The End and the Death: Volume I discussion thread

[cheywood]

11 minutes ago, Taliesin said:

 

Wait, is that a typo? Why would anyone speculate that Sanguinius of all people would kill the Emperor?

I was going off @Roomsky’s earlier comment about being satisfied as long as Horus kills Sanguinius and The Emperor kills Horus, but maybe I misunderstood. My thinking was that Sanguinius could be afflicted with the black rage (because it seems to exist outside of time) and attack The Emperor. Not saying I expect this, just that I don’t want anything to disrupt the big facts of that day on the Vengeful Spirit.

[Noserenda]

Personally, if Abnett says the writing is done, that means the writing is done, especially as they clearly already had long conversations about editing months ago before deciding to field 2+ books, no more editing or rewrites needed, the text is done, just needs publishing, which given BLs small print runs should be dooable all at once surely? Even delaying a bit to get all the ducks lined up would be preferable to stretching it out.

As to why people are nervous about Abnett, personally, hes a legendary ideas guy, some superb work from the very start of Black library thats ended up being foundational to the setting, but hes pretty bad at endings, to varying degrees but a lot of his books just abruptly end, sometimes not even tying up everything, which works great in a long running series but probably isnt the best move to finish one.

So sure id be surprised if the books ae bad but i think its entirely possible they may have been better in someone else's hands.

And yeah, as mentioned in N&R 40k canon is loose, no matter what happens its just as valid as the other interpretations. Im personally looking forward to a humble guardsman, Fists terminator, Custode and Ol to all come through a door together at once and get zapped :D 

By Sanguinus :P 

[Roomsky]

17 minutes ago, Taliesin said:

 

Wait, is that a typo? Why would anyone speculate that Sanguinius of all people would kill the Emperor?

 

Further to Cheywood's comment, it's a popular theory that Sanguinius will embrace his inner daemons to defeat Horus, but after his victory he'll be in such an unstoppable rage that he'll attack the Emperor as well. This pays off a few things:

• The constant temptations of Chaos throughout the story and Sanguinius' visions of a reality where he can and does strike Horus down
• The Emperor might actually hold back against Sanguinius as per his hesitation in old fluff, which at this point would be out of character for him to do with Horus
• The modern Imperium is built on idealized lies, and it would be thematically appropriate for a big cover up regarding Sanguinius to occur
• Horus has been a non-character throughout most of the series and it's too late to make established events hit properly

Personally I think it's a silly theory not just for being unnecessary, but because making it canon would actively enrage a huge part of the fanbase. Note the split response to The Last Jedi, and then imagine the amount of nerdrage it would have caused if it included a flashback to the "real" events of ROTJ where Vader became impossibly powerful and Luke and the Emperor teamed up to defeat him.

 

If anything, Abnett having 3 books gives him more than enough time to paint a picture of Horus compelling enough for us to care about his beef with the Emperor again.

 

Honestly it's probably the only forseeable twist that would put me off, personally. If I see any of the following, I wouldn't even be mad if they're done deftly:

• Ollanius stabs the Emperor, causing his weakness against Horus
• The Heresy was some variety of inside job 
  • I personally dislike the "it was ALL planned" angle, but some of the comments made make me wonder if Horus was always meant to be a sacrificial Chaos-magnet
• Malcador was the original Emperor, "The Emperor" is some kind of construct or psychic entity
• Something something Alpharius
• Fo's formula still exists somewhere, probably with Valdor

[Carach]

12 hours ago, fire golem said:

So, you think the books have been bloated and lacking in actual storytelling, and you think the answer is to write more books of that rather than cut down the bloat in one book?

 

I am not sure why you are asking this question considering I already provide an answer to that in the very same post. 

 

 

Most of the posts hating on things in this very thread happen to also be...LE whale folk. I am not sure the "but what if I can't get another LE" argument is a tack I am going to sympathise with frankly. 

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Carach

[Scribe]

10 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

• The constant temptations of Chaos throughout the story and Sanguinius' visions of a reality where he can and does strike Horus down
• The Emperor might actually hold back against Sanguinius as per his hesitation in old fluff, which at this point would be out of character for him to do with Horus
• The modern Imperium is built on idealized lies, and it would be thematically appropriate for a big cover up regarding Sanguinius to occur
• Horus has been a non-character throughout most of the series and it's too late to make established events hit properly

 

The only thing I can think reading this...

 

"Get thee hence, Satan."

[Arkangilos]

29 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

I personally dislike the "it was ALL planned" angle, but some of the comments made make me wonder if Horus was always meant to be a sacrificial Chaos-magnet

As in he wanted Horus to draw in Chaos so that he could try to destroy them?

 

31 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Ollanius stabs the Emperor, causing his weakness against Horus

Is there precedence for this theory? I’ve skipped a good amount of the heresy books, having only read the first few, Fear to Tread, Forge Worlds Malevolence, and thanks to Scribe’s review, Echoes of Eternity (which I’m actually listening to as of yesterday). So I’m a bit out of the loop (I don’t even know how the BA made it to terra lol).

 

22 minutes ago, Scribe said:

The only thing I can think reading this...

 

"Get thee hence, Satan."

Agreed.

[Fire Golem]

31 minutes ago, Carach said:

I am not sure why you are asking this question considering I already provide an answer to that in the very same post. 

 

 

Most of the posts hating on things in this very thread happen to also be...LE whale folk. I am not sure the "but what if I can't get another LE" argument is a tack I am going to sympathise with frankly. 

 

I don’t think they are actually. I disagree with ‘LE whale folk’ as a characterisation of me, and frankly I don’t care whether you sympathise or not, but I’ve made it pretty clear that’s my point of contention. Most of the posts ‘hating’ on it, (Scribe, DarkChaplain, I’m fairly sure on) don’t do the limited editions, and you can read peoples posts and see what the complaints are, I’d argue it’s not ‘most’ about ‘but what if I can’t get another LE’ at all. 

[Scribe]

42 minutes ago, fire golem said:

I don’t think they are actually. I disagree with ‘LE whale folk’ as a characterisation of me, and frankly I don’t care whether you sympathise or not, but I’ve made it pretty clear that’s my point of contention. Most of the posts ‘hating’ on it, (Scribe, DarkChaplain, I’m fairly sure on) don’t do the limited editions, and you can read peoples posts and see what the complaints are, I’d argue it’s not ‘most’ about ‘but what if I can’t get another LE’ at all. 

 

Yeah, my concern isnt the LE, its the consistent bloat of the setting, and the upcoming 'surprise twist' abnett style that I could do without.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I don’t think I’ve seen a single person complain about needing another LE purchase. 
 

Instead, what myself and others seem to be worried about is that one of the widest criticisms of the HH series is the sheer bloat and lack of overall focus. The Black Library studio took this to heart, and made a show of how much tighter the focus would be on the Siege series, that there would be greater oversight, and better control of the direction. 
Now, we’re getting one of the authors going against that, and it’s causing some anxiety that they’re going right back to the issues that plagued the HH main series. 

[Sothalor]

Is that really on Abnett alone though?

 

What the :cuss: then were The Lost and the Damned, The First Wall, and Mortis doing?

 

And as much as people ferociously fellate ADB, Echoes threw a giant middle finger at most of the ongoing Siege plot arcs and went off to do its own thing. Now if you think the Echoes archetype should have been what the Siege was all along, fair play (for that matter, I'm mostly in agreement). But that doesn't change the fact that as what should have been the penultimate novel in a series, it basically ignores everything else. If this were a school assignment, it would be a brilliant essay that doesn't address the assignment prompt.

 

Now instead Abnett's got the job of having to wrap everything up. That's not his fault as an author; that's an editorial :cuss:-up of Disney Star Wars proportions with the management of the series as a whole.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

As in he wanted Horus to draw in Chaos so that he could try to destroy them?

 

That's been my prevailing theory over the course of the Heresy, too.

 

The Emperor appears to be forcing a confrontation with Chaos. Whether that's because they're in some way temporally weakened by the birth of Slaanesh, or the 'time is right', or he only has a limited amount of time before the Primarchs break down or what-have-you - I think it's evident that there's a time limit on the Emperor's plan. There's a rather fascinating bit in Echoes where Vulkan is exploring the human section of the Webway, and he's talking about just how ramshackle it is, how it wasn't fit for purpose and wouldn't have lasted. It could certainly be read that this was a bluff, or at least a blind, to force Chaos into the open. Stories like The Board Is Set certainly lean very heavily into there being a lot of 'handshakes' over the course of the Heresy, where sacrifices had to be made to get a specific outcome. If Dorn had been sent to Istvaan instead of Ferrus, for example, the Dropsite Massacre wouldn't have happened, but the Alpha Legion would have taken Terra, f'ex.

 

The problem is that if the Emperor looks too strong, Chaos won't accept the gambit. They'll continue to act in the background, they'll continue subverting his plans, they'll do something wacky with the Primarchs, etc. They have to believe their victory is assured to actually invest their power into the struggle (we'll pick this up in a sec). They have to be made vulnerable. Case in point, Wolfsbane.

 

Wolfsbane in very particular gives this a lot of credibility. Russ was moulded to be thrown against other Primarchs, to bash into them over and over again. He was the one who was groomed to be a space cop (whether he thought it was his own idea or not). You see it in the game he and Malcador play at the start, where Malcador has left him only one path to victory, and it's clear to everybody involved that this attack on the Vengeful Spirit is, at best, a suicide mission with little hope of success - much less getting out alive. Certainly the chances of actually killing Horus are pretty much zero. And Russ intends to head off without his Spear - much is made of him actively disliking the weapon, and leaving it behind whenever he can.

 

But, waddyaknow, after winding Russ up to send him after Horus, Malcador makes sure he's got that soul-splitting spear. Cos' it's important.

 

Horus post-Vengeful Spirit is certainly tainted by the Ruinous Powers, but he's not, I think, possessed. He's not fully embracing daemons (he chokes out Meros in that book, iirc, and beats up others in Fear to Tread). He's still seeing Chaos as an ally of convenience, and he's still keeping things (more or less) together. He might very well have slow-rolled his way to Terra and just sat in orbit chucking rocks. But that's not what Chaos wants. They don't care about the war, or what's left afterwards, they want the Emperor dead (and presumably humbled and humiliated for defying and stealing from them). I love the way it's framed in that book: the Emperor bringing gifts and offerings, then stealing fire from the gods.

 

An important side-note here is that Chaos hasn't really got any of the Primarchs they wanted. Magnus got shattered, Sanguinius refuses to fall, and Horus just dragged himself out of the Molech gate after beating up daemons for who-knows-how-long in the Warp. And it may very well be that the Emperor can't be beaten by the Traitors as they are. Without all the sorcery and mass summonings, they wouldn't have gotten out of orbit before a vengeful Guilliman showed up. Chaos still hasn't got a surefire victory - they're still not all in.

 

Enter Russ and his spear. If there's one Primarch guaranteed to not kill his brother, it's Russ (and Sanguinius, but he only held off because kicking Curze out the airlock was worse than death). He's been sent off to stick Horus with the pointy end and let the spearmagic do its thing.

 

And it works! Horus is entirely lucid, and hot damn does he not like what he's seeing. His 'I'm a worse tyrant the Emperor' line was beautiful. Horus, at that point, has absolutely no interest in Chaos at all and is basically going forward right back on his original goals: replace the Emperor, rebuild the Imperium, yadda yadda. 

 

But, joy of joys, the spear wound has done some horrid things to his soul. And Chaos is now playing tug-of-war with it, because they've got an opportunity to really take charge here - pick up all the armies they've gotten under their thumb and go take the Emperor's head. But the only way that's going to happen is if they invest power in Horus - and the only way they're going to do that is if it's necessary for their victory (and that said victory will be assured). Enter Slaves to Darkness, where the last of Horus is shanked by his equerry (whoops) and Chaos starts walking him around ala a Men in Black. Horus is as possessed as it gets by this point, and has some kind of direct connection to Chaos so they can pump their power into him to kill the Emperor (who is, at the same time, looking very weak indeed in all the visions we see over the Siege).

 

So, to sum up: the Emperor may indeed have deliberately engineered events to appear weaker than he really was, while giving Chaos an opportunity they couldn't ignore to pump power into Horus (and form some kind of connection whereby they could be directly attacked). 

 

That's the interesting part of the Siege for me. As of Outcast Dead and Old Earth, the Emperor has basically everything where he wants it. If he kills Horus and wounds Chaos, fantastic. If he dies in the process, no worries, Malcador knows how to go forward from there (and is being explicitly kept in reserve, while getting the Sigillite Order back together (HEY REMEMBER THAT PLOT POINT?)). If the Emperor and Malcador die, the Talisman of Seven Hammers goes off, the assembled armies of Chaos are destroyed and Chaos is dealt a 'mortal blow' (because surprise surprise, giant psychic bomb going through the Webway Breach or annihilating a Chaos-connected Horus is going to cause some serious damage). He's got things set up in such a way that he wins no matter what, and is fully prepared to die if that's what it takes.

 

But, as we know, he doesn't die and Chaos isn't wounded. The big question is: well, what happened that we got the worst possible outcome - and is it the worst possible outcome, or an opportunity that nobody had even thought about until certain conditions were met? What happened (or is going to happen on Caliban) that the Watchers foresaw in Dreadwing that prevented Chaos finishing the job? What did Eldrad see in Old Earth (was he crying because he saw three 'final' Siege books?!)? 

 

TL;DR The Emperor has engineered a number of plans and failsafe options that seem to culminate in his ultimate victory at the Siege, whatever happens.

[Scribe]

17 minutes ago, Sothalor said:

Echoes threw a giant middle finger at most of the ongoing Siege plot arcs and went off to do its own thing. Now if you think the Echoes archetype should have been what the Siege was all along, fair play (for that matter, I'm mostly in agreement).

 

[Arkangilos]

13 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

an opportunity that nobody had even thought about until certain conditions were met?

Maybe the final plan was to go as it went so he could end up where when the throne failed he could become a god, which would show that the original potential lie told to Horus was actually true. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

I didn't want to just say that, but yeah, it could very well be that the Emperor decided the only way to defeat Chaos was to become a Power in his own right. Considering what happened in Godblight - not just the actual godblighting, but the discussion around divinity - it's definitely on the table.

 

But we'll still need to find out what happened/what changed between the Emperor's surety in books like Outcast Dead or The Board Is Set to get to our wonderful 'bad end' in the grim darkness of the far future. I'm sure it'll involve Enuncia!

[Roomsky]

2 hours ago, Arkangilos said:

As in he wanted Horus to draw in Chaos so that he could try to destroy them?

 

Is there precedence for this theory? I’ve skipped a good amount of the heresy books, having only read the first few, Fear to Tread, Forge Worlds Malevolence, and thanks to Scribe’s review, Echoes of Eternity (which I’m actually listening to as of yesterday). So I’m a bit out of the loop (I don’t even know how the BA made it to terra lol).

 

1. Yes, as Wecanhaveallthree eloquently puts forward. I'm not entirely sure how the timeline of it all works considering Magnus' folly, but maybe the Emperor just got more than he bargained for out of a rebellion.

 

2. I won't go too far into details, but as of Mortis Ollanius is holding a very powerful knife and has good reason to work against the Emperor rather than for him. For all people like to dunk on it, quite a few important things happened in that book. They just had nothing to do with titans.

[Arkangilos]

26 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

I didn't want to just say that, but yeah, it could very well be that the Emperor decided the only way to defeat Chaos was to become a Power in his own right. Considering what happened in Godblight - not just the actual godblighting, but the discussion around divinity - it's definitely on the table.

 

But we'll still need to find out what happened/what changed between the Emperor's surety in books like Outcast Dead or The Board Is Set to get to our wonderful 'bad end' in the grim darkness of the far future. I'm sure it'll involve Enuncia!

Oh, I missed something you said in our last discussions when you said I was splitting hairs. 
 

The answer is yes, in a way I was. But that’s because the two hairs being split are fundamentally different, even if the symptoms are the same. 
 

We know that

1) Premonition takes various forms, with some having seizures (such as Kurze and some of his sons). 

2) Sanguinius does have a side that is brutal where he is described like that (see the old IA that describes his life on Baal).

So Sanguinius saw his brother (who he loved more than the others and trusted him with the secret that his legion suffered from the Red Thirst) killing him, and it unleashed the rage, and while he was suffering from seeing the future he lashed out as if he were there. But the rage is directed at his enemies and subsides with that, and the future still shows him as dying, not as winning, and it shows that his death causes his sons to be infused with that rage he will undoubtedly be filled with when he dies.

Thats what the rage is, his anger at the betrayal being transferred to his sons in a PTSD manner where they see it and are filled with his final thoughts afterwords. 
 

So my argument isn’t that he doesn’t “fall” into a rage, which has always been part of his lore, but that he *wins* and then is killed by the emperor, because that isn’t what the rage is. It’s the rage at his death of the hands of Horus.

 

That’s why the splitting hairs matters, because the fundamental manner of the rage suffered by the sons is set by the death suffered by Sanguinius at the hands of Horus, and we see clearly that’s what those who fall see. It *is* Sanguinius’ rage, but Sanguinius didn’t suddenly suffer from it, he has always had it, and he unlocked it in his sons by the psychic backlash at his death by Horus. 

12 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

2. I won't go too far into details, but as of Mortis Ollanius is holding a very powerful knife and has good reason to work against the Emperor rather than for him. For all people like to dunk on it, quite a few important things happened in that book. They just had nothing to do with titans.

Can you spoil it for me? Like why he does?

Edited December 6, 2022 by Arkangilos

[Roomsky]

2 minutes ago, Arkangilos said:

Can you spoil it for me?

 

Short version is Ollanius, being a perpetual, was the Emperor's (possibly) first Warmaster. In the distant past, the two of them attack what history would mythologize as the tower of Babel. Within the tower is a completed Enuncia lexicon, which the Emperor plans to use in service of his conquests. Ollanius is not for fighting fire with fire and, with a full view of just how arrogant the Emperor is, stabs him. There's a big explosion which demolishes the tower and its records. Oll fled Terra when he could, trying to live as quiet an immortal life as possible. The Cabal and apparently fate itself seem to be drawing Ollanius back to the Emperor though, where he's going to play a big role in the final battle. He still doesn't like the Emperor and is now armed with a fairly powerful athame dagger. Accompanying Oll's retinue is a Chaos Cultist named Actae who seems intent on pushing him to do SOMETHING big.

[lightinfa]

1 hour ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

That's been my prevailing theory over the course of the Heresy, too.

 

The Emperor appears to be forcing a confrontation with Chaos. Whether that's because they're in some way temporally weakened by the birth of Slaanesh, or the 'time is right', or he only has a limited amount of time before the Primarchs break down or what-have-you - I think it's evident that there's a time limit on the Emperor's plan. There's a rather fascinating bit in Echoes where Vulkan is exploring the human section of the Webway, and he's talking about just how ramshackle it is, how it wasn't fit for purpose and wouldn't have lasted. It could certainly be read that this was a bluff, or at least a blind, to force Chaos into the open. Stories like The Board Is Set certainly lean very heavily into there being a lot of 'handshakes' over the course of the Heresy, where sacrifices had to be made to get a specific outcome. If Dorn had been sent to Istvaan instead of Ferrus, for example, the Dropsite Massacre wouldn't have happened, but the Alpha Legion would have taken Terra, f'ex.

 

The problem is that if the Emperor looks too strong, Chaos won't accept the gambit. They'll continue to act in the background, they'll continue subverting his plans, they'll do something wacky with the Primarchs, etc. They have to believe their victory is assured to actually invest their power into the struggle (we'll pick this up in a sec). They have to be made vulnerable. Case in point, Wolfsbane.

 

Wolfsbane in very particular gives this a lot of credibility. Russ was moulded to be thrown against other Primarchs, to bash into them over and over again. He was the one who was groomed to be a space cop (whether he thought it was his own idea or not). You see it in the game he and Malcador play at the start, where Malcador has left him only one path to victory, and it's clear to everybody involved that this attack on the Vengeful Spirit is, at best, a suicide mission with little hope of success - much less getting out alive. Certainly the chances of actually killing Horus are pretty much zero. And Russ intends to head off without his Spear - much is made of him actively disliking the weapon, and leaving it behind whenever he can.

 

But, waddyaknow, after winding Russ up to send him after Horus, Malcador makes sure he's got that soul-splitting spear. Cos' it's important.

 

Horus post-Vengeful Spirit is certainly tainted by the Ruinous Powers, but he's not, I think, possessed. He's not fully embracing daemons (he chokes out Meros in that book, iirc, and beats up others in Fear to Tread). He's still seeing Chaos as an ally of convenience, and he's still keeping things (more or less) together. He might very well have slow-rolled his way to Terra and just sat in orbit chucking rocks. But that's not what Chaos wants. They don't care about the war, or what's left afterwards, they want the Emperor dead (and presumably humbled and humiliated for defying and stealing from them). I love the way it's framed in that book: the Emperor bringing gifts and offerings, then stealing fire from the gods.

 

An important side-note here is that Chaos hasn't really got any of the Primarchs they wanted. Magnus got shattered, Sanguinius refuses to fall, and Horus just dragged himself out of the Molech gate after beating up daemons for who-knows-how-long in the Warp. And it may very well be that the Emperor can't be beaten by the Traitors as they are. Without all the sorcery and mass summonings, they wouldn't have gotten out of orbit before a vengeful Guilliman showed up. Chaos still hasn't got a surefire victory - they're still not all in.

 

Enter Russ and his spear. If there's one Primarch guaranteed to not kill his brother, it's Russ (and Sanguinius, but he only held off because kicking Curze out the airlock was worse than death). He's been sent off to stick Horus with the pointy end and let the spearmagic do its thing.

 

And it works! Horus is entirely lucid, and hot damn does he not like what he's seeing. His 'I'm a worse tyrant the Emperor' line was beautiful. Horus, at that point, has absolutely no interest in Chaos at all and is basically going forward right back on his original goals: replace the Emperor, rebuild the Imperium, yadda yadda. 

 

But, joy of joys, the spear wound has done some horrid things to his soul. And Chaos is now playing tug-of-war with it, because they've got an opportunity to really take charge here - pick up all the armies they've gotten under their thumb and go take the Emperor's head. But the only way that's going to happen is if they invest power in Horus - and the only way they're going to do that is if it's necessary for their victory (and that said victory will be assured). Enter Slaves to Darkness, where the last of Horus is shanked by his equerry (whoops) and Chaos starts walking him around ala a Men in Black. Horus is as possessed as it gets by this point, and has some kind of direct connection to Chaos so they can pump their power into him to kill the Emperor (who is, at the same time, looking very weak indeed in all the visions we see over the Siege).

 

So, to sum up: the Emperor may indeed have deliberately engineered events to appear weaker than he really was, while giving Chaos an opportunity they couldn't ignore to pump power into Horus (and form some kind of connection whereby they could be directly attacked). 

 

That's the interesting part of the Siege for me. As of Outcast Dead and Old Earth, the Emperor has basically everything where he wants it. If he kills Horus and wounds Chaos, fantastic. If he dies in the process, no worries, Malcador knows how to go forward from there (and is being explicitly kept in reserve, while getting the Sigillite Order back together (HEY REMEMBER THAT PLOT POINT?)). If the Emperor and Malcador die, the Talisman of Seven Hammers goes off, the assembled armies of Chaos are destroyed and Chaos is dealt a 'mortal blow' (because surprise surprise, giant psychic bomb going through the Webway Breach or annihilating a Chaos-connected Horus is going to cause some serious damage). He's got things set up in such a way that he wins no matter what, and is fully prepared to die if that's what it takes.

 

But, as we know, he doesn't die and Chaos isn't wounded. The big question is: well, what happened that we got the worst possible outcome - and is it the worst possible outcome, or an opportunity that nobody had even thought about until certain conditions were met? What happened (or is going to happen on Caliban) that the Watchers foresaw in Dreadwing that prevented Chaos finishing the job? What did Eldrad see in Old Earth (was he crying because he saw three 'final' Siege books?!)? 

 

TL;DR The Emperor has engineered a number of plans and failsafe options that seem to culminate in his ultimate victory at the Siege, whatever happens.

 

This is a great post - thanks for laying all this out.

[Noserenda]

Imagine thinking something as relatively small scale as collecting (relatively) cheap limited edition books is a "whale" activity worthy of pouring scorn on *shakes head sadly*  Its not for me these days but its hardly decadence! 

[Taliesin]

On 12/5/2022 at 11:08 PM, Roomsky said:

 

Further to Cheywood's comment, it's a popular theory that Sanguinius will embrace his inner daemons to defeat Horus, but after his victory he'll be in such an unstoppable rage that he'll attack the Emperor as well. This pays off a few things:

• The constant temptations of Chaos throughout the story and Sanguinius' visions of a reality where he can and does strike Horus down
• The Emperor might actually hold back against Sanguinius as per his hesitation in old fluff, which at this point would be out of character for him to do with Horus
• The modern Imperium is built on idealized lies, and it would be thematically appropriate for a big cover up regarding Sanguinius to occur
• Horus has been a non-character throughout most of the series and it's too late to make established events hit properly

Personally I think it's a silly theory not just for being unnecessary, but because making it canon would actively enrage a huge part of the fanbase. Note the split response to The Last Jedi, and then imagine the amount of nerdrage it would have caused if it included a flashback to the "real" events of ROTJ where Vader became impossibly powerful and Luke and the Emperor teamed up to defeat him.

 

If anything, Abnett having 3 books gives him more than enough time to paint a picture of Horus compelling enough for us to care about his beef with the Emperor again.

 

Honestly it's probably the only forseeable twist that would put me off, personally. If I see any of the following, I wouldn't even be mad if they're done deftly:

• Ollanius stabs the Emperor, causing his weakness against Horus
• The Heresy was some variety of inside job 
  • I personally dislike the "it was ALL planned" angle, but some of the comments made make me wonder if Horus was always meant to be a sacrificial Chaos-magnet
• Malcador was the original Emperor, "The Emperor" is some kind of construct or psychic entity
• Something something Alpharius
• Fo's formula still exists somewhere, probably with Valdor

 

Thanks for the explanation. I also read your spoiler posts about Ollanius in Mortis, which does at least lend some support to this theory.

 

I have to say I dont like that theory. I've always hated the theory that the Emperor supposedly wanted the Heresy, and that he knew it was coming, that it was in his design that this happened. To a lesser extent this " Sanguinius goes into a Black Rage, defeats Horus and then turns on the Emperor" is also not to my taste. 

 

Still I can see some merits now in the Sanguinius vs The Emperor stuff based on what is listed there, it at least seems * possible*. 

I do think it would quite diminish Horus Ascended though if he were defeated by Sanguinius and never reached the Emperor, I really dont think Black Library is going to do that.

 

As for the idea that the Emperor would hold back against Horus Ascended at this point...I neither think that will happen or that he will have room to do that, given what we have seen, I think Abnett will have both parties go all out in full strength. Hold back against Sanguinius, sure I can see that happen easily. But again I see about 0% chance of that being the final confrontation instead of The Emperor vs Horus " Ascended" .

 

 

[Arkangilos]

It could be that he holds back because he wants Horus to be fully possessed regardless of it was part of the original plan or not.

[63-19]

As if Horus hasn't been neglected enough during the heresy, and especially the siege, there's no way Sanguinius kills him. No way Abnett kills Horus off at his "pinnacle" moment and disrespects the character like that. The only thing I'd be fine with is Sanguinius falling to the red thirst before dying to Horus, which creates the black rage.

[phandaal]

Sanguinius killing Horus would be a lot more than just disrespectful to the character of Horus.

 

Horus vs the Emperor is a foundational part of the canon. Maybe THE foundational part of the canon. Retconning this event would be a disaster.

[DukeLeto69]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

Sanguinius killing Horus would be a lot more than just disrespectful to the character of Horus.

 

Horus vs the Emperor is a foundational part of the canon. Maybe THE foundational part of the canon. Retconning this event would be a disaster.

And it won’t happen. Pure fan speculation that grew legs. I hope!!!!

[Moonreaper666]

On 12/6/2022 at 10:42 PM, DukeLeto69 said:

And it won’t happen. Pure fan speculation that grew legs. I hope!!!!

 

I think the main difference is that Horus is going to be a much tougher opponent in the Finale. The Emperor is not going to fight Horus on his own. Ollianius Pius and others will be by his side from the start