Mortis

[Angel_of_Blood]

I just don’t know how anyone can stand Audios. All the ones I listened to out of necessity, like before they were released on paper in anthologies, had me rolling my eyes and trying to suppress long sighs. Keebles Garro sounded constipated, Varren was a truly awful Cockney geezer, and the White Scar was some really awful stereotype Asian accent that I’d expect to hear in Team America or Family Guy.

 

A narrated book I can deal with. Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter, good stuff! But audio dramas with accents and sound effects? Nooooooope.

[MillionsSons]

Hello - reading Mortis now but I had to stop at two third of the book when we know what Corswain’s plan was.

 

I need some help to make sense of the below:

- when/how did the Astronomicon fell to the renegades? There is an entire book for each of the spatioport falling to Horus but we only know about the Astronomican thanks to Corswain lol

 

- as a critical piece of the Imperium, how come the astronomicon is not, well, inside the palace?

 

Most importantly....

- Only condition of Victory for the loyalists is that Guilliman reaches Terra in time... but they are unaware that the Astronomican is taken by the enemy???

 

It doesn’t make any sense to me

Edited July 20, 2021 by MillionsSons

[Lucien Eilam]

as a critical piece of the Imperium, how come the astronomicon is not, well, inside the palace?

 

 

The Astronomican was only ever a temporary solution until the Imperial Webway became viable. It’s built into a mountain, on what should have been the safest planet in the Imperium. Even with all the Traitors’ advantages, it still took like 7 years or whatever to get anywhere near Terra. The Palace wasn’t built as a fortress, so it wouldn’t have been any more secure there.

 

So, it wasn’t at risk when it was constructed, and by the time it was, they couldn’t move it, and didn’t have the resources to hold both it and the Palace at once.

 

Lose the Palace and they lose Terra and the war. Lose the Astronomican and there’s at least a slim hope it lasted long enough for the Ultramarines to get close enough to figure something out. Warp navigation is extremely high risk and unreliable without a beacon, but it’s not impossible. 

 

 

when/how did the Astronomicon fell to the renegades?

 

 

It falls after Corswain arrives in the system and makes contact with the remnants of the Solar fleet. That’s mentioned in chapter 5. You’ll know who it fell to by the end – Corswain doesn’t know until he gets there.

 

As for the how, we don’t see it happen, but capturing the Astronomican probably wasn’t much of a battle – the Loyalists are fighting a losing battle even with all their forces at the Palace, the rest of the planet is pretty much abandoned to its fate.

 

 

they are unaware that the Astronomican is taken by the enemy?

 

 

I’m sure they’d be aware, but they’re on the ropes, with lone Blood Angels trying to hold wall sections with the ragtag remnants of conscript units. They couldn’t spare the 10,000 Legionaries Corswain used to recapture it, and don’t have the mobility to get them halfway round the planet if they did.

 

So, we could have had a scene where Dorn and Malcador go “Astronomican has gone out, we’re screwed without it, what can we do about it? nothing”, but it wouldn’t have added much to the scene where Corswain concludes “Astronomican has gone out, we’re screwed without it, what can we do about it? rally the fleet and take it back”.

 

Might have been nice to have it acknowledged and see how Dorn, etc. react, but basically exactly the same conversation, only without any possibility of action.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Lucien Eilam

[DarkChaplain]

Frankly, it SHOULD have been discussed by Malcador, Dorn and Sanguinius at the very least. They're all desperately banking on Guilliman reaching Terra, and this would have completely disrupted those hopes of Roboute ever making it in time with his fleet - which had to be both large enough and mostly intact and not arrive piecemeal to be taken out of action by the traitor fleets.

 

This whole "we're doomed" realization is vital to the story. They've been clinging to this ONE hope for 4 books of the Siege already. Four books, with some exceedingly lengthy ones. And nobody could be bothered to actually integrate the fall of the beacon into the narrative before its recapture. It doesn't even make sense that Dorn would make gambles in Saturnine when arguably the most important tool to their victory is either at risk or already lost. Why the hell would he shorten the timespan they can hold out by months, by way of sacrificing another star port? The Hollow Mountain should have been one of the most well-defended bastions in the first place, and it makes zero sense that Dorn wouldn't have spent his 7+ years fortifying the damned thing - or alternatively, experiment with ways to move the Astronomican into the Palace proper by whichever means. This isn't something Dorn would have no contingency plans on.

[MillionsSons]

Frankly, it SHOULD have been discussed by Malcador, Dorn and Sanguinius at the very least. They're all desperately banking on Guilliman reaching Terra, and this would have completely disrupted those hopes of Roboute ever making it in time with his fleet - which had to be both large enough and mostly intact and not arrive piecemeal to be taken out of action by the traitor fleets.

 

This whole "we're doomed" realization is vital to the story. They've been clinging to this ONE hope for 4 books of the Siege already. ....This isn't something Dorn would have no contingency plans on.

 

Yup, completely agree. Thanks for confirming I didn’t miss anything ( although I was hoping I had!)

Good point for Saturnine.

[MillionsSons]

 

as a critical piece of the Imperium, how come the astronomicon is not, well, inside the palace?

 

The Astronomican was only ever a temporary solution until the Imperial Webway became viable. It’s built into a mountain, on what should have been the safest planet in the Imperium. Even with all the Traitors’ advantages, it still took like 7 years or whatever to get anywhere near Terra. The Palace wasn’t built as a fortress, so it wouldn’t have been any more secure there.

 

So, it wasn’t at risk when it was constructed, and by the time it was, they couldn’t move it, and didn’t have the resources to hold both it and the Palace at once.

 

Lose the Palace and they lose Terra and the war. Lose the Astronomican and there’s at least a slim hope it lasted long enough for the Ultramarines to get close enough to figure something out. Warp navigation is extremely high risk and unreliable without a beacon, but it’s not impossible.

 

when/how did the Astronomicon fell to the renegades?

 

It falls after Corswain arrives in the system and makes contact with the remnants of the Solar fleet. That’s mentioned in chapter 5. You’ll know who it fell to by the end – Corswain doesn’t know until he gets there.

 

As for the how, we don’t see it happen, but capturing the Astronomican probably wasn’t much of a battle – the Loyalists are fighting a losing battle even with all their forces at the Palace, the rest of the planet is pretty much abandoned to its fate.

 

they are unaware that the Astronomican is taken by the enemy?

 

I’m sure they’d be aware, but they’re on the ropes, with lone Blood Angels trying to hold wall sections with the ragtag remnants of conscript units. They couldn’t spare the 10,000 Legionaries Corswain used to recapture it, and don’t have the mobility to get them halfway round the planet if they did.

 

So, we could have had a scene where Dorn and Malcador go “Astronomican has gone out, we’re screwed without it, what can we do about it? nothing”, but it wouldn’t have added much to the scene where Corswain concludes “Astronomican has gone out, we’re screwed without it, what can we do about it? rally the fleet and take it back”.

 

Might have been nice to have it acknowledged and see how Dorn, etc. react, but basically exactly the same conversation, only without any possibility of action.

Thanks for the huge effort to try to make sense of it

[SkimaskMohawk]

Kind of makes First Wall even worse in retrospect.

 

"I can't possibly destroy the port that's a massive defensive weakness; we might need it for guilliman to save us even though that'll mean he has orbital supremacy and has already won. But I can't fortify the astronomicon; it's the only thing that can actually get him to terra to save us!"

 

Man I hate the first wall. Butchered some characters in the service of a premise that makes no sense.

[MillionsSons]

Kind of makes First Wall even worse in retrospect.

 

"I can't possibly destroy the port that's a massive defensive weakness; we might need it for guilliman to save us even though that'll mean he has orbital supremacy and has already won. But I can't fortify the astronomicon; it's the only thing that can actually get him to terra to save us!"

 

Man I hate the first wall. Butchered some characters in the service of a premise that makes no sense.

Oh at least the Astronomicon was mentionned there!

 

My issue with First wall was how the renegades breached in. This was not detailed. Only thing we know is that 100,000+ beast men charged forward, and somehow a hole was made in the spatioport... then Forrix and his company sneaked in.

[Fire Golem]

I had a lot of the same questions reading Mortis, fwiw. I didn’t think Corswain/the Astronomicon section was particularly well handled.

[Fedor]

The whole plotline gave the impression of something clumsily shoehorned in to give the Dark Angels some presence on Terra. It was at least hinted at in Dreadwing, but nobody even hinted at it in previous books, nor did French make any effort to properly establish it as a vital front in Mortis.

 

Kind of makes First Wall even worse in retrospect.

"I can't possibly destroy the port that's a massive defensive weakness; we might need it for guilliman to save us even though that'll mean he has orbital supremacy and has already won. But I can't fortify the astronomicon; it's the only thing that can actually get him to terra to save us!"

Man I hate the first wall. Butchered some characters in the service of a premise that makes no sense.

Sometimes i think no matter what is being discussed, a portion of the fanbase will find some way to make it about blaming or laying into Gav Thorpe.

[DukeLeto69]

I too was like “wait? What?” When the Astronomicon section in Mortis started.

 

This isn’t only on French or arguably previously published books. It IS on ALL those involved in planning out the SoT series because we are told how much planning has gone into this. It would appear they all forgot about the Astronomicon being taken by Horus’ forces until Mortis. Hmmm dropped the plot ball there gang!

[DarkChaplain]

inb4 we're getting a McNeill novella to explain this inconsistency because apparently he's the only author they got available who can write non-novels to add to the Siege arc.

 

Like, seriously, this is the kind of stuff you could easily have tackled with an anthology, along with countless other fronts that we only hear about in passing. Where's the rest of the Siege?

[DukeLeto69]

The lack of SoT anthology always has struck me as odd!

[Sothalor]

Because the Siege of Terra was supposed to be the focused cumulation of a 54+ book series that was the result of some unbelievable scale creep that ended up bloating the content with nonsensical side characters and plots and aborted threads and regurgitated anthologies and-

 

"Hey guys give us Siege of Terra anthologies!"

 

:cussing shoot me.

[DarkChaplain]

So instead we get a ton of characters from those books some may well consider bloat, all shoehorned into the Siege without any rhyme or reason, killed off as sidenotes without any narrative or emotional resonance. Amazing.

 

The Siege was supposed to be an arc offering major payoff to what's come before, the glorious finale. So far, it hasn't been that at all, and it's not because of somebody like Thorpe, who some people seem to like to lay into, but because it's ticking off boxes while not having the necessary time to do so properly, or the narrative leeway in a focused novel - which the Astronomican situation is a prime example for.

 

The Siege of Terra has progressively felt smaller in scale... and not because of everything coming up millhouse at the Palace, but because it's discarded so much of the lifeblood of the 54 preceding books: Their characters and intimacy. It's managed to feel incredibly narrow in view, despite being a global event already lasting over half a year in-universe, despite there being ample opportunity to showcase other theaters of war without trouble by way of even just one anthology.

Instead of having some buildup to characters getting killed off, important strategic locations falling, or Legions falling apart, we just get the results thrown at us and then never commented on again.

 

At five books out of eight, the Siege of Terra has overall failed to make me give a damn about what is actually happening. If I wanted to read the cliffnotes version of character x's appearance to save the day, rather than the turmoil they go through on a more personal level, or "and then, between chapters, the Astronomican fell", I could've stuck with Collected Visions / Visions of Heresy.

[Sothalor]

That's a fundamental issue of vision, coherence, leadership, and oversight.

 

It's not something that can be fixed by way of "just throw more words on paper and publish it" - that's the kind of thing that got us a bloated series dozens of books long across god knows how many release formats, a nigh-impenetrable ordering/chronological method (or lack thereof), and an utterly incoherent overall narrative.

 

So far, Siege of Terra shows the lesson learned is "fans will buy it anyway".

 

 

At this point, it's not a matter of the car crossing the finish line cleanly and in style.

 

All the axles are pointing in different directions, the chassis is held together by chewing gum, the engine has caught on fire multiple times, and the whole thing ran out of gas about three miles ago and is running on fumes and mountain dew.

 

Please, don't move the finish line back so we can get more of this :cussshow. Extending the track is not going to magically make things better.

 

I just want it to end.

[DukeLeto69]

Because the Siege of Terra was supposed to be the focused cumulation of a 54+ book series that was the result of some unbelievable scale creep that ended up bloating the content with nonsensical side characters and plots and aborted threads and regurgitated anthologies and-

 

"Hey guys give us Siege of Terra anthologies!"

 

:cussing shoot me.

Nah I deliberately used the singular “anthology”

 

While you might not like the way the HH shaped up, the reality is there ARE 54 books etc. The story HAS been told that way. So that is that. Here we are!

 

SoT is the climax to what we DO have rather than what it perhaps should have been (and there are multiple permutations about what that is).

 

IMO a single anthology tying up loose ends, side events etc would be useful. The Astronomicon being a prime example. I suspect McNeill’s novellas were part of this approach.

Edited July 22, 2021 by DukeLeto69

[SkimaskMohawk]

The whole plotline gave the impression of something clumsily shoehorned in to give the Dark Angels some presence on Terra. It was at least hinted at in Dreadwing, but nobody even hinted at it in previous books, nor did French make any effort to properly establish it as a vital front in Mortis.

 

 

Kind of makes First Wall even worse in retrospect.

 

"I can't possibly destroy the port that's a massive defensive weakness; we might need it for guilliman to save us even though that'll mean he has orbital supremacy and has already won. But I can't fortify the astronomicon; it's the only thing that can actually get him to terra to save us!"

 

Man I hate the first wall. Butchered some characters in the service of a premise that makes no sense.

Sometimes i think no matter what is being discussed, a portion of the fanbase will find some way to make it about blaming or laying into Gav Thorpe.

I didn't say anything about the author and the astronomicon not being prioritized has a direct correlation to Dorns plan for the Lions Gate port.

[Bobss]

Because the Siege of Terra was supposed to be the focused cumulation of a 54+ book series that was the result of some unbelievable scale creep that ended up bloating the content with nonsensical side characters and plots and aborted threads and regurgitated anthologies and-

 

"Hey guys give us Siege of Terra anthologies!"

 

:cussing shoot me.

 

Hard agree. My Ultimate Horus Heresy Reread, even including Primarchs and Siege of Terra books is barely 20 titles

 

... but at the same time I can understand where people who diligently bought every single entry are coming from, and who want to see all of the storylines like those Iron Hands doing something at the Siege and so forth

 

For what it's worth there will deffo be a McNeill compilation anthology and there's no way Abnett can tie up the Traitors' Rout properly either, given the Emperor's entombing should be the final act of the book (or will it? Abnett is Abnett after all), so I've always expected a book '9.' Plus there's a bunch of late-Heresy stories that aren't yet tied up into a collected print format either

 

I'm a proud senior official of the Horus Heresy Bloat Hate Brigade, but to be brutally honest short stories have never, ever been the problem. The problem was the era in and around 2014-2016 in which anthologies seemed to be replacing proper releases - whether that was actually true or was just apparent I don't know and I don't care either because Anthologies Without End was still a Dark Age and let's call a spade a spade. However, If Black Library intended to release 2-3 Siege books a year, starting in 2019, which themselves were much more streamlined in their approach, and published tons of side material between these releases, oh and actually treated side material as side material instead of pretentiously labelling anthologies as literal numbered entries and all of the aggressive marketing like YOUR NEXT READ and whatnot, it would've satisfied people like me who want Solar War -> Lion's Gate Spaceport -> Eternity Wall Spaceport -> Lion's Gate Spaceport -> Ultimate Gate Showdown -> Vengeful Spirit Showdown, and then people like DC who want everything from small groups of Shattered Legionaries fighting on Terra to the general reaction of the Terran populace etc.

 

Just

My

Take

Edited July 22, 2021 by Bobss

[Fedor]

The messy anthologies without end era was needed because they went through an extended period before that of putting so much into limited editions and event/online only exclusives. Greed prevailed and that was the start of the series fragmenting and losing a lot of good will.

 

If none of that material had been eventually made available to the mainstream i think it would have caused even more resentment, just because of the sheer volume of it.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Fedor

[DukeLeto69]

@Bobss can’t talk for others but I doubt many want everyone ever mentioned in the HH series to have their plotlines/character arcs converge in the SoT. For a start that would be reductive and also patently ridiculous for a galaxy spanning war.

 

However, decent closure for what has already been put out there would be good. Now whether the mechanism for that is a few straggler HH mainline anthologies or perhaps a SoT anthology/couple more novellas or as part of a potential The Scouring series, I don’t know.

 

As per my earlier post, the HH bloat is already a thing. Like it or not it happened. So personally I think better to finish up satisfactorily (from a dramatic pov) then change course yet again.

 

All comes back to whether the HH was a story or a setting. We all know BL ebbed and flowed on that.

[DukeLeto69]

The messy anthologies without end era was needed because they went through an extended period before that of putting so much into limited editions and event/online only exclusives. Greed prevailed and that was the start of the series fragmenting and losing a lot of good will.

 

If none of that material had been eventually made available to the mainstream i think it would have caused even more resentment, just because of the sheer volume of it.

No idea if what I am about to say is true but I am pretty certain I have read from more than one source that the “anthologies without end” era (aka the weaker middle period of releases) coincided with a number of real world things happening in GW world...

 

1. Company structure reorganisation.

2. Subsequent unhappiness with several key authors on new ways or working who stopped writing for BL or substantially reduced the volume.

3. Loss of direction for HH (and BL generally with increased direct GW studio control).

 

I think it is obvious BL (now a few years down the line from recovering their increased autonomy and going back to being more of a publisher and less of a pseudo marketing dept) have learned some lessons from both HH and TBA.

 

SoT has been approached differently.

 

DoF is being approached differently.

 

We will have to wait to judge the results.

[Bobss]

The messy anthologies without end era was needed because they went through an extended period before that of putting so much into limited editions and event/online only exclusives. Greed prevailed and that was the start of the series fragmenting and losing a lot of good will.

 

If none of that material had been eventually made available to the mainstream i think it would have caused even more resentment, just because of the sheer volume of it.

 

Completely agreed with this post, but it got me thinking

 

I feel like in 2021 things are a little bit different to the mid-2010s and it shows the passage of time a little. I remember people on my old forum, some of whom now post on here, getting upset that they weren't able to access, as you rightly say, event-exclusive material. In 2011 I got salty about Aurelian being limited edition and not being able to bag one, and ADB addressed it on his blog (it's true, look it up, 2011, bobss, yaddy yadda). Aurelian was obviously reprinted in Eye of Terra I believe and I don't think a single Horus Heresy piece of content exists that hasn't been collected and reprinted in an anthology, with a few recent exceptions that will obviously make their way into a Siege of Terra anthology

 

Buuuuut if we fastforward to 2021, I regularly see people on Reddit or Goodreads or YouTube or even within my own social circles who weren't fans of the Horus Heresy in the 2010s and who picked up Horus Rising, Book I, and then False Gods, Book II, and kept reading each numbered entry until they either finished it or got sick of it. I've seen or heard literally dozens of examples (sure, this is my own anecdotal experiences, but whatever) of people getting mad that they spent their hard-earned cash on a short-story compilation that contributes nothing significant to the major beats of the Horus Heresy. This is why I still have an axe to grind with anthologies, even though we're well beyond the Anthologies Without End era because Black Library aren't owning up and treating side material as side material. I would argue this to the ends of the earth, even to a BL author if they jumped on here, because it smacks of pure, unadulterated greed. Legacies of Betrayal isn't as important as The First Heretic despite both being major numbered entries, foh

Edited July 22, 2021 by Bobss

[DukeLeto69]

@Bobss I agree that anthologies should not be as important as novels in the series but therein again lies some of the story vs setting problems around the HH.

 

We could all voice a preference for how the HH could/should have been executed and not one would be more valid than any other.

 

FWIW I think the HH SHOULD have been considered a setting (a sandbox) with space to tell all manner of stories set during that time period BUT there should ALSO have been a spine or critical path of core stories that took us from the fall of Horus to the “death” of the Emperor.

 

How that spine is executed would likely also be the target of much debate but FOR ME the focus would be Horus and the Emp with other characters as supporting cast. Ergo I guess a focus on the Sons of Horus?

 

That still leaves plenty of room in the sandbox setting for, say, a Dark Angels trilogy on the fall of Caliban, a book(s) explaining where the Blood Angels went etc etc

[Fedor]

 

The messy anthologies without end era was needed because they went through an extended period before that of putting so much into limited editions and event/online only exclusives. Greed prevailed and that was the start of the series fragmenting and losing a lot of good will.

 

If none of that material had been eventually made available to the mainstream i think it would have caused even more resentment, just because of the sheer volume of it.

 

Completely agreed with this post, but it got me thinking

 

I feel like in 2021 things are a little bit different to the mid-2010s and it shows the passage of time a little. I remember people on my old forum, some of whom now post on here, getting upset that they weren't able to access, as you rightly say, event-exclusive material. In 2011 I got salty about Aurelian being limited edition and not being able to bag one, and ADB addressed it on his blog (it's true, look it up, 2011, bobss, yaddy yadda). Aurelian was obviously reprinted in Eye of Terra I believe and I don't think a single Horus Heresy piece of content exists that hasn't been collected and reprinted in an anthology, with a few recent exceptions that will obviously make their way into a Siege of Terra anthology

 

Buuuuut if we fastforward to 2021, I regularly see people on Reddit or Goodreads or YouTube or even within my own social circles who weren't fans of the Horus Heresy in the 2010s and who picked up Horus Rising, Book I, and then False Gods, Book II, and kept reading each numbered entry until they either finished it or got sick of it. I've seen or heard literally dozens of examples (sure, this is my own anecdotal experiences, but whatever) of people getting mad that they spent their hard-earned cash on a short-story compilation that contributes nothing significant to the major beats of the Horus Heresy. This is why I still have an axe to grind with anthologies, even though we're well beyond the Anthologies Without End era because Black Library aren't owning up and treating side material as side material. I would argue this to the ends of the earth, even to a BL author if they jumped on here, because it smacks of pure, unadulterated greed. Legacies of Betrayal isn't as important as The First Heretic despite both being major numbered entries, foh

 

Oh, no disagreement it was a mess. In retrospect they would have been better giving many of them a seperate sub-series indication.

 

The ones that were closer to essential reading for various factions/characters ended up coming out well after they were at their most relevant. I can't imagine it's enjoyable for a lot of newer readers trying to figure out a reading order, something a lot of these side-stories needed to be at their best.