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Heresy Outcome


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So I can't understand how the Emperor stuffed up stopping horus, see below some of his options/mistakes, I'm sure I can think of more. 

 

1) He had the gene tech he gave Corax, why didn't he sent Valdor & the Custodes (eliminate possibility of Alpha Legion operatives interfering) to retrieve it & use it to pump out as many Astartes of the loyal legions as he could, they would run out of power armour before warriors with this.

 

2) Why not recreate the Thunder Warriors & bring Arik Taranis back (the return of Arik might happen in one of the books)?

 

3) Why did he not immediately withdraw from the webway and close the portal, rather then try and fight a hopeless war and lose 9/10s of the custodes for nothing, only then have to close it anyway.

 

4) Turn every guardsmen into a terminator style cyborg, ie. into servitors/skitarri without being mind-wiped.

 

To me these the 1st 2 are glaring options he had that Horus had no counter to & the 3rd was just common sense.  Why the hell he chose to access the webway from Terra is idiotic anyway.  - To clarify, don't put your first gate on Terra put it on some backwater, for 2 reasons, it goes pear shaped it's no loss & security would be far easier.

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1) The custodes are not invincible themselves and could have been ambushed, deceived or what nots.

 

2) He put the Thunder Warriors down for a reason given their instability. Recreating them only to have to go through the process of cleaning up all over again doesn’t seem plausible when he already had loyal legions to do the work. That and possibly his resources might have already been stretched too thin to accomplish this.

 

3) Having an entrance on Terra was the entire point. It was meant to be the way of totally getting rid of humanity’s dependency on the warp and navigators. You don’t make a road network and exclude the capital from it, you make the capital its centre.

 

4) He fought over the webway for the reason above, it was worth trying to salvage it for the long term rewards, but sometimes these things just don’t work out.

 

5) it’s fiction, being written by flawed human beings who won’t always get it right

I think having the first entrance in Terra was stupid put it in some back water system so if things go wrong its no loss. Once the ability to hack the webway is perfected then you connect Terra. They knew they were outnumbered with whole legions unaccounted for, making more thunder warriors would have made sense then you simply bleed them dry in the scouring.

The problem with shunting a project like the Webway - which was kept as secret as possible - to a random backwater system to mitigate the risks is that the further you have to travel to get things to-and-from it, the more the chances of the projects existence leaking increases.

 

Which is why it was under the Imperial Palace. The Emperor would have total control on who could see what/when/where and be able to just pretty much off anyone who wasnt supposed to be there.

 

Its also literally the center of his powerbase where he stored the most advanced and arcane tech at his disposal. Having to displace any of them via warp transit, should he require any of it, for the webway project to a random backwater also opens it up to the risk of just getting lost in the warp. AKA No Bueno.

 

Also, it was a high risk high reward project. If it all went to hell on the backwater and something went catastrophically wrong, then, guess what, there might have been a 2nd Eye of Terror.

 

Lets also not forget that the Astronomicon is based on Terra which is kinda run by the Emperor. So, y'know.

To be fair the project was humming along more or less successfully till Magnus broke the damn thing. It was then that the “oh poop” dial went to 12. The Emperor was not omnipotent so it’s plausible he didn’t account for something so unlikely like that happening at all.

To be fair the project was humming along more or less successfully till Magnus broke the damn thing. It was then that the “oh poop” dial went to 12. The Emperor was not omnipotent so it’s plausible he didn’t account for something so unlikely like that happening at all.

Yeah, Magnus breaking through the psychic wards of the Imperial Palace. Can't really just up and move/replicate those somewhere else without a LOT of effort.

 

The reason the project was held on terra was multifaceted but Logistics and Security were probably at the top of the "reasons why" pile.

Also...the Thunder Warriors were gene flawed also. They essentially had a “half life” and would die out. They were utter, horrific sledgehammers of the Terran Unification Wars. Against Astartes they’d not struggle.....but would be seriously outnumbered! The resources needed to simply “create” enough would be crazy!

 

BCC

I think a lot of this may depend pretty heavily on a matrix of 'risk, loss, and gain' like almost everything else.  

 

1.) It's a generally good question why the gene-tech wasn't better protected.  Valdor is a very important individual, and after the Drop Site massacre someone like him would be in very high demand, not babysitting some lab tech.  More over, the Emperor seemed pretty reluctant to give the gene-tech over in the first place, so it may have just been a matter of a lack of mobile resources in the first place.  Custodes were already being hard pressed for the Webway fight at the time, so basically everything seemed to be going wrong and Alpha showed up early enough to really cause mayhem. 

 

2.) The thunder Warriors are dangerous dogs/fighters/warriors, but they were no astartes.  They didn't work as well in the non-direct combat role as astartes, they were more unstable, they burned out sooner, I can imagine they were probably never in the same number of as easy to maintain.  Astartes weren't as individually strong, but in their element they work better as Battle Captain Corpus pointed out.  I can't recall the exact source but I do remember one book (I want to say Master of Mankind but I've been wrong before) mentioning the Thunder Warriors acting as a single infantry horde that opened fire to create a sound like thunder, then rushed in to do the wet work themselves.  But it was mentioned immediately afterward that against the aliens and highly advanced civilizations the Great Crusade would encounter, they'd be cut apart and butchered with ease.  They are a a sledgehammer to the sword that is the astartes. 

 

With that said, I'd be willing to bet that a smaller more contained personal guard of Thunder Warriors to supplement the custodes at the palace would have likely been an incredibly useful investment.  

 

3.)  Closing the portal would have likely meant giving up on the project that was to ensure the future of mankind in the long term.  Essentially, the Emperor didn't seem to want to give up on the dream just because of Horus, and if he gave that much ground there, it may have sealed the webway to Terra for a time but perhaps not forever and perhaps not to all the other tributary paths that led from the Impossible City.  Beyond that, the project on Terra was a completely solid and proven plan for a large scale deployment.  The Emperor did already make a secondary test run in a secluded system under the cover of absolute secrecy, Dark Glass.  Terra was the scale up, the completion project for a proof of concept that had worked.  The fact that Magnus did so much damage was nearly unthinkable. 

 

Stopping Horus earlier seems like it would have been possible in some ways, but in others it could have just led to more Drop Site and Calth style massacres.  Horus was one of the best war tacticians and his main battlefield coordination rival was dead (in Vengeful Spirit, Horus openly stated that Manus could have matched him as a battlefield general).  Horus needed to be ground down, stretched, and his forces strangled to make it a sure win for the Imperialists or else it could have led to a Long War with Horus Lupercal and not Ezekyle Abaddon in charge: and that leadership may have been devastating in the long run. 

Great points. As many mention we're working backwards here, trying to add a sensible story to a one liner except 30 years ago that became canon but I think there's one option on how and why can this make sense thanks to Laurie Goulding and ADB:

 

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SPOILERS + SPECULATION

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1. The Heresy was planned to wipe out space marines in a manner that the Emperor doesn't look like a monster for killing the heroes of the galaxy

2. The Emperor never was worried about Horus attacking, the only war that mattered was the Webway, and it was going great before the Cyclops

3. After the Webway is broken the gene tech is lost already and the Emperor is bound to the throne forever

 

Why not do the Webway in some backwater world? He actually did: Darkglass, that's how the Khan gets to Terra by bypassing the enemy lines.

 

Terra would always be the centre, and the tech worked. Magnus was the only unexpected variable that destroyed a perfect plan.

 

1. The Heresy was planned to wipe out space marines in a manner that the Emperor doesn't look like a monster for killing the heroes of the galaxy

 

The issues with this idea (and BL were stupid imo for introducing it), boil down to 'why?' and 'that's a terrible plan'. Why do you need to wipe out the Space Marines? Empy would have to be spectacularly naive (which would go against pretty much all his characterisation) to think that once the Great Crusade was concluded there would be no more need for war or elite armies (as we see in 40k, with the arrival of new forces like the Nids and Necrons). Surely it would make more sense to post them as frontier guards/garrisons/govenors/long range patrols (depending on Legion and temperament) and let time and slowed recruitment gradually reduce the scale of the Legions to that of a standing army rather than a Crusading force. But if you need to cull the Marines (or a part thereof), engineering a civil war where a bunch of your highly charismatic demi god sons/sentient weapons (depending on your interpretation of the Primarchs) turn on you is just a terrible way to go about it. Isolate individual units/groups and annihilate them by surprise, rig their ships to fail and destroy them in transit etc., there are far better, safer ways to go about purging your military than provoking half of it into open rebellion.

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

 

Just curious, where is this from?

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?

When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?

When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.

 

 

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?

When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.

 

 

So Im assuming the Master of Mankind then?

 

1. The Heresy was planned to wipe out space marines in a manner that the Emperor doesn't look like a monster for killing the heroes of the galaxy

 

The issues with this idea (and BL were stupid imo for introducing it), boil down to 'why?' and 'that's a terrible plan'. Why do you need to wipe out the Space Marines? Empy would have to be spectacularly naive (which would go against pretty much all his characterisation) to think that once the Great Crusade was concluded there would be no more need for war or elite armies (as we see in 40k, with the arrival of new forces like the Nids and Necrons). Surely it would make more sense to post them as frontier guards/garrisons/govenors/long range patrols (depending on Legion and temperament) and let time and slowed recruitment gradually reduce the scale of the Legions to that of a standing army rather than a Crusading force. But if you need to cull the Marines (or a part thereof), engineering a civil war where a bunch of your highly charismatic demi god sons/sentient weapons (depending on your interpretation of the Primarchs) turn on you is just a terrible way to go about it. Isolate individual units/groups and annihilate them by surprise, rig their ships to fail and destroy them in transit etc., there are far better, safer ways to go about purging your military than provoking half of it into open rebellion.

 

 

Yes only Sigismund understood the Crusade would NEVER end, they would be fighting to keep what the conquered, how some of the primarch failed to understand this is beyond me.  And even if the Milky Way was pacified Andromeda is next.

 

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?
When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.
Close, but it's actually Saggitarus. He was a Custodian before Ra was recruited.

 

I'll try and get a quote after breakfast.

Half of the Space Marine Legions went over to chaos. These are Space Marine. Supposed to be more reliable and disciplined than Thunder Warriors. Bringing back the Thunder Warriors would see a high risk of them falling to chaos (I can imagine them corrupted by Khorne) seeing as how they are so much more unstable and violent.

 

 

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?
When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

Just curious, where is this from?
When Ra joins the Emperor before he executes the Priest king.

So Im assuming the Master of Mankind then?
Yes, indeed. Chapter 6. It starts on page 103 on my eBook version. Ra is with the Emperor in a vision and and goes to warn the first dreadnaught about Drach’nyen.

Thanks for the replies I read them all. Just got my copy of malevolence (can I quote lore for it or is that like posting spoilers?) I can only conclude the Emperor wanted some kind of "heresy" to happen so he is worshiped as a god to empower him to defeat the gods of chaos.

 

As for the Thunder Warriors and chaos, Arik says to the Navigator "that won't work on me" when referring to her warp eye so I have assumed the thunder warriors were immune to the warp. The warriors that Navigator killed at in the outcast dead were not thunder warriors they were gene bulked mutants with all the failings of normal men.

 

One for one the Thunder warriors totally outclassed Astartes putting them on the walls of the Palace to be used as Traitor/Deamon fodder would have played to their strengths perfectly. Their half life is irrelevant as this is a fight for the survival of mankind every resource will be used, on that note if Arik is not mentioned in the Solar War books at the siege I will be extremely -][- DELETED -][- off.

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