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

[grailkeeper]

On 2/12/2024 at 11:38 PM, Cactus said:

@Lord_Caerolion, E Keeler / aquila is such a DAbnett pun I'm amazed I haven't seen it before.

(My favourite pun name is still Philly O'Fish from Sinister Dexter.)

 Never noticed that.

 

He recently uad a throwaway character who was a bodybuilding voodoo priest called "Papa Legday".

 

In the most recent Ghists novel there is a mention of the Ouroboros being called Robbie Ross. Turns out Robbie Ross was thr man who introduced Oscar Wilde to himosexuality and was a huge literary figure in his own right.

[TheArtilleryman]

31 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

 Never noticed that.

 

He recently uad a throwaway character who was a bodybuilding voodoo priest called "Papa Legday".

 

In the most recent Ghists novel there is a mention of the Ouroboros being called Robbie Ross. Turns out Robbie Ross was thr man who introduced Oscar Wilde to himosexuality and was a huge literary figure in his own right.

 

Sorry, everyone knows that "our rob or ros" is actually Dave Lister.

 

 

Edited February 18, 2024 by TheArtilleryman

[Guest]

Can anyone spoilt what happens to Corswain?

[SkimaskMohawk]

I want to say

 

Spoiler

....nothing?

 

He defends against the death guard and keeler's pilgrims sacrifice their life to restore the astronomicon. But there's no resolution or anything further about corswain. 

 

Edited February 19, 2024 by SkimaskMohawk

[DarkChaplain]

40 minutes ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

Can anyone spoilt what happens to Corswain?

 

Spoiler

A whole lot of nothing. He lives, obviously, as he needs to be on Caliban as previously established - this is not something Dan Abnett could conveniently subvert. He guards the hollow mountain with his Dark Angels while Zahariel/Cypher and the Mistai try to relight the Astronomican, which only works out when the Keeler pilgrims pray inside the mountain and suffer from spontaneous combustion to power it.

 

That plotline ends with:

 

Quote

The Hollow Mountain shivers. Impacted snow slumps from its shrugging shoulders, millions of tonnes collapsing into its craggy skirts, lifting a cloud of ice crystals like white fog. The engulfing storm, black as pitch-blend, blows back from the peak in a rolling ripple two hundred kilometres wide, inky cloud folding into and under itself in a vast expanding halo. Pearlescent lightning shears and rakes the emptying sky.

Light spears from the mountain’s portals, blue-white and fierce, melting snow and ice and annihilating the shadows. The bone-song of the Death Guard has resumed with renewed fury, but it cannot compete. The Archaen blight, born of the most ancient organic corruptors, paleovirologies, primordial interstellar bacterial colonies, and the primal essence of decay that existed long before anything died on Terra, is baked from the black cliffs and scoured off the burning platforms, sterilised and purged. Dead viral matter falls as stringy black rain, and torrents of fallen insect husks drool from the cliffs like drained pus. Black figures, in their thousands, some burst and evacuated, collapse screaming into the pass, carried by the crushing avalanche of light, or swept away by the continental downfall of dislodged snow and compacted ice. There is a mangling roar of engulfing destruction.

Part of that roar is Typhus’ scream, his song disarticulated and crushed into noise.

The mountain’s defenders, Corswain and his Dark Angels, Sigismund and the last of his Seconds, are caught in the catastrophic upheaval alongside their adversaries. Many are swept away instantly, tumbling into the grinding mayhem with the stricken warriors of the XIV Legion, mashed by sliding ice, shredded by the wind, burned by the light, or drowned by the deluge of dead biomatter that pours like sacred naft or dirty oil. Cliffs collapse and fall away, rocks topple, fighting platforms disintegrate as the light scrapes everything from the mountain’s flanks.

A few hold on, by luck or sheer fury, clinging to cracked rock, or tangled debris, or simply each other. With bloody hands and torn fingers, they refuse to let go, despite the screaming light that breaks their bones or the blizzarding force that cracks their war plate and crushes their lungs.

 

And that's literally it on the Corswain front. Since we never see any Loyalists make planetfall, let alone the arrival of Russ and the Lion, it's not picked up on again.

 

I think Roomsky said elsewhere that The End and the Death Vol.3 doesn't have a Return of the King ending, but frankly, it should have had. Considering that Vol.3 is actually shorter than either Vol.1 or 2, I'd even argue it deserved an extra part for a proper epilogue, not just the few short chapters at the end. The arrival of Guilliman, the waking of Jaghatai, the abject grief of Dorn, the Lion's self-loathing depression on being late, the "funeral" of Sanguinius.... it really deserved a section with the action subdued, fading into the background, staring at the sheer loss of every certainty.

 

Not by top-down narration, which Abnett did for a bit there, but through the eyes of the characters who the defenders of Terra have been waiting for ALL SIEGE. The ones who haven't witnessed first hand just how broken things were in the meantime. The ones who feel like they failed Him on Terra, trying to cope with not having been there in the first place.

 

Which I'd group Dorn in with, because hells, he got stuck in a desert for two books, fridging him. I still argue Dorn should not have been in the sanctum proper, standing alongside the Emperor, Sanguinius and Valdor, and instead gotten stuck at Bab Bastion and teleporting to the Vengeful Spirit from there.

[Felix Antipodes]

The very lack of these stories is why I’m convinced we will have a Scouring setting fed to us.  They will use these stories and others to try and bait us into following the series.  If the funeral of Sanguinius isn’t the lead off story I will be very surprised.

[Nagashsnee]

8 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Which I'd group Dorn in with, because hells, he got stuck in a desert for two books, fridging him. I still argue Dorn should not have been in the sanctum proper, standing alongside the Emperor, Sanguinius and Valdor, and instead gotten stuck at Bab Bastion and teleporting to the Vengeful Spirit from there.

 

I still want to know how he not only broke out of the fully surounded Bhad but then made a good ordered fighting retreat to the sanctum and made it inside before it sealed while safeguarding elements of the command staff. Like THATS  a story all right.

 

Instead 'Somehow the Imperial Fists got here'. 

Edited February 20, 2024 by Nagashsnee

[Rob P]

11 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

... The arrival of Guilliman, the waking of Jaghatai, the abject grief of Dorn, the Lion's self-loathing depression on being late, the "funeral" of Sanguinius.... it really deserved a section with the action subdued, fading into the background, staring at the sheer loss of every certainty.

 

...

So long since i've looked at the lore, but does the Lion ever actually get to Terra? Head canon was always that he ends up going to Caliban on the way due to whispers of treachery and then the rest we know.

[Nagashsnee]

36 minutes ago, Rob P said:

So long since i've looked at the lore, but does the Lion ever actually get to Terra? Head canon was always that he ends up going to Caliban on the way due to whispers of treachery and then the rest we know.

He 100% gets to terra, him and Russ have one of their famous chats there. If anything OG lore had him and Leman being the threat behind Horus for the siege, the pre eminence of the Ultras on this is the recent version.

Edited February 20, 2024 by Nagashsnee

[wecanhaveallthree]

He's got a magic teleporting demon (OR IS IT???) in his ship, he'll be fine.

[DukeLeto69]

12 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

He's got a magic teleporting demon (OR IS IT???) in his ship, he'll be fine.

Is the Tagmatathingey a trapped daemon? I thought it was DAoT tech? 

[Marshal Rohr]

10 hours ago, Felix Antipodes said:

The very lack of these stories is why I’m convinced we will have a Scouring setting fed to us.  They will use these stories and others to try and bait us into following the series.  If the funeral of Sanguinius isn’t the lead off story I will be very surprised.

Do you even want to read a Scouring series? Does anyone besides redditors and loretubers? How can anyone care anymore?

[Alpharius902]

41 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Do you even want to read a Scouring series? Does anyone besides redditors and loretubers? How can anyone care anymore?

A numbered series? No, but as a setting or imprint, I’d appreciate it (something like Crime or the like.) Stuff like an action piece of Skalathrax (someone convince Reynolds to write this please), the political thriller that could be born from Guilliman’s reforms (the Second Founding and the breaking up of the Excertus Imperialis), the tragedy of Ahriman casting the Rubric, or the spread of different variations of the Imperial Creed across different belief systems would all be interesting to me at least

[Etruscan]

59 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Do you even want to read a Scouring series? Does anyone besides redditors and loretubers? How can anyone care anymore?

 

Personally yes, mostly because I'm not a huge of the contemporary 40k setting and greedily I want more audiobooks** in 30k to accompany me during hobby sessions. Also because I would like a bit more closure on some of the other antics going on at the end of the Siege and in the immediate aftermath. TEATD vol III was immensely frustrating in how abrupt (almost non-existent in some cases) it was dealing with the arrival of the Ultramarines and the sudden retreat of the Traitors.

 

** as long as they are narrated by Jonathan Keeble of course, I can't stand John Banks and a couple of the others.

Edited February 20, 2024 by Etruscan

[Etruscan]

Digressing here but one more thought with regard to the Scouring, some insight on the Xenos take on proceedings would be cool. How did Eldrad respond for example? And the Drukhari?

[Rob P]

4 minutes ago, Etruscan said:

 

Personally yes, mostly because I'm not a huge of the contemporary 40k setting and greedily I want more audiobooks** in 30k to accompany me during hobby sessions. Also because I would like a bit more closure on some of the other antics going on at the end of the Siege and in the immediate aftermath. TEATD vol III was immensely frustrating in how abrupt (almost non-existent in some cases) it was dealing with the arrival of the Ultramarines and the sudden retreat of the Traitors.

 

** as long as they are narrated by Jonathan Keeble of course, I can't stand John Banks and a couple of the others.

This is one of the things that Indomitus really solidified - the current setting.

 

Yes, prior to that we had a few books in the deep dark past of 'not 41st millenium', but the game and stories (other than the main line campaign books) were set anywhere in the last couple of thousand years of the setting and a few further back but post-HH. Primaris in particular (and the rift) segment stories moreso into a 'before the current timeline' and 'during the current timeline'.

 

This segmentation does lean in to the Scouring setting being a thing. I suppose especially the temporal immediacy from the Siege and before the War of the Beast.

 

I wonder by the end of it whether the periods between the Beast and the Rift will become more segmented to reveal less of a general stagnation from the Siege and more a series of crises that lead to the present timeline?

 

[Roomsky]

I maintain that not showing the Ultramarine's arrival in full was the right call, thematically we shouldn't be getting any catharsis by the end, it's important that both sides be left feeling like it was all for nothng. I'll agree that seeing Dorn's resolve breaking as the Emperor is enthroned would have been nice though. This whole experience is supposed to be what sends him spiralling post-Heresy.

 

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Do you even want to read a Scouring series? Does anyone besides redditors and loretubers? How can anyone care anymore?

 

Honestly? Yeah, but only because the cat is thoroughly out of the bag at this point on maintaining any mystique of historical events. We now have novels that deal with the build-up to and the eventual fall-out of:

• Ahriman's Rubric
• Skalathrax
• The Destruction of Caliban
• The Iron Cage
• Eskrador
• The splitting of the legions
• Lucius' death and rebirth with the legion
• Rogals Death on the Sword of Sacriledge
• The Ultramarines' war on the Night Lords

But no novels covering the events themselves. In some cases, this is pretty intensely annoying when there's no good reason to dance around the subject anymore. I generally feel the same about the Age of Apostasy and the Badab War.

[EverythingIsGreat]

2 hours ago, Roomsky said:

I'll agree that seeing Dorn's resolve breaking as the Emperor is enthroned would have been nice though.

 

Spoiler

Well, in the story he's depicted as crying. So do Valdor and the Custodes, as witnessed by Malcador's dissipating thought-form. That is a major character tweak, to go with the others ever since the Horus Heresy Chapbook.

 

I noticed you appreciated Abnett subverting the old lore in several instances during TEATD/3. In William King's "Assault on Terra" Dorn is smiling rather than crying (because the Emperor is still alive). 

 

Edited February 20, 2024 by EverythingIsGreat
typo

[lansalt]

2 hours ago, Roomsky said:

Skalathrax

This one was already depicted in the Khârn book series, which starts with him in a coma carried out by a group of WE fleeing from the Siege. There's also several stories set during the Scouring spread among many other books, like the Battle of Thessala flashback at the start of Dark Imperium.

[Roomsky]

5 minutes ago, lansalt said:

This one was already depicted in the Khârn book series, which starts with him in a coma carried out by a group of WE fleeing from the Siege. There's also several stories set during the Scouring spread among many other books, like the Battle of Thessala flashback at the start of Dark Imperium.

 

The lead-up to Skalathrax was depicted. That book stopped before the actual war and never got a follow-up, it's only half a narrative.

 

I am generally fine with the Scouring being shown as parts of other works, so long as they give said momentus events their due. The Ahriman Omnibus barely touches on Ahriman casting the Rubric, for instance, when IMO it should get proper focus if so many works are affected by it.

[DarkChaplain]

The most we got on Skalathrax was a short story by Laurie Goulding, with Khârn slaughtering bodies while his kill counter rose. Likely written because a novel wasn't happening anymore. Skalathrax is so much more than that, though. You'd think that, since the World Eaters have their own Codex now, they'd be eager to go back and fill that gap with a sequel

Edited February 20, 2024 by DarkChaplain

[EverythingIsGreat]

Spoiler

Speaking of subverting/referencing old lore, from the Afterword of TEADT:

 

Quote

The book is also full of allusion and sidelong reference, what we might refer to as ‘Easter Eggs’. Some are subtle and tangential, some are blindingly obvious (Abaddon’s ‘Shields up!’ is an efficiently succinct – two word! – summation of his demeanour). While many of you will get many of the references, not everyone will get the same ones, and I doubt anyone will get all of them. One day, perhaps, I will be persuaded to produce an annotated version of this book, as I have done with Xenos. There’s scarcely a line, or at least a paragraph, in the whole book that doesn’t make some nod to something in the lore, if only by dint of word choice.

 

I took the easiest way out by starting with McNeil's Vengeful Spirit, and was well rewarded with sly references in TEADT, but there were also  unexpected references:

 

Chapter 25 has several. Going forwards, there ia ruminations by Horus

 

Quote

The war on Molech had stoked the fires of Ezekyle’s ambitions. Not for much longer would he be satisfied with a captaincy, even a First Captaincy of the Sons of Horus. Soon he would need something grander to lead. A Legion of his own perhaps?

 

Going backwards, McNeil subverts William King's take from the Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (1990)

 

Quote

'Sire, what are your orders?' asked Kibre.
Horus smiled at the extra vowel at the end of the honorific. A natural development, given the power that now filled him.”

...

'Sire, what are your orders?’ said Ezekyle.

In King's telling it is Dorn, Kane and Sanguinius who ask the exact same question of the Emperor just before teleporting to the VS.

 

 

[lansalt]

38 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

The lead-up to Skalathrax was depicted. That book stopped before the actual war and never got a follow-up, it's only half a narrative.

35 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

The most we got on Skalathrax was a short story by Laurie Goulding

I honestly don't remember Skalathrax having much more to it after Khârn began his rampage. I've read those stories and I think they did a decent job of explaining how the WE splintered into their 40k warbands during the Scouring.

[Marshal Rohr]

Skalathrax was from before the modern GW studio and BL team got their hands on the world eaters. Khârn was destroying his own men’s tents and you’d be hard pressed to find a single depiction of a world eater capable of putting up a tent in any codex in the last ten years. You get random WE like Lheor in a novel and need to convince yourself the whole time that’s a guy from the same legion as three books of Abnett saying how they can’t do anything but kill. 

[grailkeeper]

5 hours ago, Roomsky said:

 

• The Ultramarines' war on the Night Lords

 

 

Before the Heresy kicked off one of the few things we knew about Gulliman, and possibly the only thing we knew about the Ultramarines during the heresy was that Gulliman got the Gauntlets of Ultramar from a chaos champion at the Gamalia Reclusiam Massacre.

 

I dont think we know what that was, but a massacre does sound Night Lordy. I'd always assumed it was a khornate champion but cant remember why.