The End and the Death Part I, II, III, ...

[EverythingIsGreat]

16 hours ago, Noserenda said:

I'm pretty sure the Blood angels have some of sanguinius' blood stashed away in relics and grails?

 

But cloning primarchs isn't that simple, and rarely works out properly

 

Well my comment re:Sanguinius' blood was more of a joke. In Swallow's BA novels, Bile makes it to Baal where he manages to steal a phial that includes Sanguinius' blood. So I thought we would find out how that blood was taken in the first place. Unless it is mentioned somewhere that Sanguinius had stored some of his blood before his annihilation and I forgot about it.

[Moonreaper666]

I did not expect Chaos to pull a Xanathos Gambit. But then again being several steps ahead proves the Chaos Gods are the only REAL Gods in 40k

 

I believe Gav Thrope talked to Dan Abnett before he wrote Rise of Ynnari Wildheart (Retcon the 1st phase of the War in Heaven to be Eldar + Necrontyr vs Chaos)

 

Considering EVERYTHING Chaos does in The End and The Death plus Fall of Cadia ALL the Non-Chaos factions SHOULD fear Chaos for EVEN at their PEAK and WORKING TOGETHER won't stop Chaos when it stops fighting blindfolded and with both arms behind its back!!!

 

Warp = NXT from Limitless but so much more

 

It's Canon that all of the Primarchs can (not will) be corrupted by Chaos. But what I never suspect is that 

Spoiler

The Emperor can be corrupted as well

 

Guess Chaos should have thrown Lion and Sanginius in the Red Desert or give them and their Legions Nurgle's plagues

 

I knew that a certain character is the backup Dark King

Spoiler

When the Dark King card became The Despoiler

 

I'm glad the central fight in Part 2 is 

Spoiler

VERY one-sided and the Emperor WON'T hold back when he fights Horus

 

Laurie Golding is right about a certain event in Vol 3! He told us over a DECADE ago!!!

[Scribe]

So....

 

Spoiler

Its a bit of the Infinity Crusade and Dr. Strange "I have seen all futures, we have 1 chance." and "We have to go back in time to get the McGuffins and set the stage." Back to the Future version 30K.

 

Grim. There was a world in which we get the actual Tragedy of the HH...

[darkhorse0607]

16 hours ago, Noserenda said:

I'm pretty sure the Blood angels have some of sanguinius' blood stashed away in relics and grails?

 

But cloning primarchs isn't that simple, and rarely works out properly

 

Dante's mask has some in the gem, they had a feather in stasis (which I believe had blood on it but I can't say for certain) during the Devastation of Baal, I'm pretty sure there is some in a few other pieces but I can't remember off the top of my head

[Scribe]

22 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

Dante's mask has some in the gem, they had a feather in stasis (which I believe had blood on it but I can't say for certain) during the Devastation of Baal, I'm pretty sure there is some in a few other pieces but I can't remember off the top of my head

 

His blood was also part of the creation process, at least in the 3rd Edition era. I assume its still floating around in that sense.

 

Cross posting a spoiler summary from reddit, as I dislike going to reddit at all. 

Spoiler

I find the seemingly high number of references to the Abnett-verse completely revolting in the comments.

 

Spoiler

The Dark King isn't Horus or Curze or Samus, it's The Emperor. By summoning as much Warp energy as he can to empower himself for the fight against Horus The Emperor is on the brink of truly ascending to Godhood.

Erebus tells Abaddon that they are about to win either way. The Emperor will ascend as the new God of Ruin, if he gives up the power Horus will kill him and the fall of mankind is assured

Oll, Loken and co. Convince The Emperor to give up the power to prevent the creation of another god, the shockwave of him giving up his power frees Rogal Dorn from the desert of part 1. Dorn sees a red wall casting red shadows in the red desert and calls the thing whispering to him "The Red". He is about to give in to Khorne when the star above him suddenly goes out which distracts him from what he was about to say, and then Dorn begins to beat down the Wall which falls away letting him return to the Vengeful Spirit.

Malcador thinks that as things are coming to an end the Emperor and him have begun to appreciate how skilled the Primarchs truly are more and more. Malcador thinks that the Emperor is learning from Dorn here and choosing the "least bad" of the two options, and that the devil they know (Horus) winning is better than whatever the Dark King is

Malcador feels that in giving up his power the Emperor cast away at the part of his soul with compassion and warmth in order to be more effective when he comes face to face with Horus.

Valdor and his Custodes begin fighting the Sons of Horus led by Abaddon, with Valdor seeing Abaddon's marker tag in his visor in his last chapter

Sanguinius fights Horus by flying around him and occasionally swooping down to stab at him. Horus is holding back from using the full extent of his powers because he wants to turn Sanguinius to his side, Sanguinius hopes he can anger Horus and make him clumsy and unskilled. Horus thinks that Sanguinius seems to be showing fear for the first time in his life

Sanguinius beats Horus down to his knees and swings his sword down to sever Horus' neck when Horus finally releases his full power, he blocks Sanguinius, Sanguinius tries to fly upwards to make the fight "3 dimensional" but Horus commands a multitude of dimensions, he reaches through "the 8th angle of space" and plucks Sanguinius out of the sky and slams him to the floor of the Spirit.

Sanguinius has his ankle and wing broken but he still gets up and Horus is surprised by how fast and strong he still is. Sanguinius moves at "the speed of light" but Horus moves at "the speed of Darkness" and smacks him into a shrine on the Spirit, at the centre of which is Ferrus' skull

Horus picks Sanguinius up who is clawing and scratching at him so he drops him and begins beating him with Worldbreaker "like a dog" Sanguinius tries to say some final words but his lungs are full of blood and he can't speak. Half of his face has been peeled off and hangs loosely like a mask. Horus picks him up with his Talon, squeezes and snaps Sanguinius' neck and back. Sanguinius is dropped to the floor of the Spirit and daemons come out of the shadows to string his corpse up

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/17nb30y/the_end_and_the_death_vol_2_ending_summaryspoilers/?rdt=45086

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Scribe

[SkimaskMohawk]

Idk what's worse, abnetts direction with the plot, or moonreapers misunderstanding of it. 

 

It's kinda really funny doing the ol' look back at past plot points/foreshadowing.

 

The emperor and crew made the primarchs pretty comprehensively, even mapping out individual personalities and natures to specific primarchs. He can also super mind read, and spent the last 200 years seeing their capabilities; there should be no sudden lesson taught by, or newfound appreciation of them. He crafted them in their entirety and has seen what new cultural influences have resulted in. 

 

The eldar made slaanesh through a species wide, long time, decline into depravity. 40k emperor has become a pseudo god through a species manifested belief during 10000 years. But the dark king would have been made by the emperor just powering up? Like, he always could have just gone to the eye of terror and turned into a god, whenever he wanted to? It's not formed by a species emotion ripening in the warp over time, just this:

 

  

Spoiler

  

 

We what else? The emperor losing his compassion when giving up his big power, when valdor implied it was already fading long before that.

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Scribe]

7 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

when valdor implied it was already fading long before that.

 

Good point, something that happened 200 odd years prior to this event. Yet another "Nah I want to tell it my way." Fantastic.

 

Please folks, prove my initial assumptions about all this wrong. I'm actually begging to be wrong.

[Nagashsnee]

23 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Please folks, prove my initial assumptions about all this wrong. I'm actually begging to be wrong.

Honestly? I expected major retcons and twists. So in that sense i am pretty happy.

 

And the Sanguinius vs Horus duel is solid when you read it as one straight piece. I would have liked a bit more talking and a bit less fighting but that petsonal prefrence. 

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, Nagashsnee said:

Honestly? I expected major retcons and twists. So in that sense i am pretty happy.

 

Which of course is fine, and obviously a path Abnett could and seemingly has, gone with. Thats fine. I'm not saying you cannot enjoy it.

 

But from my perspective, this sure looks like.

 

1. "I wanted to retread things, because I want them my way."

2. "I want to seed plot lines and bread crumbs to my 40K works."

3. "No editor shall deny me, or my thesaurus."

 

Are those things true?

[Nagashsnee]

21 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

 

1. "I wanted to retread things, because I want them my way."

2. "I want to seed plot lines and bread crumbs to my 40K works."

3. "No editor shall deny me, or my thesaurus."

 

Are those things true?

In my view yes to an extent. 

 

1) agree 100%.

2) agree 50 % ( nothing with this in moderation and when dont to the wider lore).

3) 0% agree. Its not an authors job to make sure the editots do theres. He creates and they manage/steer/guide. I cant put this on Abnett, this is 100% on the HH editorial team and GW lore team. But they have been since day 1.  A publisher is suppose to handle the talent. The talent is not meant to worry about the publisher.  BL and the lore ream oked it. Abnett wrote what he wanted to write. But thats kinda his job. He writes they guide/edit and the drafts become a book...or even 3 books .

[Scribe]

I dont put 3 at Abnetts feet. It would be nice if he had shown some kind of self restraint, its not as if he doesnt have the experience to know the difference, but yes, 3 is 100% Kyme's or whoever the BL editor assigned to this, fault.

 

Regardless, based on what you are saying, I'll be flushing $50 or whatever it is in CAD down the toilet. I will be getting it, because at this point I pretty much have to, but yeah. 

[Just123456]

3 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

 

I will reply, but I believe it's better to put this subtopic to bed.

 

The short answer is I forgot how definitive the 1st edition had been on this. Not remembering it was so concrete, I thought the shaman backstory/emperor age was character- rather than IP- viewpoint. In my defense, as noted earlier, GW often mixes tentative (character) statements into authoritative (IP) ones. A good example are the two paragraphs of “The Emperor is Born” section that was discussed earlier in this thread. The second paragraph doesn’t have the authority of the first. Too many conditional/subtly speculative statements in it.

 

I mean, the whole shaman backstory is presented as factual. The fact it said in one single part the Emperor identified the time of his birth doesn't imply anything. The Sensei and Star Child detailed from pages 184-191 in Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned are very explicitly presented as fact. 

 

 

The Emperor's age has always been solid. After all, the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra novels show Oll Persson, Damon Prytanis and other Perpetuals. Oll Persson is the oldest Perpetual, he was one of Jason's Argonauts, he knew Theseus, he was at the battle of Verdun, 73 Easting and so on. Oll Persson is 45,000 years old and the oldest Perpetual as the Perpetual audio book and Saturnine novel said. That places Oll Persson being born in the Upper Paleolithic. 

 

Damon Prytanis is another Perpetual who was at the battle of Iwo Jima and Custer's Last Stand. 

 

The Perpetuals are immortal humans who can resurrect from being vaporized. The Perpetuals cannot die without Fulgurite and stronger power. 

 

Did you think the Perpetuals were made up head cannon too? How would you explain that? 

 

A part of me suspected you got the belief of the shaman backstory being invented by the Fandom from Luetin09, who some people misinterpreted as saying the shaman backstory was nothing more than a theory. And 40k YouTube lore channels are unreliable anyway. 

 

If you are saying the shaman backstory was an invention of the Fandom. I might have misunderstood that. 

 

Did you know that Lexicanum precisely cited Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned for the shaman backstory, Sensei and Star Child and that Lexicanum precisely cited all the page numbers from Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned? And did you know that Lexicanum is strictly moderated with a no nonsense policy and is so strict in moderating that they only allow approved admins? 

 

I am sorry. I had to get that out. I just wish people would stop watching YouTube videos and read Lexicanum or the books. 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Just123456

[SkimaskMohawk]

Whats with repeating how strict and no nonsense lexicanum is? Plenty of stuff is missing citations and the quality of the site dropped when BOLS acquired it. It's a fine tool to use, but it harkens back to early 2000s wikipedia at best. 

[Just123456]

38 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Whats with repeating how strict and no nonsense lexicanum is? Plenty of stuff is missing citations and the quality of the site dropped when BOLS acquired it. It's a fine tool to use, but it harkens back to early 2000s wikipedia at best. 

I mean, yeah, but almost all of those pages missing books cited are outdated pages from years or decades ago. 

 

And Lexicanum precisely cited Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned with all the page numbers for the shaman backstory, Sensei and Star Child. 

 

I didn't say Lexicanum is perfect, just that its strict and generally fine to use. You have to be approved to become an admin. There are not a lot of moderators, which is why its not as detailed as you would hope. 

 

I don't think BOLS is particularly bad. It can be very good sometimes. 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Just123456

[SvenIronhand]

3 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

The eldar made slaanesh through a species wide, long time, decline into depravity. 40k emperor has become a pseudo god through a species manifested belief during 10000 years. But the dark king would have been made by the emperor just powering up? Like, he always could have just gone to the eye of terror and turned into a god, whenever he wanted to? It's not formed by a species emotion ripening in the warp over time, just this:

 

There's more to it than that. The entire heresy is one big human sacrifice ritual for the Dark King, basically.

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, SvenIronhand said:

There's more to it than that. The entire heresy is one big human sacrifice ritual for the Dark King, basically.

 

I'm going to hold off until i read the set up proper, but I'll say this: slaanesh wasn't created through a sacrifice. It was created through concentrated emotion and a culture wide slide into depravity; all the eldar dying was a consequence of the birth of the god, not the fuel for it.

 

So what is the Dark King god of? What is one guy going super sayan representative of?

 

2 hours ago, Just123456 said:

I mean, yeah, but almost all of those pages missing books cited are outdated pages from years or decades ago. 

 

And Lexicanum precisely cited Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned with all the page numbers for the shaman backstory, Sensei and Star Child. 

 

I didn't say Lexicanum is perfect, just that its strict and generally fine to use. You have to be approved to become an admin. There are not a lot of moderators, which is why its not as detailed as you would hope. 

 

I don't think BOLS is particularly bad. It can be very good sometimes. 

 

Yea it's...early 2000s wikipedia. Some people used it for all their assignments, and some people didn't trust it because there's some obvious sloppiness and that can bleed through.

 

And bols hasn't been good since like, 4th edition. Current goonhammrr is basically what bols was in its heyday. 

 

[grailkeeper]

Did Abnett get a quid for every mention of time being wrong? He could afford to retire if he did.

[grailkeeper]

 

Chapter 6 part xxxxxvxvx

 

 

"Time is chondefluously wrong.

 

The character runs. She meets a man.

 

It's Inquisitor Eisenhorn or is it?

 

He is not of this time

 

He says qwertyuiopically-Welcome to the End and the Death "

Edited November 5, 2023 by grailkeeper

[Scribe]

40 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

So what is the Dark King god of? What is one guy going super sayan representative of?

 

Contradictory devotion and obsessive hatred. A God of cold brutality, tyranny and xenophobia. 

 

The saddest thing about all this is that the concepts are not even that bad, but since he was apparently left to his own devices he has spectacularly missed the mark.

[grailkeeper]

I haven't gotten far enough to get discuss the major plot points, but it seems to me like the editors dropped the ball hard on this book. It'd massively bloated and very self indulgent. It could have been trimmed to one book without much loss. Its a sign of an author being more powerful than the editors when the novels start getting overly long. Look at the size of the later Harry Potter books compared to the earlier ones, or game of thrones.

 

From what I've seen of the lore arguments here  (not much as I'm trying to avoid spoilers), they might have been solved with a firmer editorial hand.

 

Abnett is BLs no 1 author. The last book in a massive series is not a great time to get experimental like this. I don't fault him for wanting to write like this. I do fault the editors for not reining him in.

[SvenIronhand]

1 hour ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

I'm going to hold off until i read the set up proper, but I'll say this: slaanesh wasn't created through a sacrifice. It was created through concentrated emotion and a culture wide slide into depravity; all the eldar dying was a consequence of the birth of the god, not the fuel for it.

 

So what is the Dark King god of? What is one guy going super sayan representative of?

 

The warp responds to ritualized mass death events pretty well, too, as seen with the Ruinstorm. And the Dark King is the god of Ruin. Perhaps it's the Primordial Annihilator, perhaps not. 

From Part 1:

 

Spoiler

‘Such is the inevitable fate of all advanced, psychic species,’ says Actae. ‘And the Dark King is our fate. This war, my lord, is not one of loyalists against traitors. It is not about the conquest of Terra and mankind by Chaos. It is certainly not about a son at war with his father. This is the Triumph of Ruin. Horus and the Emperor have taken their conflict to such a pitch, that we are about to suffer the same fate as the cursed aeldari. The human race will die in birth-fire, consumed by blood-rage, pestilence, violent transmutation and blind desire. And from the grave-pyre of our civilisation, the broken galaxy will see Horus rising, absolute and complete, as a new, true and terrible god.’

 

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, grailkeeper said:

 

Chapter 6 part xxxxxvxvx

 

 

"Time is chondefluously wrong.

 

The character runs. She meets a man.

 

It's Inquisitor Eisenhorn or is it?

 

He is not of this time

 

He says qwertyuiopically-Welcome to the End and the Death "

 

Are those actual quotes? Please no...

[EverythingIsGreat]

1 hour ago, SvenIronhand said:

The warp responds to ritualized mass death events pretty well, too, as seen with the Ruinstorm. And the Dark King is the god of Ruin. Perhaps it's the Primordial Annihilator, perhaps not. 

From Part 1:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

‘Such is the inevitable fate of all advanced, psychic species,’ says Actae. ‘And the Dark King is our fate. This war, my lord, is not one of loyalists against traitors. It is not about the conquest of Terra and mankind by Chaos. It is certainly not about a son at war with his father. This is the Triumph of Ruin. Horus and the Emperor have taken their conflict to such a pitch, that we are about to suffer the same fate as the cursed aeldari. The human race will die in birth-fire, consumed by blood-rage, pestilence, violent transmutation and blind desire. And from the grave-pyre of our civilisation, the broken galaxy will see Horus rising, absolute and complete, as a new, true and terrible god.’

 

 

There's a lot of noise about something (the Dark King triumphant at the end of SoT) that did not happen. As a plot device it is maybe the means to lay out the final chapter of the SoT and "explain" in some measure why things turned out the way they did.  But it is also a moot point. Horus got annihilated, the Emperor turned into a half-alive incommunicado corpse, and the Imperium trots along and rots along. :cuss:.

[Fedor]

8 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

Good point, something that happened 200 odd years prior to this event. Yet another "Nah I want to tell it my way." Fantastic.

 

Please folks, prove my initial assumptions about all this wrong. I'm actually begging to be wrong.

 

Just pretend ADB wrote it. Instant 10/10, no flaws, no need to think. Succumb to the urge.

[Just123456]

The book was very good when I read it. I am sorry for the multiple spoiler tags which go nowhere. I messed up. Just look at the first spoiler tag and second spoiler tag. 

 

Spoiler

The Dark King seems like a throwback to 1st edition, particularly in Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned which said on page 184 that the Emperor can fall to Chaos just as Horus did in the section about Chaos triumphing. This is the same book with the Star Child lore and tabletop. 

 

The Emperor never went to the Eye of Terror to drink up true god power because he knows its probably too dangerous and corrupting to try, but by the Siege of Terra he didn't have a choice and tried to be good about it, but he gave up that Dark King power so he wouldn't be lost as the supreme Chaos God. 

 

Below.

Spoiler

As Terra, the Vengeful Spirit and the solar system are being pulled into the warp, all the dimensions and the laws of reality are falling apart, even Euclidean and Minkowskian principles. On top of this, Horus is becoming a functional god. He can melt the world into the sky, he can blow time away like the tufts of a dandelion, he can twist up all the materia in the whole universe into one knotted ball and summon inevitable cities, he can resurrect the dead from their tombs and times, making them live as they once did. Horus at this point can do anything he wills. But the Emperor drank from the warp to fight the ascending Horus, but drank too much too fast and was becoming the Dark King, who would have been a god vastly stronger than all of Chaos, but the Emperor chose not to and went back in. I

 

https://pastebin.com/GkptkaE8

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by Just123456