What story arcs did Black Library introduce?

[Valkyrion]

I've been in this hobby a long time, but my memory is more like a wet paper towel than a sponge, so I was curious as to what was brand new when Horus Rising et al came out.

I know that Horus killing Sanguinius is early 90's stuff predating the books (though that hasn't happened yet).  I think Signus Prime and KaBandha also predates the books by some years. But what about other storylines that have since become important lore points? A lot of it was in Visions, I think. 

 

e.g did Loken and Torgaddon already exist in lore? Aximand? Sigismund? Horus getting high on Davin? The Megarachnids and Interex? The Ruinstorm?  Even the name 'Lupercal' - is that used anywhere before Horus Rising?

 

I have a vague memory of Leman Russ always breaking Magnus's back, but I can't recall Fulgrim decapitating Manus prior to Fulgrim or Galaxy in Flames (whichever one it was). 

 

Was the Perpetual storyline already in it's nascent form 40 years ago or is it brand new? The Saint, Keeler? Cabal? (brand new in this instance being about 15 years old!)

 

Lots of questions, I know, but I like an origin story!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MARK0SIAN]

My first army was Black Templars so I can tell you that Sigismund becoming the Emperor’s champion at the siege predates the novel series. 

[Astartes Consul]

It sort of depends on what you class the Heresy Trading Card Game and Collected Visions as, tbh.

 

Because a LOT of what has been central to the main arcs of the Black Library series can't be traced back to that.

31 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

Was the Perpetual storyline already in it's nascent form 40 years ago or is it brand new? The Saint, Keeler? Cabal? (brand new in this instance being about 15 years old!)

 

This is all new, IIRC.

[Astartes Consul]

35 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

I have a vague memory of Leman Russ always breaking Magnus's back, but I can't recall Fulgrim decapitating Manus prior to Fulgrim or Galaxy in Flames (whichever one it was). 

 

Index Astartes: Iron Hands from UK White Dwarf 262 (October 2001) has the following passage about Ferrus.

 

 

So that's about five years before Horus Rising was published? Not sure if the Visions source books had already changed the story by then though.

[Ripper.McGuirl]

Alpharius/Omegon was introduced in Legion.

[Orange Knight]

14 hours ago, Astartes Consul said:

 

Index Astartes: Iron Hands from UK White Dwarf 262 (October 2001) has the following passage about Ferrus.

 

 

 

That little blurb tells a far more compelling story than what the novels managed when they expanded and detailed the events...

[Xenith]

Soo much. It might be easier to say what already existed before the HH series

 

[lansalt]

25 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

That little blurb tells a far more compelling story than what the novels managed when they expanded and detailed the events...

Unfortunately Ferrus and the IH are one of the legions with the worst stories and characterization. They're only saved by their appearances in Shattered Legions tales.

[Astartes Consul]

34 minutes ago, lansalt said:

Unfortunately Ferrus and the IH are one of the legions with the worst stories and characterization. They're only saved by their appearances in Shattered Legions tales.

Think they really suffer from having been featured so early. When BL launched the series, it was never intended to be anywhere near as big. In hindsight, the storm of Ferrus, our main source on pre-Heresy Emperor’s Children and the story of Istvaan V all being in one novel is insane. 
 

But at the time, I think there was only a plan for a limited series of novels. It was only after the huge success of the first run, and the clear appetite for more and more exploration on new settings, stories and characters, that the series was expanded. 
 

Though obviously by that point Ferrus was already headless.

[lansalt]

4 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

Think they really suffer from having been featured so early

Sure, but even in the more recent Ferrus primarch novel they're terrible during the pre Heresy era, with an EC character being almost the actual protagonist.

[Karhedron]

16 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

Was the Perpetual storyline already in it's nascent form 40 years ago or is it brand new?

 

It was new but it did tap into older lore regarding the Sensei Knights who were supposedly the children of the Emperor. Like the Perpetuals, they were immortal and largely immune to Chaos. Rather than being totally unique, the Emperor is now depicted as the most powerful of the Perpetuals.

[SlickSamos]

18 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

e.g did Loken and Torgaddon already exist in lore? Aximand? Sigismund? Horus getting high on Davin? The Megarachnids and Interex? The Ruinstorm?  Even the name 'Lupercal' - is that used anywhere before Horus Rising?

I don't think any of the four of the Mournival except for Abbadon nor was the Mournival itself existed before the first book.  Similarly both Murder and Interex were brand new.  Dan Abnett recently gave an interview which does cover how they planned the series & talks about how much they invented and how much they adapted.  Link here:

 

 

I'm sure there are other sources out there, but Mira's interview is the one that springs to mind.

 

 

[Astartes Consul]

4 hours ago, lansalt said:

Sure, but even in the more recent Ferrus primarch novel they're terrible during the pre Heresy era, with an EC character being almost the actual protagonist.

 

Oh absolutely. However, that might have gone a bit better is Ferrus / pre-Heresay IH's had been given a decent treatment the first time round. Maybe.

 

 

[lost_angel]

Unremembered empire wasn’t mentioned anywhere in lore prior to the hh books - only the attack on Calth. 

[Gorgoff]

7 minutes ago, lost_angel said:

Unremembered empire wasn’t mentioned anywhere in lore prior to the hh books - only the attack on Calth. 

Because nobody remembered.

[Astartes Consul]

1 minute ago, Gorgoff said:

Because nobody remembered.

 

 lmao, beat me to it.

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

Shadrak Meduson and the Shattered Legions. Some of those arcs have something related in other parts (For example in Horus Heresy CCG and the material of the first Collected Visions books or spare tales in old WD or previous versions of GW web page. That's the case of Sigismund) but not the case of Shadrak.

Edited March 31, 2023 by AGRAMAR

[b1soul]

Other than the Emperor facing Horus on the Vengeful Spirit with a freshly slain Angel on the floor...most of the major HH events were fleshed out more with Collected Visions (Oct. 2004 - Sept. 2006: Visions of War, Visions of Darkness, Visions of Treachery, and Visions of Death), no? 

 

I think this art was from 1990

 

...and Adrian Smith was probably inspired by it when he crafted the most iconic piece of 40K art imo

 

I believe the bare bones of Prospero, Signus, Isstvan III, and Isstvan V may have been introduced much earlier? Not so sure about Calth...but now that I think back, Index Astartes did cover the First Founding Chapters' Heresy-era legacies in very general terms iirc.

[apologist]

The early mentions of the Horus Heresy were not particularly consistent with each other, and I suspect the Visions were Merrett wanting a consistent 'series bible'. Adeptus Titanicus and Realm of Chaos introduced the ideas of the Horus Heresy, with Primarchs then just capable Space Marine commanders, more akin to Legion Masters. As you can see, a lot of the core elements are present even at this stage:

 

 

The material on the Horus Heresy after that was scanty – we had Captain Karlsen of the Thousand Sons recounting his memories in a piece of colour text in Dark Millennium, a few off-hand mentions of the Heresy and Primarchs in Codex Imperialis from 2nd edition 40k, and the 2nd edition Codex Chaos included some tantalising hints. Other than that, the 1988 Adeptus Titanicus had a summary of events and some battles – Yarant IV, Tallarn etc. – but these were quite short pieces of colour text rather than a coherent narrative. Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines are mentioned fighting the Word Bearers here. Later, the Index Astartes series of articles started to cover pre-Heresy events, with lots of juicy information on the events of the  Heresy appearing here.

 

As you can see below, in this extract from Dark Millennium, the colour text was written before the idea of the Rubric of Ahriman, and Prospero was moved after the Siege of Terra. Nevertheless, the broad strokes like the rivalry between the Space Wolves and Thousand Sons are there, or the Siege of Terra – and even details like the duel between Sanguinius and a Bloodthirster before the Ultimate Gate – are there:

 

 

 

Prior to the publication of Horus Rising, the various Visions of [...] books were the most complete picture of the events of the Horus Heresy.  They were written by Alan Merrett, the IP guru of GW at the time; presumably to gather together all the scattered snippets of info about the Horus Heresy in one place, and make a consistent story thread for the new Horus Heresy books series to follow. This book references and makes consistent pretty much every prior mention. The Legions – whose numbers and colours had previously varied (see Epic Space Marine and Codex Imperialis) were listed and finalised with their Primarchs. A number of new actors appeared here for the first time, too – Malcador the Sigilite, for example. It's here I'd suggest you look for the 'original' info on the Horus Heresy.

 

Later compiled into Visions of Heresy, this compilation added new events that had been created and explored in the novel series – the Shadow Crusade and Ruinstorm, for example, were added in the later edition. The compilation also corrected a few misplaced captions and revised some images, so you're after the earliest stuff, then you'll want to track down the individual Visions of books.

 

The Visions were likely used as a primary resource for Abnett, McNeill and Counter while writing the first three – though as we don't known the timeline, it's possible that they  themselves influenced the Visions; it's not (as far as I'm aware) ever been made clear. I'm happy to be corrected, but I believe the Visions came first. In any case, Visions contains a lot of seeds that would later be developed, particularly in the case of names – an otherwise unremarkable Sons of Horus Marine captioned 'Tormageddon', for example, appears in the Visions; and I suspect Abnett took that off-hand reference as the basis for Torgaddon, who, as we found out more than a decade later, would be 'reborn' as Tormageddon.

 

+++

+ Which is the truth? +

I'd note that part of the appeal of the setting is that there are multiple 'truths'. Karlsen's account above – of the 'angel-winged man' being thrown down by a bat-winged daemon is true in a sense, and remains consistent even with the more detailed telling in the Siege of Terra series; even if Sanguinius later grows into being ten foot tall. Other details have varied. The Ultramarines, Iron Hands and Space Wolves were the Space Marines fighting on Tallarn, rather than the Fists, for example (Epic Space Marine). The Space Wolves and Dark Angels alone were racing to lift the Siege, with the Ultramarines simply not invovled (galactic scale meaning something in those days! :P)

 

Even real fundamentals are still recognisable, even if the details are very different – just look at how Horus was corrupted originally:

 

 

It's fascinating to try to see how particular threads were picked up, dropped, reinterpreted or redacted through the series – and I suspect that lots of bits that appeared in Visions of [...] had already been discussed with an eye to the novel series prior to their being published.

 

Overall, I think the answer to your question is quite difficult to answer because of the scope of the novel series. It's difficult to say which details are 'new', because the original material was so vague, and there are so many (beautifully done) callbacks, revisions and Easter eggs. The pre-Primarch Legion colours, for example, are often the suggested paint schemes for those Legions given on the Epic: Space Marine box.

 

From my point of view, the key changes and things the novels introduced or explored for the first time are:

• The nature of the Emperor – and his rather mercurial character. He was very definitely portrayed as humanity's only hope, and genuinely 'good'.
• The nature of the Primarchs – who have gone from human-sized (as all Space Marines were) generals to ten-foot tall demigods infused with the warp.
  • In particular, the implication of a Faustian bargain between the Emperor and the Chaos Gods.
• The size (in terms of soldiers), organisation, and tinctures of the Legions.
• The Perpetuals; particularly Erda.
• The Selenites.
• The Shattered Legions – previously the Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands were essentially taken off the board.
• The Shadow Crusade and Imperium Secundus.
• The war between the Dark Angels and Night Lords.
• Information on a number of Legions, including the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion – and surprisingly, the Sons of Horus – all of whom were virtually unexplored.

...but as I mention above, all of those are arguable – and while I have done some deep dives in reading and researching things in the past, I'm more than willing to say there are sources I'm likely unaware of.

Edited March 31, 2023 by apologist

[lost_angel]

The White Scars narrative was another biggie. Can’t believe I forgot this one. 

[Cactus]

Great summary @apologistp but I have couple of nits to pick.

 

The Visions of... books were compilations of artwork from the CCG and I doubt the narrative was being written with a planned novel series in mind. Obviously the novels have built on the narrative that Visions of Heresy lays out. It's all a bit chicken and egg and we're guessing at Alan Merritt's intentions but I wanted to put the alternative view on the record.

 

It was Forge World that increased the size of the legions with Betrayal and this filtered back into the Black Library fiction.

[Sgt John Keel]

 

17 hours ago, apologist said:

Prior to the publication of Horus Rising, the various Visions of [...] books were the most complete picture of the events of the Horus Heresy.  They were written by Alan Merrett, the IP guru of GW at the time; presumably to gather together all the scattered snippets of info about the Horus Heresy in one place, and make a consistent story thread for the new Horus Heresy books series to follow. This book references and makes consistent pretty much every prior mention. The Legions – whose numbers and colours had previously varied (see Epic Space Marine and Codex Imperialis) were listed and finalised with their Primarchs.

 

That doesn't make a lot of sense, the first Visions book (… of War) came out in 2004 and the canonical list of First Founding Chapters (with their Primarchs) was printed at least as early as Codex Ultramarines in 1995, and the colour schemes (as well as some significant lore nuggets) for pre-and post heresy Chapters/Legions were printed in Indices Astartes between about 2001 and 2003 I believe. 

 

To nit pick a bit as well, the Visions books were first collected in the prosaically named Collected Visions, Visions of Heresy is, as you say, more of a re-working. 

 

Very nice and comprehensive summary otherwise. 

 

Personally, the Visions books were about as ill-considered as the introduction of the Tau, but hey… at least they have some interesting art work.

 

Also, was Murder not really a thing before the Black Library books?

Edited April 1, 2023 by Sgt John Keel

[Zuvassin]

If I may (and I'll preface this by explicitly stating I'm just one person, with zero greater authority than personal experience):

 

I helped co-write the original Index Astartes article for the Word Bearers. The WB had been my primary army in 40k Second Edition, and back then, before social media groups and even fancy forums like this became the dominant areas for the hobby, a bunch of us hung out on (email) mailing lists - the greatest one being IGCOM.

 

It was there that a bunch of us got to know the then-WD editor, Paul Sawyer, and some of us eventually got asked to help with writing the Index Astartes articles for the original 18 legions.

 

At the time, the lore was pretty much what had come out in the Realm of Chaos books and the materials supporting Adeptus Titanicus, as well as some additions and retellings in what became Epic as well as the 2nd edition Codex Chaos and then expanded a bit too in the Horus Heresy boardgame (the original, IIRC they re-released an updated version about ten years ago or so). Point being, there was a lot of open space to figure things out. For example: in Rogue Trader (ie 40k First Edition), the Word Bearers were just a generic Khornate Traitor Legion (IIRC, alongside the Night Lords, really only showing up in a few color pages of Khorne Marine heraldry with the World Eaters taking center stage). The 2nd edition Codex Chaos had about the only real information on them, a relatively brief blurb about how Larger and the Word Bearers were rebuked by the Emperor for taking too long to build monuments and churches to him instead of pushing forward with conquest. 

 

So, in that sense, the seeds of Monarchia were there, just not explicitly named or spelled out.

 

Another thing not super explicit was exactly who all was where during the Heresy. Beyond the main duel of Emperor, Sanguinius, and Horus (IE Blood Angels and Sons of Horus), the only other real indicators of who had been at the Siege of Terra (which IIRC was basically one of three main plot points of the Heresy at the time, alongside the Istvaan massacres and the "flight of the Eisenstein") were the Horus Heresy boardgame and a few of the legion blurbs in that 2nd edition Chaos-dex. So it was vaguely known that the Blood Angels, White Scars, and Space Wolves were present for the loyalists, as well as that the Emperor's Children and World Eaters were present but respectively not well organized by this point in the war (IE that the Emperor's Children would turn from the actual war to rampage against civilians across Terra).

 

I had noticed that a lot of the people doing these IA articles were really trying to shoehorn their legion into the Siege. I had also noticed that the 2nd Edition Codex Chaos sorta implied, without really overtly stating, that Larger had actually fallen first. It didn't explicitly tie the two together, as I recall, it was more that you could read between the lines of "after the Emperor's rebuke, Lorgar's eyes were opened that the Emperor was not a real god and he thus went searching" and "by the time Horus turned, Larger and the Word Bearers had already blah blah blah".

 

I saw a chance to make my beloved legion the actual first to fall, even before the most famous traitor primarch who the whole dang Heresy is named after. But I figured I'd have to be willing to sacrifice something to get that, and the obvious seemed to be to be one of the few people not pushing to make them the previously unknown star of the Siege or otherwise force them to be fitted into it. At the time, one of my best gaming friends was also involved - he'd been asked to write the Ultramarines IA. I asked if he'd be cool with it, then proposed that the WB and UM would be written to miss the siege due to the WB launching a surprise assault to pin the Ultramarines in the eastern end of the galaxy.

 

This was approved, and I went to work coming up with details. I noticed in the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines that Calth was mentioned as a dead world that had previously been something of a wealthy/luxury type world until its star started poisoning it. The blurb mentions nothing about the Heresy, I don't even recall if it explicitly mentions or even implies what exactly caused the star to kill the planet, but I saw the potential of a neat bit of lore to connect my favorite legion with my friend's favorite legion: Calth had been an important Ultramarine world and thus the target of a massive Word Bearer attack that would ultimately destroy it and pin the Ultras away from the Siege.

 

Now, that initial idea had nothing of what got fleshed out in the novels about the underground war, the special Word Bearer ships, or the ruinstorm that served to be the thing that actually pinned the 13th in place for much of the Siege. I didn't even get to finish the IA as being in grad school my real life priorities took over.

 

Anyways, nostalgia trip aside, I wanted to bring all that up because it really wasn't until the novels and subsequent FW game were started that the Heresy lore really was pushed into a formal "this is how it happened" shape. I think people nowadays maybe dismiss or don't believe or simply don't quite comprehend how off the cuff GW used to be with its lore. I think they're seen now - probably rightfully so - as this large corporation that likely has a super formal process to how background material gets created and vetted and sorted out, but that wasn't always the case. There used to be an interview with one of the early 40k people, perhaps even Rick Priestley himself, where the person mentions that the original lore was very explicit that power armour was Marine only. But that some "Marines" got sculpted that Rick felt were too outside the concept to be used as Marines, but he didn't have the resources to bin them or force a resculpt - 40k initially had little time and slots allotted to it. So he had to basically retro-invent the Inquisition and add the whole black carapace lore that technically anyone can use power armour, it's just only Marines who can make full use of it due to that implant.

 

And that's really how it went. It's been said that the Horus Heresy was essentially the result of them needing a civil war story to explain why Adeptus Titanicus only had the exact same titans for both sides, but what gets overlooked is that the original story is essentially a rip-off of the 2000AD comic Rogue Trooper, which involves a sci-fi future war that's basically a retelling of the American Civil War and involves a plot where the "Traitor General" betrays the main character and his unit in a "dropside massacre". Similarly, you can see a lot of elements from other 2000AD comics worked into 40k, from "Kaos" worshipping robots (ABC Warriors), the hive-cities and weaponized judges of Judge Dredd, and Nemesis the Warlock, a comic about a psychic alien being hunted by a xenophobic human Imperium centered on Earth (called Termite), ruled by a Grand Inquisitor and his "Terminators". The up-pointing arrow that Marine Tactical Squads use as their marker is actually a re-use of what in Nemesis the Warlock is a stylized atomic mushroom cloud image used to warn people of highly-irradiated places.

 

40k lore was often very "seat of their pants" in terms of how GW came up with things. That includes the Heresy - they'd make stuff up, let random people like us help make stuff up, and when they realized that the gaming community as a whole were latching on to some of these things, they'd double down on them as basically fan-service. Hell, even as relatively late as the early 2000s, when they released the Inquisitor 54mm role-playing game, there's a supplement that covers a story in which someone's trying to locate a being who's heavily implied to either be Sanguinius himself or the son of Sanguinius.

 

Heresy-wise, it's really only been with the shotgunning of random names, events, and such that came about when they made the Horus Heresy card game and associated "Visions" art-books, and then basically codified them with the Black Library novels, that any of this lore was suddenly fleshed out in a formal and competent way. And even then, GW still has an out - the first or second book of the Dawn of Fire series for 40k has an in-universe reference to the Horus Heresy novels as "romances" of the Heresy that are popular pulp tales within the Imperium.

 

So even now, you could always claim the Horus Heresy narrative we currently have is just the distorted fiction known to the citizens of the 41st millennium, lol.

[b1soul]

As an aside, I feel that 40K has come such a long way since 1st edition that 1st edition, 2nd edition and everything 3rd and beyond feel like three parallel universes 

[Sgt John Keel]

11 hours ago, Zuvassin said:

Beyond the main duel of Emperor, Sanguinius, and Horus (IE Blood Angels and Sons of Horus), the only other real indicators of who had been at the Siege of Terra (which IIRC was basically one of three main plot points of the Heresy at the time, alongside the Istvaan massacres and the "flight of the Eisenstein") were the Horus Heresy boardgame and a few of the legion blurbs in that 2nd edition Chaos-dex. So it was vaguely known that the Blood Angels, White Scars, and Space Wolves were present for the loyalists, as well as that the Emperor's Children and World Eaters were present but respectively not well organized by this point in the war (IE that the Emperor's Children would turn from the actual war to rampage against civilians across Terra).

 William King's seminal Assault on Holy Terra was first published in 1993 (I assume it was meant to accompany the release of the board game), and it seems like a far stronger source of which legions were at the siege than you appear to imply here.