Pages from the Black Books (unreleased Black Book lore Page 5)

[ThaneOfTas]

12 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

lore from the unpublished 10th Black Book?!

That's pretty interesting! What, if anything, do we know about book 10?

[Lord Marshal]

6 minutes ago, ThaneOfTas said:

That's pretty interesting! What, if anything, do we know about book 10?

 

I believe it was supposed to be what eventually became Martian Civil War and Rise of the Dark Mechanicum.

 

Quote

Andy: Campaigns of the Age of Darkness – The Martian Civil War started life way back in the closing days of the 1st edition of the Age of Darkness game, and it was originally intended to be the last of that edition’s black books. Then came the pandemic, and then the start of our massive and ongoing Horus Heresy plasticification (which is totally a word) project, and the idea of a campaign book covering Mars was set aside for a while to be revisited at a later date. 

Some of the contents of that book were in fact used elsewhere – while other parts will still have to wait for new models – but with the release of the core of the Mechanicum range in plastic the idea was revisited, and so here we finally are! 

 

Edited September 17 by Lord Marshal

[No Foes Remain]

So if the Martian Civil War was going to be 10 does that mean the Shadow Crusade was going to be 11 or part of it? We've seen some unreleased Ultra and WB armours that could have been from them.

[Casual Heresy]

1 hour ago, No Foes Remain said:

 We've seen some unreleased Ultra and WB armours that could have been from them.

 

Where can one see these? Not something that's come across my radar before.

[Lord Marshal]

32 minutes ago, Casual Heresy said:

 

Where can one see these? Not something that's come across my radar before.

 

I believe these are two of them, which were eventually used for WarCom articles come 2nd edition.

 

[Lord Marshal]

In Pursuit Of Perfection. And that's it from the Black Book series.

 

Quote

This week is the last installment of our Pages from the Black Books series, but we have a very special treat to end on – unreleased lore for the Emperor’s Children.  This extract comes from an unreleased Black Book, which would have looked at the descent into madness of the Emperor’s Children and the rise of the Dark Mechanicum. 

 

Today’s extract – The Pursuit of Perfection – describes how the III Legion changed as the Heresy progressed, similar to the way in which 2020’s Book Nine: Crusade followed the Night Lords.   

 

More of the lore which was destined for this Black Book appeared in the Rise of the Dark Mechanicum supplement for Legions Imperialis.

 

[darkhorse0607]

Last one eh? Kind of sad to see it end

 

Oh well

 

Bring back shoulder pad Thursdays!

[ThaneOfTas]

44 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

Last one eh? Kind of sad to see it end

 

Oh well

 

Bring back shoulder pad Thursdays!

Agreed on both counts.

 

Also where there any lore hits that were missed from them?

[Matcap86]

Kind of surprised that they chose to give EC the spotlight in this. Feel like they're one of the more overrepresented legions in the black books. 

[1ncarnadine]

Unbelievably cursed to now understand that a Heretic EC + Dark Mech book is the one we missed. That would have been two of the things I wanted to see covered most in one volume  Alongside Rise of the Dark Mechanicum, I'd guess there's more cut content from this book that was published in various places over the last few years. Exemplary Battles in the Age of Darkness: Volume 1 seems obvious, and Fulgrim Transfigured was probably originally commissioned as a book 10 tie-in.

This piece also tracks with what I remember hearing at Weekenders and ties a lot of the EC story together. I remember Alan Bligh saying that the Emperor's Children were one of the most dangerous forces you could encounter in the Heresy after Isstvan, but this section makes it clear how rudderless they were at large and how detached they were from the overall strategic goals of the Traitor host, which makes perfect sense.

Still no sign of truly debased or deranged color schemes in the plates here, which is unfortunate, but they did include some later heresy schemes incorporating more black as their purple dye supply runs out. I really like the iconography on the Deredeo with the knives-in-skull icon and the Legion icon infilled with black.

And now we have to wonder what's in that facility on Terunir IV 

 

32 minutes ago, Matcap86 said:

Kind of surprised that they chose to give EC the spotlight in this. Feel like they're one of the more overrepresented legions in the black books. 

The EC might be one of the least represented legions across the black books and following supplements. They appear in books 1 and 2 and then vanish outside of legion recap summaries for the rest of the OG black books. I don't believe there's a single EC color plate in books 3-9. Even in the HH2.0 supplements, there's not that much EC content (an Inductii color plate in Siege of Cthonia?) and never a major feature aside from the Exemplary Battles Volume 1 book, where they make up 1 of 5 entries. They've also not been in the LI supplements aside from a handful of minor engagements in the Great Slaughter book.

I'd guess the actual most represented legion across all the supplements might be the Alpha Legion? Books 3 (Isstvan III, Paramar) 6 (Mezoa, & the Pale Stars), 8 (Chondax, Alaxxes), plus involvement in the Siege of Cthonia, Tallarn, and I think Beta-Garmon?

[Matcap86]

14 minutes ago, 1ncarnadine said:

The EC might be one of the least represented legions across the black books and following supplements. They appear in books 1 and 2 and then vanish outside of legion recap summaries for the rest of the OG black books. I don't believe there's a single EC color plate in books 3-9. Even in the HH2.0 supplements, there's not that much EC content (an Inductii color plate in Siege of Cthonia?) and never a major feature aside from the Exemplary Battles Volume 1 book, where they make up 1 of 5 entries. They've also not been in the LI supplements aside from a handful of minor engagements in the Great Slaughter book.

I'd guess the actual most represented legion across all the supplements might be the Alpha Legion? Books 3 (Isstvan III, Paramar) 6 (Mezoa, & the Pale Stars), 8 (Chondax, Alaxxes), plus involvement in the Siege of Cthonia, Tallarn, and I think Beta-Garmon?

 

I mean I was just talking about the original Black Books and the fact they were planning on doing more with ECs in that series. This would've been the 3rd book they're involved in, not many others could stake that claim. Maybe Alpha's, Sons of Horus and World Eaters? Most of the legions only star in one book, with a bit of an expansion in another.

Edited yesterday at 03:01 PM by Matcap86

[Lord Marshal]

1 hour ago, ThaneOfTas said:

Agreed on both counts.

 

Also where there any lore hits that were missed from them?

 

Solar Auxilia didn't get covered outside of their appearance at Port Maw, although that may be because a lot of what was in the BBs did get copy/pasted into the Libers and LI.

 

Non-Cultist Militia also didn't get a spotlight shown on it despite them covering a lot of Tempest. 

 

Edited yesterday at 03:03 PM by Lord Marshal

[Griefbringer]

Having relatively recently learned about this series at WHCommunity, it is a pity to hear that they are already coming to a close (not that I have managed to delve properly into the already published material). But nice to see that they went to the extra effort of digging up some previously unpublished material (and 10 pages of it).

 

As for the included artwork, Palatine Prefector Ixathe looks like quite a dandy in his artificer armour. Somehow that screaming face in the middle of the chest plate contrasts with his otherwise calm outlook.

[lansalt]

3 hours ago, 1ncarnadine said:

Even in the HH2.0 supplements, there's not that much EC content (an Inductii color plate in Siege of Cthonia?) and never a major feature aside from the Exemplary Battles Volume 1 book

I'd argue that HH2 beakies, praetors, and HH3 Saturnine terminators were all designed for the EC before being marketed as generic. There are several clues that point to that (Compare the chest eagle in the AoD sword praetor with the Saturnine ones).

 

 

[MoriyaSchism]

6 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

In Pursuit Of Perfection. And that's it from the Black Book series.

 

 

It would be really great to have this excerpt in uncompressed form. I'm still very disappointed this whole series articles was compressed and full of image compression artifacts. 

[Son of Rawl]

Book 10 could have been when they planned Daemon Fulgrim. 

 

I do wonder what they will replace this with, if anything.

[SvenIronhand]

4 hours ago, 1ncarnadine said:

And now we have to wonder what's in that facility on Terunir IV 

Pretty clear it’s the corpses of the fallen EC who were defending that world, given that one of the Praetor’s demands was to be laid to rest with honor.

[Gree]

Ah, we were robbed. All of the other stuff in the pipeline sounds amazing. It seemed like some of this stuff got recycled into Heresy 2.0.

 

I think this is the most detailed depiction of Chemos's destruction we've gotten. I think this is like the third version we've had? The Emperor's Children get dunked on in the Heresy novels a bunch, it's nice to see them give the Dark Angels a tough fight.  Even backed into a corner, they were still dangerously lethal opponents.

 

I'm not sure if I understood the passage correctly, but it seems to me that Chemos wasn't destroyed? The Dark Angels didn't deploy Exterminatus here? Or did I misunderstand the wording here?

[LSM]

I love this.

 

One thing that... perturbed me about the modern Emperor's Children fandom was how much the pre-Heresy Legion seemed to have become the touchstone for people, over the actual 40k Emperor's Children. And I really love the portrayal in the early Heresy books, but what I often saw was folks wanting the post-Heresy Legion to be rewritten to be more like their pre-Heresy selves. The change, the fall - that story of highly disciplined, authoritarian, tightly wound perfectionists, snapping and becoming anarchic, hedonistic, gleeful addicts - I love that. And to want to turn it back struck me like someone wanting Darth Vader to be more like Anakin Skywalker. (Well... imagine that prequel Anakin was a good character...)

 

So to have a HH entry focussed on highlighting how they shifted... Big love from me.

 

//

 

17 hours ago, Gree said:

I'm not sure if I understood the passage correctly, but it seems to me that Chemos wasn't destroyed? The Dark Angels didn't deploy Exterminatus here? Or did I misunderstand the wording here?

 

It does seem that way.

 

2001's Index Astartes article originally said: "After the lifting of the Siege of Terra, and the end of the Horus Heresy, Imperial forces set out to assault Chemos from orbit, intending to destroy the Emperor's Children's fortress-monastery and eradicate any trace of Chaos from the world. Following this action Chemos was quarantined by the Inquisition, and in the past ten millennia no further information, not even a record of Exterminatus, has appeared in Imperial databases regarding the world."

 

In 2018, David Guymer's novella Dreadwing established (I think) that the Dark Angels destroyed Chemos concurrently to the Siege, as part of their campaign against the Traitor Legion Homeworlds (in an effort to peel resources towards their defence). 

 

In White Dwarf 478 (2022) Chemos is said to have been completely obliterated by the Dark Angels via seismic macro-charges, followed by orbital bombardment, which caused the detonation of the planet's core (with slabs of Chemos sent tumbling out into space). The First Legion declared the system Perdita, and set up warning beacons threatening reprisal against any who dared enter. 

 

This seems to have gone back to something more like the original 2001 version. (Granting that it was probably written before WD478.)

 

//

 

Other curious note: this mentions Chemos' capital city as being "Phoenicia"; whereas traditionally it was Callax. Josh Reynolds' Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix (2017) also says that the capital of Chemos is Phoenicia (despite noting that Fulgrim gained his nickname "The Phoenician" from a member of his father's court, in reference to his purple panoply; conflicting with Graham McNeill's Fulgrim where his nickname is a reference to the Terran legend of the phoenix); but it still has Fulgrim as growing up in Callax.

 

The Emperor's Children's Fortress Monastery was also said to be built in the centre of Callax. (Not that Fulgrim ever returned to Chemos, once he left.) Which... I guess it's possible that at some point Chemos established a new capital and named it after Fulgrim's Imperial nickname...

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by LSM

[Scribe]

This really hitting me hard.

 

Black Books, HH1, the Heresy series itself?

 

Pinnacle of the Hobby for me and I really miss it.

[Marshal Rohr]

On 9/24/2026 at 8:07 AM, darkhorse0607 said:

Last one eh? Kind of sad to see it end

 

Oh well

 

Bring back shoulder pad Thursdays!

Wait what??? They never did the Fists or Iron Warriors did they????

 

 

does that mean the unreleased legion lore is coming in their planned “House of X” style heresy books. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Marshal Rohr

[01RTB01]

12 hours ago, Scribe said:

This really hitting me hard.

 

Black Books, HH1, the Heresy series itself?

 

Pinnacle of the Hobby for me and I really miss it.

 

Yup. I have to say second seemed a good evolution of first ed. However, there hasn't been a single game of third played locally. I've 14,000 points of emperor's children sat doing nothing. (C.8000 is painted)