Wishlist timeline from Unification Wars to Scouring

[b1soul]

I am not claiming that the current timeline cannot work on a logical or logistical level 

 

This is more about how would you plan or rework the timeline if you could, based on your creative perferences, in a hypothetical world where you are head of GW Creative and totally free to do so, even paid to do so.

 

Currently it seems the Unification Wars last for a millennium, the Great Crudade lasts for two centuries, the HH lasts for less than a decade, and the Scouring lasts for more than a century.

 

Here is my first crack...

 

Unification Wars: these are mutiple wars with breaks in between and from start to finish cover 150 years on Terra and another 100 years to retake the rest of the Sol System. Many centuries of pre-planning and prep may have occurred under the Emp and Malcador.

 

Great Crusade: this mighty galactic campaign to absorb millions of world (emphasis plural millions) lasts for 700～800 years. Primarch rediscovery takes a long time. Even the first rediscovery only happens 200 years into the great crusade, setting up the Early GC as a very unique setting in its own right: heroes of that early phase are legend toward the end of the GC. This much lengthier period is still highly accelerated given the sheer number of worlds that were absorbed.

 

Horus Heresy: half a century, with the middle decades being a massive galactic war of attrition. Guilliman's Imperium Secundus experiences the Ruinstorm but even greater time-distortion. What feels like several years to Guilliman is more than four decades outside Ultramar. 

 

Scouring: 120 years (similar to the current century plus timeline). The Traitors didn't all attempt to flee straight for the Eye asap. There were many who attempted to set up pocket empires in realspace during a time when the Imperium was greatly weakened and trying to reorganise/rebuild under the surviving loyalist Primarchs and even Valdor: with significant tensions in the wake of the Emperor's physical passing. It took this rather lengthy period to restabilise the Imperium, but by the end of it, the Primarchs had also exited, ushering in an era of further reorganisation and development (or devolution, depending on your pov) under mortal leadership and the Custodes fade even more into the background 

[Astartes Consul]

For me, the main change would be that the post-Ullanor, pre-Heresy era lasts a decade at least. I understand why it was quite compressed in the novelisation. But it never made sense to me that in only a couple of years, Horus goes from 'Okay, Dad I'll finish your Crusade!' to 'Father why have you abandoned us?'. 

 

Instead, a timeline where none of the Primarchs hear from Big E for a decade at least, the Council of Terra/Malcador runs everything, and things start to lose direction as even Horus can't keep the whole Crusade together like the Emperor could. Everything out in the Crusade becomes confused. The Legions get more and more independent power over military operations but are becoming detached from the growing Imperium's functions. Lorgar is off being increasingly erratic after his Pilgrimage and sowing the seeds of chaos, Curze is terrorising the edges of the Galaxy, the Lion is in the Halo Stars, Guilliman has become focused on Ultramar, Peturabo is being Perturabo, Magnus is locked up on Prospero trying to undo pact he made with the Warp/obsessed with finding out what the Emperor is doing, Fulgrim has spent a full decade being corrupted by the Laer blade and is a completely parody of himself. While all this is going on, Horus has become so consumed by his doubts, feelings of being abandoned and the power struggle between the military and civilian authority that he can't or won't reign his brothers in properly. He's prime for corruption on Davin. 

 

Ultimately, the Emperor's focus on the Webway and his final great work to save humanity is what sparks his downfall. He leaves too early and is too secretive - which is a theme the novels focus on quite a bit anyway - and his single minded drive to succeed as quickly as possible, which is what got the Imperium to where it was at Ullanor, is also what brings it all down. 

[b1soul]

That's a great point about giving Horus more time to struggle and stew in resentment after the Emp pulls his disappearing act.

 

A few more points off the top of my head...

 

In my view, right before the Siege, the Traitors do have this massive military advantage, but right after the Siege, the pendulum shouldn't swing all the way to the other side: the Loyalists have only prevented the conquest of Terra/Sol and gained a modest military advantage, mainly because the Traitors lost the one leader capable of holding (most of them) together. So it makes sense that the Scouring should still be a brutal protracted struggle to recapture swathes of Traitor-infested territory. I'm not a fan of Horus is gone and everything just collapses for the Traitors.

 

I would also fill in or emphasise some details of the Thunder Warriors, apart from their tendency suddenly to lose mental sanity and/or physical integrity after a short span of service...so we really get an idea of what the long-lived, (relatively) stable Space Marines were replacing. In some cases, more details breathe more life into the setting: say a super-majority of Thunder Warriors would "expire" after a very short span (like less than a decade) but a small minority who won the genetic lottery could actually function for well over a century...or even longer. Relative to SM, all of them were also much more vulnerable to radiation, bio warfare and chemical weapons (in this regard, Thunder Warriors were no tougher than baseline humans). Many were emotionally unstable berserkers, also more prone to psychic corruption than SM. While Terra was not an irradiated, poisoned rock on the level of Baal, there were plenty of hazardous environments, where the Thunder Warriors struggled (also elsewhere in the Sol system). As for the lucky few, long-functioning TW, they were often the more senior officers of the Cataegis, who herded the masses of their less fortunate brethren against the enemy.  These luckier individuals were also another reason for the Culling of the TW, rather than letting them exit "naturally". Could also consider a scenario where toward the end of the Sol campaign, the Cataegis were becoming very hard to control and suspicious of their future (rightfully so), including their leaders who could put two and two together.  You could have SM and TW working in parallel from the late Terran wars to the end of the Sol campaign, with the Imperium telling the TW leaders that the SM would function as a spec ops formation to "support" the Cataegis.

 

Because the ranks of the TW needed to be constantly replenished (physical failure or mental incapacity) and monitored (violent insanity requiring neutralisation), they needed to be kept on a tight leash, not let loose upon the galaxy via semi-autonomous expeditionary fleets.

 

On the HH being extended to a half century, it allows the HH, especially the lengthy period of attrition, to breathe more as a potential full-fledged setting while still being a punctuated catastrophe relative to how long the Unification Wars and now much longer Great Crusade are (only fifty years to undo what was built over a thousand)

Edited September 23 by b1soul

[calgar101]

Extending the fall of Horus and the other 'mad' Primarchs is needed, in my opinion, to make their fall and turning against the Emperor more believable. Some of it is down to the writing and I don't want to get too bogged down regarding author quality, but yeah Horus really loves the Emperor, so him starting to have doubts even before his actual fall on Davin needs to be made more plausible. 

 

As for the Scouring, I didn't think it was ever portrayed as that quick but the loyalists do have the advantage post Siege.

The traitors bar the Iron Warriors and maybe Word Bearers have a large chunk of their legions intact  but the others have all been bled on the walls significantly. 

The Daemon Primarchs are all banished and Horus is dead so there is a huge power vacuum; already powerful leaders are plotting their grab for leadership. 

 

The loyalists may be bleeding also but they are far more coordinated, the Lion and Guilliman have near enough full legions plus support. Also during the Heresy the Lion had destroyed some traitor home worlds so their future recruitment will be disrupted, any world's who tried to stay impartial probably now turn to the Imperium again. 

 

Corax and numerous Shattered Legion warbands have also been attacking traitor supply lines and worlds, so again the traitors might flee some place only to find said world in ruins or an Imperial force waiting. 

Horus didn't really build up an empire to rival the Imperium, it was a built on the threat of force and him winning victories, it was hollow. Once the traitors lost in the Siege and were in full rout, that house of cards came tumbling down.

 

Again if a Scouring series is written and it's done well, it will make more sense.

[Astartes Consul]

I think the key point in the Scouring timeline would be that the traitors have lost all their support from the warp (including the Demon Primarchs?) and half of them have gone insane, either with grief, rage or shock.

 

Thinking about it, Perterabo and Alpharius/Omegon (maybe) are the only two Traitor Primarchs in the equation post-Siege? Hours is dead. Angron, Magnus and Mortation were banished back into the Warp. Fulgrim ran away to do *redacted*. Curze is locked up or has escaped and is off being insane. Lorgar is...meditating? 

 

So, all the fully demonic ones are off the board. Perturabo has a fairly big canonical role in that era, but it is confined to trying to outfight Dorn. 

 

Whereas the loyalists have The Lion, Russ, Guilliman, Dorn and Vulkan all on/near Terra. Then Corax out in the dark and, presumably at some point, the Khan tagging back in.

[b1soul]

According to Lexicanum, the Heresy ended around 015.M31 and Fulgrim struck down Guilliman around 121.M31, so that is potentially a century or so of "scouring" Traitors, depending on how writers want to play it.

 

Another note on the Unification Wars, a thousand years just seems too long for the wars of Terran conquest. I would prefer many centuries of planning and preparation, but the actual (major) wars lasting a millennium (what current GW sources suggest) strikes me as rather odd: hence my preference for something on the scale of a century and a half for the Terran campaign and maybe a century (or less) to conquer the other Solar planets and scour the system of hostile Xenos (would have a bit of a Destiny feel to it). I would have there be a Terran-Martian conflict, a long military stalemate, before the Treaty of Mars is signed (with later propaganda pretending the conflict never happened). During this time, many generations of the generally unstable/short-lived Thunder Warriors would come and go. I would clarify that while proto-SM creation was rolled out toward the end of the Terran campaign, their mass-production was only perfected toward the end of the Solar campaign. There was also reluctance to deploy them in large numbers without primarchs around to lead them. The Emp's hand was eventually forced due to TW insurrection brewing and the need for super-soldiers better suited for interstellar campaigns and representing the Imperium to other human worlds.