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

[Roomsky]

On 2/15/2024 at 12:54 AM, wecanhaveallthree said:

Little Horus, in my mind, is Aximand not embracing anything at all. It's him literally losing his identity (along with his face - I love how Abnett wrote the 'now he's got his face literally stitched back on, he looks more like Horus than ever!' that's themes, that is). Through the short he's trying to reconcile the Luna Wolves of old with what they've become, and he's in denial, he's just appeasing Abaddon and Horus, he's clinging to the familiar, the old, the rituals and the brotherhood that used to exist. Through the short we're given that changing spiel about how he's an 'aspect of change', of sweeping away the old, how he's totally fine with that, haha, he's totally not sad or scared or anything at all:

 

He's remade at the end, remade in a new image - but he never made that choice. Slaves to Darkness backs this up as well. Aximand is more than simply conflicted, he's paralysed, he is wholly incapable of moving forward but he knows he can never go back, either. Aximand was the face (heh heh) of, I think, more than a few Traitors who found the rebellion they'd signed up for turning dark and ugly and corrupt, but not knowing how to turn back, not knowing how to get away from it. I loved Little Horus because it showed the utter helplessness of those who had doubts in the Traitor cause. 

 

So I went and re-read Little Horus. If indeed the story is his response to being powerless in the face of his legion's embracing Chaos, I read it as him essentially throwing himself into it. Aximand can't get off Mr. Horus' Wild Ride at this point so his going "no, check it out, I'm more Horus-y than ever!" I don't think that's conducive to his becoming the naysayer at the Siege - rather, he should be more lost in the sauce than Abaddon by that point. Overcompensating + Chaos = many tentacles.

 

I also gave more notice to the breathing that follows him around throughout. Almost like there's a man beside him. I wonder how long Abnett really had that twist cooking, because paranoia and guilt alone don't really account for it being Loken that he sees following him. If it were purely in his own mind, it would've been Tarik, non?

[wecanhaveallthree]

Good catch: that's certainly a possibility, and I really like the idea.

 

I like it so much I'm gonna steal it and post it on Reddit!

[Tymell]

Well, that's it I guess.

 

My feelings on Volume III, like all of them (and honestly, like the Siege and even the Heresy as a whole) are mixed.

 

On the one hand, I feel Volume III is the best of the three. It's by far the most focused, with a good deal of its time spent, understandably, on the big Emperor vs. Horus fight. Where the narrative does cut away, it feels natural for the most part, to keep the flow going and continue on with some of the other threads established.

 

Spoiler

For me, that fight itself is excellent, a highlight of the entire Heresy series. It remains fixed on the Emperor and Horus, yet manages to feel suitably epic and grand in scale. In a (3-volume) book plagued with bloat, I very rarely felt my interest waning during this battle, despite it running on for over a third of the book's total page count.

 

About the only moment I can think of that I didn't take to was the bit where they fought with the tarot cards. Not because it was "too silly" or anything, I just couldn't get invested since the slew of cards didn't really mean much to me. It felt like watching a poker game without knowing the rules: you get some idea of what's good and bad, but you can't really get properly engaged because most of it just doesn't mean much to you.

 

However, that particular bit doesn't last long and, as I say, I found the rest to be wonderfully gripping and creative. They "parry" with places from their history, battle one another simultaneously many times over with aspects, shed "years" as much as blood, and throughout it all there's a good balance with the more gritty bits of "normal" combat. It strikes a good balance, not getting carried away with those metaphysical aspects such that it loses weight, but using them to keep the pace going, build things up, and hold your interest. I also appreciate the way, as Horus himself notes, the emphasis feels on how the Emperor uses his power rather than his raw strength.

 

This fight is the capstone of the series, what it's all been building to, and I can honestly say I came out happy with it. I won't say it was perfect, but this was a pivotal moment for the Heresy and 40k's history itself, and there was plenty of room for it to be done badly. I think Abnett managed to pull it off with style. A bit more dialogue between the two of them might have been nice, but we did get some good dialogue between Horus and Loken. I especially liked the talk of how the Emperor fought to not become exactly what Horus is. The idea that the Emperor's biggest struggle was against his own ego and hunger for power, and that's a struggle Horus lost, giving in and accepting that easy path to power.

 

Oh, and Leetu defending Sanguinius' body against daemonic scavengers was a cool scene too, though I would've preferred seeing Loken do that since he'd had an encounter with the Angel previously way back in Horus Rising.

 

Now, all that said, I found the rest of the book around that fight to vary from "fine" down to "ugh, no".

 

All the stuff with Fo was utterly pointless. No, I don't care if it references something in some 40k book I haven't read or that will come along further down the line. Throwing in some little one line reference or something, fine, but they wasted a significant chunk of time here and in previous books of the Siege on this absolute tumour of a plot thread. It goes absolutely nowhere, contributes absolutely nothing, and amounts to, you guessed it, absolutely nothing. It's an unforgivable waste of everyone's time, and it's especially galling to read Abnett talking about how big this ended up being when he patently could've cut this entire subplot and lost nothing. It's made even worse when Fo somehow managed to mix up an entire human clone and put his own mind into it without anyone noticing. Sorry, but feth off. I'll take another three novels of perpetuals or Keeler and Sindermann over a single word more about Basilio Fo.

 

The set-up mentions for 40k also fell very flat for me. I expected some kind of reveal of the archivist's name, since they were so pointedly avoiding giving her one for so long, but when it was said to be Lilian Chase, I just blinked and shrugged. It meant nothing to me. I've read the Eisenhorn and Ravenor books, so when I googled it I did recognise it, but still, this big moment of revelation had nothing like the impact it was clearly supposed to.

 

Similarly, I guess Actae/Kat taking a Moriana name is supposed to hint at her as becoming Abaddon's seer later on, or at least as a potential candidate for that? Meh. Again, the name didn't click with me at first, and even when I later reminded myself of it, it still didn't interest me. This one isn't helped by the fact that I still don't like Cyrene/Actae being crowbarred in here. To me, in the Siege anyway, she's felt like one of the most wildly inconsistent nothingburgers of a character. Her scene with Dorn felt especially bizarre and awkward.

 

Loken being stabbed in the back by Erebus I don't mind so much (though I would've preferred if we left Loken's final fate as a mystery), but I'm so over Samus at this point and the idea of Loken's murder birthing him does absolutely nothing for me.

 

Just as Horus dies there's a whole "this is how the long slide into 40k begins" bit that I really didn't care for. It felt too heavy-handed and awkward, like some of the author's afterword literally crammed into Horus' death. It doesn't last for that long, but I remember it really bugging me when I got to it.

 

Keeler leading her massive pilgrimage against the Death Guard felt like it was meant to be this big cathartic moment, but I wasn't feeling it. The regular people hadn't done enough other than traipsing around for me to really care, and the practical part of my brain read Keeler saying "they can't kill us all", and just thought, "I'm pretty sure they can…"

 

Oll's end felt a bit anti-climactic, I guess in part because his desperate defence of the Emperor felt a bit out of place. I get that it was for the good of humanity as a whole, but it still lacked the emotional resonance of Olly Piers standing up to Angron, or even Dusk's defence of the Emperor in this same book. And Grammaticus using one of Sanguinius' feathers to cut his way through space…nah. I'm not in on that one, sorry.

 

I liked the defence of the mountain against the Death Guard. Typhus riding up in a daemonic necro-chariot was honestly awesome (and makes me wish he had this as an actual option for his model), and the re-lighting of the Astronomicon was a great moment, though I would've liked if this had been emphasised as a goal for longer. Leetu getting tossed to the feet of the Chaos Gods was also a great moment, I kind of wish he'd just ended there, honestly.

 

Sorry this post's a big rambling, but I guess this whole set of books was too, so maybe that fits. In summary for Volume III, I really liked the title fight itself, but most everything else around it dragged the book down, either falling flat or outright annoying me, with one or two exceptions.

 

And I still stand by this absolutely not needing to be three volumes, sorry Dan. If it was Nick Kyme as editor who allowed that, then they needed a better editor for this, because any editor worth their time could've cut so much of this out. If they'd cut all the fat away from this, had a single beefy volume with the better parts of Vol. I, the Sanguinius fight from Vol. II and the Emperor fight from Vol. III, plus some of the better side-stories hammered more into shape, this could've been one of the best books of the series.
 

[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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.