The War in the Webway

[karden00]

I am giving Master of Mankind another go, and something occurred to me:
How did Horus get access to the Webway? 

I fully expect I might just be missing a detail, but MoM takes a mainly Imperial point of view, other than Drach'nyen, but do we ever find out how Horus and the bad guys got in there? 

 

[Donkey Kong]

Magnus broke the Emperor's wards. It's the prologue of the book, referred to as Magnus's Folly. I'm sure A D-B can give a better explanation since it is, after all, his book. But, my metaphor would be the Warp is an infinitely large ocean, the Webway is an infinitely large hamster tube cage sitting in said ocean, Magnus cracked the tube, and daemons poured in.

 

As for how Horus got access to the Webway, I don't think he did. The only traitor space marines in MoM are World Eaters, and I don't know how World Eaters got there either. Their presence reads as either a coincidence or an oversight, so the World Eaters just happen to have been going that way (and it works because Angron is used as a peripheral talking point for Land's consultation and Ra's insults) or A D-B and whoever he was consulting with didn't think things through. If it was a planned out campaign (I don't think it was), and Horus knew about the Webway and where it lead (I don't think he did), I don't know why he wouldn't attack from that direction. Also, when the Daemons start winning, they fall into infighting as Chaos does.

[1ncarnadine]

There are Sons of Horus in the webway in MoM as well as the World Eaters. I think maybe others are referenced... and the Legio Audax made it in there, even.

 

I'm guessing Horus learned of the Webway through dark rituals... and/or Lorgar. Probably Lorgar, actually. I think Diocletian actually curses Lorgar's name for there being traitor Astartes in the Webway, at one point.

 

It was definitely something some Traitors planned, anyway. Not necessarily Horus, but I think it's most likely that he had some knowledge. Definitely those Traitors most in thrall to Chaos, at any rate. 

[bluntblade]

LYD is almost totally right, except that it's Saggitarus who infers Lorgar was responsible, not Diocletian. Magnus blew open the gate he found on that world on his way to Terra; the Traitors could very well have found and used that.

[A D-B]

There are Sons of Horus in the webway in MoM as well as the World Eaters. I think maybe others are referenced... and the Legio Audax made it in there, even.

 

I'm guessing Horus learned of the Webway through dark rituals... and/or Lorgar. Probably Lorgar, actually. I think Diocletian actually curses Lorgar's name for there being traitor Astartes in the Webway, at one point.

 

It was definitely something some Traitors planned, anyway. Not necessarily Horus, but I think it's most likely that he had some knowledge. Definitely those Traitors most in thrall to Chaos, at any rate. 

 

Yep, and...

 

LYD is almost totally right, except that it's Saggitarus who infers Lorgar was responsible, not Diocletian. 

 

...yep. 

 

They're also there in the old artwork and the old lore, so in they went into the novel. 

[bluntblade]

Link please? I haven't seen that artwork.

[karden00]

Great, thanks so much! I’m just about done my second go around, and I gotta say, that one detail eluded me. I was indeed asking about traitors, not daemons, whose presence is made perfectly clear from the outset, and I don’t mind at all that from the protagonists point of view, it’s an ‘oh :cuss, traitors too!’ But I was less clear on whether or not this had been addressed in another work.

As for old webway art, yes please, share away!

[Brother Captain Kezef]

The traitors have sided with daemons and they have access to the webway already. The Eldar have sealed the portions that they use but much of the webway is open to incursions.

 

Magnus' actions did not allow daemons into the webway, it wrecked the Emperor's wards and protections stopping them getting into the Imperial sections.

[karden00]

Is that how it worked though?

I’m not looking to challenge, only to clarify.

Wasn’t the whole point of the webway that it bypassed the need for warp travel?

Makes it a little strange that daemons just seem to have access to it by default?

[A D-B]

Is that how it worked though?

I’m not looking to challenge, only to clarify.

Wasn’t the whole point of the webway that it bypassed the need for warp travel?

Makes it a little strange that daemons just seem to have access to it by default?

 

Originally, yeah, you're dead right. But with the Fall of the Eldar (dun dun dunnnnn!) "something went wrong".

 

Essentially, even in M31, the webway isn't in great shape. Whole sections of it are flooded with daemons, which would've eventually needed cleaning our or warding against once the Emperor overtook the whole thing. Other parts are sealed up, like entrances aboard the Craftworlds that got swallowed up by the expanding Eye of Terror when it first kaboomed. And on that note, a lot of the webway (arguably its core, given the location in relation to the Eldar Empire) is literally in the Eye of Terror. That's where a lot of the daemons get into its broken tubes and pipes and corridors and whatever else.

 

One of the coolest things about life in the Eye of Terror, for Chaos Marines at least, is that you have these shattered, yawning openings of the webway half-visible out of the corner of their vision from time to time. But going through the webway these days, especially these collapsed/ruined/darker.disconnected parts, would be supremely dangerous without guides.

 

But yeah, specifically in M31, daemons have still gotten in there. And Magnus shattering the Emperor's wards over the Imperial Webway let them get into that bit, too. 

 

Bad times.

[Xisor]

There's also the small detail of... temporal shenanigans.

 

The Astartes and Titans in the MoM could arguably be a lot (by order of many millennia) older than any of the other Astartes and Titans *not* encountered in MoM.

 

It's not at all intimated that that's the case (if memory serves), but it's one of those plausible things - if the warp is involved, a linear narrative and causality isn't inherently protected!

 

Fundamentally, from a roleplay-mechanical point of view, all of this (from the scattering of Primarchs, via Magnus catastrophic message, right through to the Emperor's eternal incarceration on the Golden Throne)... all of it could be chalked up to the PCs rolling abysmally on psychic phenomena/perils of the warp tests.

[A D-B]

There's also the small detail of... temporal shenanigans.

 

The Astartes and Titans in the MoM could arguably be a lot (by order of many millennia) older than any of the other Astartes and Titans *not* encountered in MoM.

 

It's not at all intimated that that's the case (if memory serves), but it's one of those plausible things - if the warp is involved, a linear narrative and causality isn't inherently protected!

 

Fundamentally, from a roleplay-mechanical point of view, all of this (from the scattering of Primarchs, via Magnus catastrophic message, right through to the Emperor's eternal incarceration on the Golden Throne)... all of it could be chalked up to the PCs rolling abysmally on psychic phenomena/perils of the warp tests.

 

You are my everything.

[Mellow]

I always imagine the Warp as a large tank of water of infinite size and complexity and the webway is a series of tunnels or hosepipes going between different points in that 3D space. I always presumed those tunnels twist and move when pushed in the eddies of the warps currents.

[bluntblade]

Has Chris Wraight ever clarified whose minds were those reeeally alien ones Arvida brushed against?

[Carach]

they wont ever be clarified. 

 

that's ancients of ancients.. could be remnant races and/or races that now constitute parts of the Cabal