at all. That's the war the Black Legion leads, now that they're no longer the Sons of Horus.

[b1soul]

Would love to read series about The Scouring, Nova Interregnum, and The Age of Apostasy

 

I believe the latter two occurred relatively closely?

[Conn Eremon]

NTI was mid M34 to late M35

 

AoA was early M36.

[Clone]

Finished this book a few days ago and I let it sit in my mind so I could process it. Gotta say I loved it. So many good points but I don't know how to use spoiler tags :-( 

[Emperor's Furor]

use [ spoiler ] to open and [ /spoiler ] to close without the spaces.

[b1soul]

NTI was mid M34 to late M35

 

AoA was early M36.

 

That's a lot of Galaxy-changing stuff occurring in a pretty short span.

 

The difference between "late M35" and early "M36" could be really small. I'm thinking a maybe a 400 year difference would be reasonable. I'd be surprised if the AoA occurred almost immediately after the NTI

[godking]

Got the book yesterday finished it today.

 

Best Graham McNeill book i have read.

 

The Knight Errant Iron Warrior was  a great character right most of the time but completly lacking in tact or empathy.

 

This book made me respect Horus more and the emperor less.

 

With the emperors clod like handling of things you would think that he wanted the heresy to occur.