How much of 'Prospero Burns' can we trust?

[Gamiel]

Something I have been thinking about: since everything we learn about the Space Wolves in that book is though Kasper Ansbach Hawser's/Ahmad Ibn Rustah's eyes and we later find out that he is a plant and the Wolves know he is a plant, can we really trust anything that we learn about the Wolves?

 

After all, one of the returning themes about Russ and the SW in the HH is that they are a lot more clever and capable of subtility then they make themself appear, so what say they have not just been showing very specific things about themself to Kasper/Ahmad (which they admit to his face) but have outright lied to him about stuff?

[Wolf Guard Dan]

In the past I’ve heard that all Horus Heresy books are written from the perspective of an imperfect narrator. You can probably trust Kasper’s perspective that what he’s seeing is what the Wolves wanted him to see. But know that someone was messing with his mind so he himself may be misremembering or had something memory implanted into his mind. 

[Marshall Bretton]

Just so happens I'm re listening to this at the moment lol. I think there are two options we can look at for this:

 

1.

The wolves and Russ make it clear throughout the book that they hide nothing from their enemies. The whole point of keeping Kasper around is so that they can show their enemies (they thought the thousand sons) that they knew he was a spy and didn't care. They wanted him to see them as they were so that they would know exactly what was coming for them. If this is the case then that probably makes everything in the book fairly reliable and would be a very good account of what the wolves were like and what actually happened in that period (memory changing demons aside of course).

 

2.

The wolves and Russ also make it very clear that a huge amount of how they operate is an act including the persona Russ projects of being a savage barbarian king. Fulgrim actually calls him out for this in the book so clearly not everyone was fooled. This shows that they are clearly able to use deception on a significant scale and would think nothing of acting completely differently around Kasper just to keep up a ruse. In this case clearly very little that is said in the book can be trusted beyond the fact that it was what Kasper witnessed.

 

So basically it falls down to personal opinion on what you think the wolves are doing. For me I think that Kasper is a reliable narrator and the wolves are acting openly and honestly around him for the majority. I feel like this because of some of the fact about the wolves revealed to Kasper as well as the fact that the deception option puts the wolves on a level close to the alpha legion for deception and whilst that would be cool, it just doesn't fit for me.