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The Siege of Terra: Solar War


Izlude

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So is Jubal Terran or Chogorian? In Warhawk, a big deal is made of Jubal as he is a Terran recruit who looks, acts, and sounds like a Chogorian...but in Solar War, Jubal receives a Chogorian blade from his father. So unless his father is a Terran collector of off-world blades, this is a rather glaring error.

 

Changshi took the knife, looking at it, the reflection of the crescent blade caught in his grey eyes. It was a beautiful weapon, made on Chogoris and fitted with a power field generator by the Legion smiths. It had been Jubal’s father’s, given to him when he left his family and his humanity behind. Now the young warrior, who bore a Chogorian name but had never seen its skies, looked at it and realisation formed in his eyes.

 

 

He's not Chogorian. How could he be if he's "never seen its skies"?

@Lord Caerlion: that bit's referring to Changshi, Jubal's equerry, not Jubal himself. Changshi was recruited mid-heresy from "a nameless ocean world".

 

Seems like it is an unfortunate slipup, particularly when Jubal's Terran ancestry was such an interesting feature of Wraight's primarch novel and he got a short if decent showing in Path of Heaven. Perhaps doubly so when he was a character originally created by French in his Templar audio drama.

 

A shame but not the end of the world, kind of what happens with characters' homeworlds. Same thing occurred with Fabius being Chemosian in the dramatis personae for Talon of Horus but Terran in the heresy/40k novels. Or back and forth two or three times with Typhus being Barbaran or Terran in the old IA article/Lords of Silence/The Buried Dagger. Some of these are more consequential than others but there's rarely profit in rationalising them away when they are so clearly minor errors.

I just finished it. Hands down on par with Slaves to Darkness. John French outdid himself. If the other Siege novels are half as good it will be a victory.

 

One thing I really appreciated about the book was that they used it as an opportunity to set the board again on the chaos stuff. Only the word beaters and corrupted legions are dialed to eleven. The sons and iron Warriors are still very much traditional fighting forces fighting conventionally.

I just finished it. Hands down on par with Slaves to Darkness. John French outdid himself. If the other Siege novels are half as good it will be a victory.

 

One thing I really appreciated about the book was that they used it as an opportunity to set the board again on the chaos stuff. Only the word beaters and corrupted legions are dialed to eleven. The sons and iron Warriors are still very much traditional fighting forces fighting conventionally.

 

That's good to hear. It adds to the more interesting vibe of the Traitor army being less united than Horus would like and more like a mixed bag of self-interested 'allies' alongside religious zealots, neither of whom the Warmaster can fully control. Do the Loyalist come across as far more unified? It would add to the feeling that Horus wasn't wrong in bemoaning his getting the short end of the straw in terms of Primarchs and Legions.

To be honest the traitors do come off as fairly united in the sense that they're professionals aiming at the big prize with high stakes. Perturabo and Aximand are the architects of the strike on the system's edge. Apart from some grumbling about logistics or about all the work the IVth put into holding back the Ultramarines, and Aximand dropping a few mild barbs to goad the IVth, they work together pretty well. Same with the other force of SoH/WB and Thousand Sons. A good bit of sniping at each other but they're competent and collaborating seriously, even as warped as the Word Bearers are.

 

There are POV sections from relatively new recruits in the SoH and they're practically savages so the rot has set in, but overall because of who gets the attention, you're not seeing the absolute depravity of Slaves to Darkness. By contrast you do see snippets of Emperor's Children and Night Lords ships, along with a bunch of blackshields or other 'non-legion' forces, and they're portrayed as undisciplined reavers whose nature has been factored into the larger plans.

 

The loyalists don't come off as disunited but then the Blood Angels hardly feature, and both Dorn and the Khan agree that the Vth legion forces are largely best off doing what they do best as roving 'Falcon fleets'.

Or it might not be. What does it matter? The Horus clone theory was always tenuous and the stuff of myth even in-setting. Khayon floats the idea that he (40k Abaddon) might have been a creation of Fabius, with the true Ezekyle having been slain in his pilgrimage. As the big man says himself:

 

 

 

‘And if I were, brother – if I were merely Horus remade, recrafted, with a twist in my gene-code here and an alteration there, would it change anything?’

What if...it's exactly as described?

 

Yeah, that's fine. 

 

But for anyone that does like the idea of Abaddon being a Horus clone in some way, it's not exactly mental gymnastics to make it "work." I personally don't subscribe to that one, either.

The likeliest course is that XVIth legion geneseed makes facial structure and stature change in some legionaries that makes them look more like Horus. The same way Blood Angels go into their coffins hairless, irradiated nearly feral scavengers and come out looking like Chris Hemsworth.

The likeliest course is that XVIth legion geneseed makes facial structure and stature change in some legionaries that makes them look more like Horus. The same way Blood Angels go into their coffins hairless, irradiated nearly feral scavengers and come out looking like Chris Hemsworth.

This is actually the case, going right back to Horus Rising. Originally to be a Son of Horus was to really resemble the Primarch. Aximand was the most pronounced example, but Torgaddon, Marr, Mor, Abaddon and every Mournival member prior to Loken came under that banner.

 

The likeliest course is that XVIth legion geneseed makes facial structure and stature change in some legionaries that makes them look more like Horus. The same way Blood Angels go into their coffins hairless, irradiated nearly feral scavengers and come out looking like Chris Hemsworth.

This is actually the case, going right back to Horus Rising. Originally to be a Son of Horus was to really resemble the Primarch. Aximand was the most pronounced example, but Torgaddon, Marr, Mor, Abaddon and every Mournival member prior to Loken came under that banner.

 

 

There does seem to be quite a variety in how pronounced that 'Son of Horus' effect is. Interestingly we now have a slightly more detailed description of Sejanus's appearance from when he picked up Abaddon as a ganger in the tunnels.

 

"The man's skin was the black of polished cinder-wood. A close cropped mohawk of hair ran across his scalp. Wide, silver-grey eyes glittered above a smile."

 

In False Gods his grey eyes (and how good-looking he is) were noted as his main distinctive feature but his nose is called out as being a particularly Horus-like feature: "He was exactly as Horus remembered him, perfect in every detail: the noble face, wide set eyes and firm, straight nose that could be a mirror for the Warmaster himself."

 

So a noble mien, a Horus-like nose, but darker skin.

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