Re-Reading Horus Rising and False Gods

[Krelious]

Just started reading the new edition of False Gods  when Loken  is talking about how great this time is to be alive and that people in the future will regret not being in this era where Horus helps brings enlightenment to humanity, that Horus and Abbadon will be remembered forever. Loken, so optimistic about everything but also the only one to suspect Erebus. The first two novels are just a constant gut punch where you might not read them immediately after the other but the familiar feeling carries over like it was yesterday.  

This is how it feels. 

[DukeLeto69]

And THEN they gave the third book to Ben Counter

[LSM]

I did a little reread recently, though focussing just on the Emperor's Children bits.

 

A couple little things that jumped out at me:

• Lord Commander Eidolon is commanding a single 100-marine Company at Murder, and has (at least) three Captains serving under him (Tarvitz, Lucius, Anteus; with it implied that each was directly in command of a "troop" of only 25 Marines). Galaxy In Flames would go on to boast that "more than ten thousand Emperor's Children made up the Legion"; it's kind of fun to think about how small the Legions were originally conceptualised as being, early on. (And people complain now about the 100-250k numbers being far too small for galaxy-spanning forces!)
• Lucius fights with a longsword (which has a notably long grip so that he can switch between wielding it one handed or two handed), and a Combat Shield. (The 2015 short story Virtues of the Sons then also has him with a Combat Shield, but neither ForgeWorld nor Graham McNeill would go with this depiction.)
• In Lucius' original 2002 fluff, it's mentioned that he was made a Lord Commander pre-Heresy by Fulgrim. In the c2003 Horus Heresy CCG, Lucius' card has him as "Chapter Master of the Emperor's Children" at Isstvan. (Saul Tarvitz is "First Captain of..." and Fabius is "Captain of...") I had been wondering if the intent of Lucius being a Captain in Horus Rising was that (in a future book) we'd get to see that promotion... and it was just forgotten about by editorial/McNeill/Counter. And indeed, in Horus Rising the following paragraphs jumped out at me: 

  "Saul and Lucius represented the bipolar aspect of their Legion. Like all of the Emperor’s Children, they devoted themselves to the pursuit of martial perfection, but Saul was diligently grounded where Lucius was ambitious.

  "Saul Tarvitz had long since realised that Lucius would one day outstrip him in honour and rank. Lucius would perhaps become a lord commander in due course, part of the aloof inner circle at the Legion’s traditionally hierarchical core. Tarvitz didn’t care. He was a file officer, born to the line, and had no desire for elevation. He was content to glorify the primarch and the Emperor, beloved of all, by knowing his place, and keeping it with unstinting devotion."

  When read with (now incorrect) foreknowledge, it does seem to me to be priming Lucius for elevation to Lord Commander rank. (And in Virtues of the Sons, Lucius is in command of a force of 1000 Marines, whom he makes come watch him duel Azkaellon. Azkaellon himself brings only five Sanguinary Guard as witness.)

• Saul Tarvitz's rank bounces around a bit too. First as an undesignated Captain (sometimes "line captain"), then Galaxy in Flames lists him as First Captain (as in the CCG), before 2007's Fulgrim shuffles him down to Tenth Captain. (While still listing Lucius as a Captain, but not saying of which Company, and creating Julius Kaesoron as the new First Captain, Solomon Demeter as Second Captain, and Marius Vairosean as Third Captain.) The prominence of Captain as a rank in the early books fits ill with the increased Legion sizes of later books.

• To look forward slightly, in Galaxy in Flames Eidolon's armour is described as "golden" - so heavily gilded that the Legion's purple is barely present. He is also described as wielding a hammer, which 2012's Angel Exterminatus will have Lucius comment is "stupidly big" (while an Iron Warrior comments that Eidolon's hammer is "monstrously heavy" and comparable to Perturabo's Forgebreaker, which is said to be the size of a mortal man). I was also unable to find any reference to Eidolon using a Jump Pack on re-read; which is to say that his (Isstvan-era) ForgeWorld model/paintjob doesn't seem to quite capture his textual look. (The next time that Dan Abnett writes Eidolon, in 2020's Saturnine, he seems to not have been informed of either hammer or Jump Pack; having Eidolon fight with sword and scream instead, and getting kicked off the Saturnine Wall to plummet down into the flames below. He also misspells the name of Eidolon's equerry from 2016's The Path of Heaven, Von Kalda, as Von Kaida.)

[Jareddm]

I would note that only the first printing of Galaxy in Flames lists Saul Tarvitz as First Captain. This is dropped in all subsequent printings of Galaxy in Flames, and he's just referred to as captain.

[Griefbringer]

For contrast, I just last week finished reading Horus Rising ("5th anniversary edition" with new foreword by Dab Abnett). I guess I can also comment on my perceptions here.

 

Overall, I was not quite sure to expect from this book, having bought it on a whim from a second hand bookstore, but found it an interesting read. Horus himself, when he appears, is represented as a rather decent chap, though presumably almost all of the readers know enough of the setting already to know what will happend in future.

 

My favourite aspect of the book is probably the remembrancers - artists become war correspondents - and all of the challenges they have with the military bureaucracy trying to prevent them in getting to places they would like to visit (largely on basis of their safety), and the various other tensions involved. My main annoyance was characters discharging their storm bolters in a few places - my understanding is that these were introduced post-Heresy, and that the period-equivalent armament would have been combi-bolter.

 

I also paid quite some attention to the organisation of the Luna Wolves, especially Loken's company, which is described as being 300 men strong before their assault on a mountain stronghold. There is no indication of any intermediate level of command between the captain and the squad leaders (who typically seem to lead 10 man squads), and Loken does not even seem to have a dedicated company second in command, until is encouraged to appoint a sergeant as such. Loken's company also has its own terminator squad, and so has at least one of the companies landed on Murder - and the first company has its famous Widowmakers terminator squad. The terminators are apparently spread across the companies, rather than concentrated in specific companies.

 

Interestingly, towards the end when Horus lands in Xenobia with a delegation over 500 strong, it is suggested that only half of these are military personnel. Yet a few weeks later, it is mentioned that there were two companies of Luna Wolves present on the ground. Either these two companies were significantly smaller than Loken's 10th company, or additional military personnel had been landed during the negotiations.

 

Lastly, on the topic of military ranks, it becomes clear quite early that not all captains are company commanders. There are at least two captains who act as squad leaders in the first company, and at least one of these clearly acknowledges Loken as being of senior status as a company commanding captain (meanwhile, Loken considers the first captain senior to himself). Later on, this is further affirmed when it is mentioned that Loken himself was first promoted into the rank of captain, and only later on assigned to the command of the 10th company. Unfortunately the book does not tell what were his duties in between, but it seems that there is a pool of captains in the legion, waiting to be assigned a company to command - perhaps this explains the presence of numerous captains acting as squad leaders in the first company while waiting for a leadership position to open in some company?

Edited Friday at 06:15 PM by Griefbringer
Removed some unnecessary details that might have been considered spoilers

[Jareddm]

Proper legion organization would not be fleshed out until much later, through the HH Black Books. I would not put weight on the early Horus Heresy novels, as they were also still assuming legions were 10k strong.

[LSM]

Funnily enough, the organisation of a Space Marine Legion in The Horus Heresy Book One - Betrayal (2012) isn't that different than the organisation laid out in the 2004 CCG.

 

2004:

• Company: 100 Marines, led by a Captain
• Battalion: 5 Companies (ie 500 Marines), led by a Lieutenant Commander
• Regiment: 2 Battalions (ie. 1000 Marines), led by a Commander 

With "Regimants" noted to often have Legion-specific names, such as Wings, Chapters, Great Companies, etc. "Commanders" are often Lord Commanders.

 

2012

• Company: usually 100 Marines (though certain Legions maintain larger formations), led by a Company Captain and 3 Lieutenants
• Battalion: usually 5 Companies (ie. 500 Marines; though certain Legions maintain Battalions of 7 or 10 Companies), led by a Lieutenant Commander
• Chapter: 2 Battalions (ie. usually 1000 Marines), led by a Lord Commander

With "Lieutenants" noted to often have Legion-specific names, such as Decurion, Pack Leader, Chieftan, etc. "Company Captains" often Centurion, Prime, Wolf Lord, etc. "Lieutenant Commanders" often First Captain, Marshall, Shadow Captain, etc. And "Lord Commanders" often Chapter Master, Khan, Warsmith, etc.

 

And with "Companies" often Maniples, Bands, Brotherhoods, etc. "Battalions" often Cohorts, Regiments, Battle Groups, etc. And "Chapters" often Great Companies, Harrows, Millennials, etc.

[Jareddm]

What is the medium that this information from the 2004 CCG was delivered upon? I'm assuming it was more than the card flavor text.

[wecanhaveallthree]

I've yammered enough about my feelings towards Rising, so let's discuss something else that's been fleshed out over the years: the Interex!

 

Whether intentionally or not, the revelations through Gaunt's Ghosts (and particularly Vincula, but that's getting a bit in the weeds) that the Sabbat Worlds are the old kinebrach/Interex planets was a) really cool and b) really twisted the knife in the interpretation of them in Rising retroactively. I've always been of the mind that the Interex were never meant to be an actual alternative to the Imperium. They always felt too... Star Trek, for lack of a better word. Too naive, too trusting, too certain they knew what they were doing. Leaving a race of ALWAYS CHAOTIC EVIL genospiders on some rock is, like, hilariously dumb, and I always thought their 'warning beacon' - the crystal music thing - not being intelligible to other humans (never mind anything else) spoke to their complacency as well. You could read it as 'Imperium so corrupt and mired in war thinking/culture they cannot even comprehend warning beacon', but that requires Horus to be a massive dumbass, so I dismiss that out of hand. You have a fleet full of linguists and a supergenius, and they can't figure it out? Don't think that's a cultural issue, holmes.

 

And, besides that, it relies on everybody who ever comes across it to a) take it seriously and b) not think 'sweet, I want whatever dangerous thing is down there' or just the eternal c) of intelligence everywhere and their desire to put their faces just a little too close to the ominously-hatching alien egg. Because if the MEGARACHNIDS get their hands on a ship - and they will if one lands there - they're just gonna start genociding again, with no guarantee anyone will be around or able to stop them again.

 

The Interex are just dumb in general. They're like 'YEAH WE THOUGHT YOU WERE KAOS', yet they let the Imperium and their delegation come to their city and hang out. They're like 'WE KNOW ALL THE WAYS OF KAOS' but can't see Erebus literally cackling and rubbing his hands. They imagine themselves so secure, so gifted with knowledge and understanding and 'enlightenment' that they don't see anything wrong with storing and maintaining dangerous Warp artefacts like the anathame. 

 

That, too, always seemed like a signpost to me that the Interex just Didn't Get It. 

 

They beat the tainted kinebrach, and instead of finishing the job - or sticking them on a rock somewhere - they looked at them and were like, 'hell yeah, that's what we want in our society'. They've become similarly 'tainted': they believe they know what the danger is, what form the danger takes, so even when they believe it's staring them right in the face with the 'Warmaster', they're arrogant enough to believe they can handle it. And every further revelation in Ghostz hammers that home further: just look at Hinzerhaus! Look at how Chaos is constantly seeping through the cracks of these worlds, how deeply ingrained it is into the very fabric of reality in that area of space. The kinebrach saturated their holdings with the Warp, their weapons and artefacts still causing massive suffering and death into modernity. And the Interex didn't see this as, like, the obviously bad thing it was - or, worse, they thought they knew enough to 'handle it'. 

 

The Interex represent a pretty typical sci-fi civilisation from another setting, who are reasonably wise, reasonably diplomatic, reasonably forthcoming - and get chewed up and spat out by 40K upon 'first contact' with the survivors of Old Night. The Interex aren't an alternative, they aren't a sad loss of potential; they're a cautionary tale: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

 

In that, and that alone - their reflection of the Imperial Truth - I think their inclusion in Rising is fully justified. 

 

[Griefbringer]

Interesting comments about the interex (which for some reason in Horus Rising is spelled with lowercase first letter). They certainly feel like a rather unusual element in the setting, and now that you put it into words, they really feel like a lost human civilization that USS Enterprise might have met in its journeys. At least they use some pseudo-Latin terminology, which provides some similarity with the 30K Imperium.

 

As for the connection between interex and Sabbat Worlds, I was not aware of that - though I have so far only read the three first Gaunt's Ghosts books, which were all authored several years before Horus Rising.

 

For other similarities in the books, it seems that both Gaunt and Horus (or maybe Dan Abnett as an author) are fond of relatively flat military organisations. Luna Wolves legion has companies and squads, but no other intermediate command levels (Horus Heresy 2.0 rulebook background section again repeats that Sons of Horus have no permanent organisation above company level). When multiple company operations are carried out, such as the four company landing on Murder, one of the company captains is placed in command of the overall operation (while simultaneously remaining in charge of his company).

 

Tanith First and Only regiment (at least in the first three books) similarly has squads and platoons, with no higher level command structure, and even colonel Corbec doubles as a platoon leader. Thus, in one of the books there is a scene where Gaunt simultaneously briefs all 40 platoon leaders about the planned operation. If the Tanith units on their founding had a higher level organisation, it was lost together with the whole officer corps that had stayed on the planet during the initial loading - and Gaunt did not seem any urgency in establishing such structure. It is curious though that several thousand Tanith were succesfully transferred to the orbiting transport ships, without a single regimental officer staying with them to oversee the whole operation (admittedly, naval logistical officers may have been in charge of most of the practical work involved).

[LSM]

16 hours ago, Jareddm said:

What is the medium that this information from the 2004 CCG was delivered upon? I'm assuming it was more than the card flavor text.

 

One of the ~lore cards from the Traitor's Gambit set, 'Military Hierarchy of the Imperium II'.

 

I read through them and created a summary a little while ago: The Horus Heresy (according to the CCG).

 

Though in looking back over those, I see that 'Military Hierarchy of the Imperium I' says that most Legions can muster at least 100,000 combatants, with the Ultramarines the largest of the Legions at over 250,000. So the early novels dipping the Legions' numbers ("over ten thousand" Emperor's Children, Eidolon Lord-Commanding a single Company, etc) was more the weird outlier, I guess, before a return to larger numbers in the later books.

 

 

 

[Griefbringer]

Thanks for providing picture of that card - it is quite clear and informative. Perhaps one of the benefits of the limited space provided by the format - there is not much space for excessively flowery prose or vague waffling about all sorts of possible exceptions.