Pre-Angron Twelth Legion

[Leif Bearclaw]

So I was rereading Betrayal the other day, and got curious about the pre-Primarch War Hounds Legion. Is there much else published about them, and how they were before the transition into the World Eaters?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Marshal Loss]

Your best bet is to read HH7: Inferno - they and the Space Wolves have some interested parallels, and the pre-Primarch World Eaters pop up a few times in the course of the VI Legion narrative. The War Hounds were held up as the epitome of controlled, noble aggression, while the Wolves were savages who killed each other as often as the enemy: and then their Primarchs came...

[SkimaskMohawk]

Betrayer is also pretty interesting at the look it gives on Legion Master Lhorke, the only space marine known to specialize in chopping of wood.

[Leif Bearclaw]

Sorry, should've been clearer, I meant Black Library/non FW stuff. I've got, and repeatedly read, all 7 of the FW black books. In fact it was the little aside about the War Hounds' holding action vs the Psybirds in Tempest that kinda kick started this current info search, with Betrayal being the obvious first step.

 

So is it just Betrayer then? No random little short stories buried in some anthology etc.?

[Knight of the Raven]

As much as I wish A D-B wrote an entire novel about the War Hounds before Angron or even better, an alternate universe where he never got the butcher's nails, lore on the War Hounds comes down a few snippets in Betrayer and, from what I've read, After Desh'ea.

 

I just so happen to have created a file with the former's references to Lhorke back when I read it; spoilers ahead.

 

 

 

They were also the Wounded. The Failures. The ones who endured their handlers whispering binaric code-words such as 'unstable' and 'volatile' and 'terminal degradation'.
That's why they weren't on the surface. That's why they were kept in stasis. They were the oldest, the first, before the techniques had been perfected.
-Betrayer, p. 151

 

World Eaters. Lhorke still felt an intruder to that name. He'd lived and died as a War Hound, in the decades before Angron, before they took the name Eaters of Worlds to honour the primarch's slain rebel army, the Eaters of Cities.
-Betrayer, p. 152

 

Lhorke had fallen in battle thirty years before the primarch's arrival.
-Betrayer, p. 153

 

Lhorke had been slumbering in the first of his necessary respites by the time they orbited Angron's worthless little world. They'd woken him, though. They'd woken all of the first ones in the weeks after Angron's arrival. The Legion had never known a more momentous event.
-Betrayer, p. 167

 

"The dead men separated at last, walking through corridors as familiar to Lhorke as anything in life. This ship - back in the age it bore the name Adamant Resolve - had been his to command."
-Betrayer, p. 178

 

'That isn't an axe,' Orfeo laughed at one point. He parried another one of Khârn's cuts, and the World Eater heard the smile in the other warrior's voice. 'Look at you with that blade. Always trying the edge. However did you earn your reputation, Khârn? Who trained you to fight as though all foes were lumber to be chopped?'
Khârn lashed back with three cuts, as quick as his burning muscles would allow. Each one clanged as it was blocked and turned aside.
'Lhorke,' he said, 'Legion Master of the War Hounds.'
Their blades locked again, and Khârn found himself glad of the moment's respite. He tried to catch his breath, but Orfeo disengaged with a flourishing spin, launching immediately into another barrage of blows.
'Lhorke is dead,' Orfeo voxed from his helm's grille. 'Lhorke died on Jeracau.'
-Betrayer, p .188

 

 

[Caillum]

^ Concur with KotR & SkimaskMohawk here. Betrayer is one of the Horus Heresy's finest novels (though you know this as you're re-reading it). After Desh'ea has a few great snippets about the War Hounds, and is IMHO one of the best short stories in the series.

[Sandlemad]

After Desh'ea is very good and a huge influence on some of the best bits of Betrayer. Not a huge amount of detail on the pre-primarch Warhounds but it does have a snippets: their honour guard's particular apparel, the names of some of the upper command (everyone above Khârn, basically) and how they anticipated having a primarch.

 

It also has Khârn retelling one of their campaigns under the Emperor, fighting weird worm-xenos alongside the Iron Warriors, which is interesting. They're fighty - Khârn grins when he says that their "axes weren't dry for a month" - but not berzerkers. It also covers how they got the 'Warhounds' cognomen, though this is different to the imperial view in FW's Betrayer.

 

The author's blog has a nice bit of thought about writing it:

 

"Other elements came in almost out of nowhere.  There’s a fair amount of material on the pre-Heresy World Eaters, but almost nothing on the Great Crusade pre-Angron World Eaters, and I needed to develop that a little since their reaction to their Primarch would be so grounded in their existing Legion culture and practices. 

 

In the first draft I’d gone for a very barbaric feel for them, with lots of bare arms, rawhide, ceremonial melee weapons and so on, but in the second I revised that since it seemed a more interesting contrast to make them a much more formal, traditional military in contrast to what they later became.  The second draft was also when the War Hounds name came in, and was such a sweet and natural fit with the existing story elements that I wondered how I’d finished a draft without it."

 

EDIT: Never noticed that the B&C spellcheck adds the circumflex to Khârn, wowsers.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I think the OP has only read the 1st campaign book Betrayal not the novel Betrayer

[bluntblade]

Well, he's missing out

[SkimaskMohawk]

I agree, honestly Lord of the Red Sands is excellent too, even though its from Angron's POV during Istvaan III

[bluntblade]

Sounds good