Unfinished Business in the Horus Heresy

[lansalt]

We know of Russ. Due to great wolf

Isn't that story set before the Heresy?

[Brother Lunkhead]

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This thread is locked down pending review. I'll reopen it as soon as possible.

 

Brother Moonreaper666, you will be getting a PM from me soon....

 

READ IT.

 

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UPDATE

 

GAME ON 

 

Please note that a number of posts have been hidden. They are all related to the resent unpleasantness. Keep in mind that personal attacks on a fellow frater are against both the letter and spirit of the rules of conduct of the B&C 

 

If you have any questions or concerns, please send me a PM. In this and all issues related to the welfare of the B&C, I am at your service.

 

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Edited May 4, 2022 by Brother Lunkhead

[lansalt]

I've updated the OP with the new info we know about the Siege of Terra and the HH article in this month's White Dwarf 478.

Please add anything else you think it's missing!

[Noserenda]

3 hours ago, Crix said:

I bet Abnett still has the final say on Alpharius/Omegon and the Alpha Legion; he started all those threads anyway. 

Not true, apparently when Dan came to GW with a list of outrageous ideas for Legion they accepted all of them and countered with a few of their own, apparently the Twins was one of the latter.

Regardless of that though, its still GWs IP ;) 

[Ubiquitous1984]

10 hours ago, lansalt said:

I've updated the OP with the new info we know about the Siege of Terra and the HH article in this month's White Dwarf 478.

Please add anything else you think it's missing!

Can you please expand on what is included in the WD article as I don’t have access to it?

[lansalt]

50 minutes ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

Can you please expand on what is included in the WD article as I don’t have access to it?

See here: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/369602-state-of-the-union-heresy/page/200/#comment-5846562

 

[Ubiquitous1984]

15 hours ago, lansalt said:

See here: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/369602-state-of-the-union-heresy/page/200/#comment-5846562

 

That was a great read - thanks for sharing!  I'm a bit miffed that they decided to release this important HH lore in WD however, and not a BL publication or in the new rulebook.

[lansalt]

16 minutes ago, Ubiquitous1984 said:

That was a great read - thanks for sharing!  I'm a bit miffed that they decided to release this important HH lore in WD however, and not a BL publication or in the new rulebook.

It feels to me like content originally written for a Black Book what it's no longer going to be released.

[grailkeeper]

The Dark Angels and the Fallen.

I've said it a few times but the DA are the worst treated by the heresy. They were the ones who had the biggest story going in, and as a result were the first to be dealt with outside the main storyline. Those initial books were poor. What has happened since has also let them down. The Fallen should have been dealt with before the siege.

[lansalt]

9 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

The Dark Angels and the Fallen.

I've said it a few times but the DA are the worst treated by the heresy. They were the ones who had the biggest story going in, and as a result were the first to be dealt with outside the main storyline. Those initial books were poor. What has happened since has also let them down. The Fallen should have been dealt with before the siege.

The DA/Fallen storyline is still active in the Siege of Terra books, with their attempt to liberate the Astronomicon being ending in a cliffhanger so far.

[Ubiquitous1984]

4 hours ago, lansalt said:

The DA/Fallen storyline is still active in the Siege of Terra books, with their attempt to liberate the Astronomicon being ending in a cliffhanger so far.

I wonder if the whole DA Siege angle will be wrapped up in a novella?  I sure hope so, if the appropriate author is available.  Gav Thorpe hasn’t written anything since Wolftime….

[Felix Antipodes]

I thought the fall of Caliban was post Siege of Terra (just)?

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

I thought the fall of Caliban was post Siege of Terra (just)?

Yes, it was immediately after the end of the Siege. The Lion returned to Caliban to pick up reinforcements to assist with the Scouring and it all went pear-shaped.

[Pirate Empress]

On 5/2/2022 at 12:24 PM, sitnam said:

 

As an Iron Hands fan, I feel pretty shafted by their BL portrayal during the HH series, and it pretty much killed my interest in finishing the Heresy as a series.

I agree wholeheartedly. Shadrak Meduson, while a cool character, was more Shattered Legions and not wholly representative of the Xth Legion. Anyone else who was an Iron Hand in the Horus Heresy novels was just a jerk cuz.....reasons? I'm fine with them being psychos, but they needed to be compelling and they weren't.

[DarkChaplain]

Really disliked how the Shattered Legions / Iron Tenth storyline ended, too. The betrayal I can take or leave, it feels fitting with how dogmatic the Iron Hands would be especially in M41, but I felt that wrapping up all that buildup in a novel that starred Vulcan - who was basically the least interesting part of the novel - and scrapping the literal "Iron Tenth" novel they were supposed to get, and then taking the rough plot, compressing and squeezing it into Old Earth... yeah, no.

And then we have Tybalt Marr, who got REALLY built up to be a menacing go-getter of the Sons of Horus post-Molech. Got a great audio drama to develop him and his rivalry with Meduson. He bloody succeeds, with a clear traitor victory of the old school, no daemon bogus, just doing a good Legion job.

 

....and instead of using Marr from then on, to showcase what has become of the Sons of Horus, the decline, seen through the eyes of a character we've known since Horus Rising, they kill him off in a completely pathetic way in Saturnine. Just poof, cross that name off the list. And he'd have been a great viewpoint during the Siege in particular, because he'd been away so long to chase for Shadrak, so the bulk of the daemon stuff and return of the gangs would've passed him by. He wouldn't have seen those mass recruitment drives of low quality stock. He could've been a wonderful buddy for Abaddon during the Siege, no matter which direction he'd eventually flip.

But he, like Aximand, just got killed off with little payoff. I get it, Saturnine was supposed to be a brutal loss for the Sons of Horus. It was supposed to isolate Abaddon and be up close and personal. Names had to go down. But damn, it's just nuked the SoH from a narrative angle. Outside of Abaddon, I don't think there's a single Astartes left in that Legion who I give a damn about. It's a hollow shell of past glories, the XVI, but that doesn't mean it should be one narratively.

And that's kind of similar to the Iron Hands. The characters they built up to be rooted for got killed off, but there's nothing to replace them, outside of namedrops and FW-inclusions. The Legion left the stage after Old Earth, which is the big difference between them and the Traitor Legions at the Siege, who stick around while being bare of character(s).

You can say about Annandale or others what you want, but at least he had a consistent throughline of PoV characters that carried over with the Destroyers (who sadly got sent off in the Siege prequel novella, but stuck around for at least 3 print entries), or Guy Haley with Corvo of the future Novamarines. Instead of relying on Marius Gage, Remus Ventanus and Aeonid Thiel, the Ultramarines received a good bunch of developed characters throughout their appearances, while most Legions just started with a few, mostly pre-established ones, and either never built up side characters to follow up or spin off, or introduced them so late into the series, there's barely any room to get used to them. See: that Word Bearers sorcerer French introduced, who got killed off two? books afterwards, right on the final stretch, and was so esoteric and generally "OP", I found it impossible to care for him as a person.

 

BL really missed the mark on both Loose Ends and not writing themselves in a corner by wrapping up all the ends they had hastily and inelegantly.

[Felix Antipodes]

A lot of the problems with under-use of both Legions and/or characters, imho, come down to the way GW set out the storyline.  I would have thought a strong spine of books, hitting on all the major HH moments, with a separate spin off series for each Legion’s off main stage actions was the way to go.  These side story series would go as long as the story (or sales) sustained them and would showcase fully the Marr, Shadrak, etc, characters.

This would have allowed GW/BL to punch out just as many books (or even more, god help us ) without running out of room to develop the storyline and characters.

just my 2c.

[Jareddm]

9 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

or introduced them so late into the series, there's barely any room to get used to them. See: that Word Bearers sorcerer French introduced, who got killed off two? books afterwards, right on the final stretch, and was so esoteric and generally "OP", I found it impossible to care for him as a person.

Agree on everything else, but I believe Zardu Layak was a FW character first, similar to Endryd Haar, who was then brought over into the series.  And I imagine by that time there would've been pushback about introducing new characters rather than using ones that would promote the models/game.

[DarkChaplain]

Considering that French worked with ForgeWorld on the Black Books and was close to Alan Bligh, I'm pretty sure Zardu Layak was added to the Black Books in tandem with John's plans for Slaves to Darkness and beyond. They'll at least have talked about where the character could/would go. Would not surprise me if he wrote the fluff for him in the first place.

[Roomsky]

I'm of two minds on most of those issues.

It sucks that some novels were condensed or straight-up dropped due to the constant demand to speed to the Siege. I personally like how Meduson went out but it really deserved its own novel, especially considering it was the best part of Old Earth IMO. Marr on the other hand is wasted potential I can't think of any good reason to have been disposed of so quickly - post-Saturnine we have nothing but new SoH characters to follow outside of Argonis and Abaddon, one of whom has plot-immortality. I think it's fine that Marr got gunned down anticlimactically, but his POV would have been a valuable addition to the Siege considering how many established characters have already dropped dead.

Layak I think was perfectly utilized in Slavs of Darkness. Lorgar had fallen into a habit of finding new disposable favourites once the previous had stopped being useful, and it was great to see it finally biting him in the ass. And while I appreciated having another character with an uncertain destiny at the head of a Siege faction, we've been left with minimal/no pagetime for Erebus (or even the Word Bearers as a force, small as it may be) or Sor Talgron, who I assume still made it to Terra (though if A.Reynolds would like to surprise us with a novella, I would not object.) Doesn't help that Layak  seemed to have a total personality shift before Solar War that we didn't see - he was basically a different character than in StD.

I don't think every established character needed some grand epic payoff - I was perfectly fine with Amandera getting Kharned and Aximand getting ganked - but we're missing some valuable POVs to ongoing events, often in favour of new characters invented to die. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

4 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Considering that French worked with ForgeWorld on the Black Books and was close to Alan Bligh, I'm pretty sure Zardu Layak was added to the Black Books in tandem with John's plans for Slaves to Darkness and beyond. They'll at least have talked about where the character could/would go. Would not surprise me if he wrote the fluff for him in the first place.

Well zardu came out with Tempest in 2015, and his lore was a bit different to what was presented in Slaves to Darkness. 

In the game entry he willingly converted to the new beliefs after monarchia, and started to read the books he was supposed to burn, eventually culminating in his choosing the name of zardu layak. He was more or less on "team Erebus", and also included on calth; somewhere we know an undesirable part of the legion was sent. 

In the novel, he's been basically created by Lorgar. The whole set of zardu layak's beliefs and ideals (and name) are grafted on, with his original memories being wiped. He's a tool, with an intended purpose; not something youd send off to die. 

Feels like he was retconned pretty heavily and not pre-written in by french.

[lansalt]

I know it's hard to resist going off-topic about the development of plot lines and characters, but please keep the posts in this thread about story plots or characters that so far (SoT:Warhawk) haven't been explained somehow, or have been apparently forgotten/ignored by the writers.

[Ubiquitous1984]

Spoilers of EoE:

Spoiler

All I can say is unless Dan has 1000 pages for book 8, I think we are going to be left with an immense number of unresolved plot lines from the HH/SoT series.  Book 7 was extremely focused, and didn’t touch many of the main SoT characters or plots.  Perhaps they’ll be a fourth novella or even an anthology to help tie up these loose ends?

Edit - and by coincidence the following day BL announced that book 8 will be at least two books and perhaps more.  Makes sense to me otherwise we are going to be annoyed with so many unresolved plot threads.

Edited September 2, 2022 by Ubiquitous1984

[Noserenda]

Some Echoes of eternity spoilers

While Zephon's death and resurrection are explained, his armour is explicitly Red in EoE and there is absolutely no mention of the Sanguinary guard in the book.

Also, Magnus definitely isnt explaining anything in the last book on account of (temporary) decapitation.

 

 

[drooling blood]

That Magnus bit, was a bit :cuss:. Tbh.

As well as the version of the shields dropping.

Theres was a assassin running around on the VS. Maybe saving it a one shot later.

[bluntblade]

On 8/10/2022 at 7:24 PM, Roomsky said:

I'm of two minds on most of those issues.

It sucks that some novels were condensed or straight-up dropped due to the constant demand to speed to the Siege. I personally like how Meduson went out but it really deserved its own novel, especially considering it was the best part of Old Earth IMO. Marr on the other hand is wasted potential I can't think of any good reason to have been disposed of so quickly - post-Saturnine we have nothing but new SoH characters to follow outside of Argonis and Abaddon, one of whom has plot-immortality. I think it's fine that Marr got gunned down anticlimactically, but his POV would have been a valuable addition to the Siege considering how many established characters have already dropped dead.

Layak I think was perfectly utilized in Slavs of Darkness. Lorgar had fallen into a habit of finding new disposable favourites once the previous had stopped being useful, and it was great to see it finally biting him in the ass. And while I appreciated having another character with an uncertain destiny at the head of a Siege faction, we've been left with minimal/no pagetime for Erebus (or even the Word Bearers as a force, small as it may be) or Sor Talgron, who I assume still made it to Terra (though if A.Reynolds would like to surprise us with a novella, I would not object.) Doesn't help that Layak  seemed to have a total personality shift before Solar War that we didn't see - he was basically a different character than in StD.

I don't think every established character needed some grand epic payoff - I was perfectly fine with Amandera getting Kharned and Aximand getting ganked - but we're missing some valuable POVs to ongoing events, often in favour of new characters invented to die. 

This has actually happened to the SoH twice, ironically. The first half of the Heresy gutted the supporting cast which Abnett himself had introduced, with Sedirae, Targhost and Noctua all quickly killed off. I know what you mean with Saturnine in that the slaughter is satisfying, but there is definitely a cost.

It occurs to me that one place where Wraight especially succeeds with his Scars run is that he makes this rate of attrition into more of its own point, besides the fact that while Shiban survives thus far, his fate still isn't set in stone.