Wars Of Words



Not featured in this novel: the Luna Wolves (copyright Games Workshop)

Welcome, citizens, to the Truth.

So was Karkasy an expert politician?  Or was Loken a fool?

This is hardly a fair question, of course; not coming from us.  Others will judge the worth of these contributions to 41st Millennium thinking, but for ourselves, we see our role as somewhere between that of an iterator and a remembrancer; we record and contextualise what has taken place, but we do so out of the desire to spread enlightenment in an age sorely lacking in same.  Of course Loken seems foolish and naive to us.

Even so, it is hard to see how any man capable of learning to load a bolter could completely fail to see the paradox in interrupting a man in public to correct him on facts you insist are better discussed in private. Nor is it clear how it never occurred to Loken - who has been turning this issue over in his mind for some time, let us remember - to question why the situation on Davin's moon was important enough to dispatch Erebus to the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet to petition Horus, but not so important as to either interrupt the dealings with the interex, or for the Word Bearers to take action on their own.

But then, what else is one to expect from an Astartes?  That is not intended as sarcasm, but as a genuine question.  The Astartes are bred for two things: loyalty and war.  Political insight was never conceived of as a useful attribute.  The Legions had the Primarchs for that.  Or perhaps it was less by design than by necessity.  The martial limitations of the Space Marines compared to their primogenitors is well-known, but the corresponding gap in mental agility may be no less wide.  Indeed, one might almost wonder which direction causality flows in.  Are the Astartes so blind to deceit and politicing because their creed is so rigid and simplistic?  Or did their operating principles have to be so uncomplicated because there was no reason to believe they could adhere to anything more complex?

Either way, disaster is about to strike.  Not because no-one saw it coming, but because even once it had been seen - explained in the simplest possible terms by a lecherous poet in an expansive yurt - there was simply no way to formulate a plan going forward.  Not for the last time, Loken is presented with evidence that Erebus is plotting something, some event which lies on a scale between untoward and treasonous, and he does nothing.  There is simply no stage two for which he has been prepared, when stage one is the betrayal of a fellow Astartes. We have spoken at length about how the obsession with militarism doomed the Imperium to civil war, one way or another.  The fact of the Heresy was never in any doubt. This new problem of paralysis in the face of mendacity is a similar guarantee, this time of the Heresy's form.

With noble defenders of humanity as blind and passive to everything but direct military assault, the rot was always going to spread deep, and spread quickly. It would only show itself when it was ready.

The moon of Davin is a hollow sphere; a vast, stinking canker at the centre of decades of malicious plotting.  Who could land there and remain uninfected?

Horus' fall is now assured.

------

What Was

I'm afraid I'm not seeing anything in this chapter that meaningfully leads back to pre-book activities. Sure, Horus reminisces over his conquering of Davin, but there's really not much mileage in that.  We'll come back to the spectres of the past some other time.

What Is

Sindermann is so kind as to engage in some low-level philosophising in this chapter. Are you convinced either by his idea that we're all just one good meal away from collapsing into barbarism, or that we're gradually climbing into an age of enlightenment and equality?

Did the conversation with Sindermann happen before the war council?

I've no idea.

This is getting to be a problem.  Does it get easier as we go?

Er, I think so. I don't really remember.

Encouraging.  Er... I think it'd take more than one meal. Especially if you just haven't bothered getting the shopping in.

What would get to you first?

How do you mean?

I mean what would have to go before you decided you'd need to kill me?  Would you burn me if the electricity failed?

No. Apparently you smell like roast pig when you burn.

Me personally?

I think if the electricity failed the biggest problem would be not being able to read my books at night.  Between that and your snoring I can't believe you'd be long for this world.

Let's move on. What about Sindermann's version of a glowing future.

Umm... no.  There will always be people who will argue and wreck the lovely future for everyone.  You just have to look at global warming deniers.

I certainly agree that global warming deniers will ruin our future. Politics!

Was Sindermann implying the Emperor uses magic? He seems to be defending the "wise men" of the past who Loken calls warlocks.  When he talks about the Emperor understanding so much, is that an excuse?  And if Loken finds out the Emperor is messing with the Warp without really knowing what he's doing, is he going to rebel?

I think Sindermann is researching what previous generations thought about the Warp.  Maybe to understand the Warp better, maybe to expose the Emperor.

Why would he want to do that?  He's dedicated his life to spreading the Emperor's words.

What better reason to get mad when he finds out the Emperor is using the Warp somehow?

Apparently a lot of Loken's hostility to Erebus comes from the First Chaplain now being the only person Horus listens to.  How has that happened, and what is Erebus whispering into Horus' ear?

I thought Loken was trying too hard to insist his distrust wasn't over jealousy.

Yes, too himself no less.  I don't believe it for a second.

Erebus is obviously telling Horus no-one else can be trusted. It's all getting a bit... Rasputin? Is that who I mean?

You'd be right, but I think you're actually thinking of Grima Wormtongue.

Yes I am!

(My girlfriend, ladies and gentlemen.)

I want to know what Erebus actually said to Loken in that conversation Loken mentioned.  I think a lot of things will make more sense after that.

 

What do you think is going on between Abaddon and Erebus? Why isn't the First Captain as pissed off about Erebus shouldering the Mournival out of the way as Loken is?

I wonder if Abaddon is still pissed off about Horus giving him crap last book.  Maybe he's perfectly happy not hanging out with him any more. In fact - if Horus is murdered, does Abaddon become Primarch.

No, it's more than a title. He would end up in charge of the Legion.  But if Abaddon is plotting Horus' downfall, why hang out with the Warmaster's new bestest friend of all timey-times?

Because Erebus wants the same thing.  He's the inside man.

And what about the silver coin?

I assume it's a Lodge membership coin. Have they welcomed Erebus in? Though that'd be odd for a Word Bearer; to join something the Emperor has expressly forbidden.

I think he'd take a dim view of stealing cursed alien swords as well.

Fair point.

 

On a scale of one to ten, where does Erebus' plan lie in terms of sneakiness?  Does Karkasy deserve credit for being so observant, or is Loken simply embarrassingly obtuse?

I don't think Karkasy deserves credit. I'm sure any human could have seen it, if they'd been looking for it.  Or maybe they all did, but only Karkasy had an Astartes he could go talk to about it.  I don't think Loken was stupid.  He was just...

Out of his wheelhouse?

Yeah. It's just something beyond his understanding.

What about Horus, though?  He's supposed to be a pretty savvy politician.

We know his state of mind isn't where it should be, though.  After all those things he thinks have gone wrong, it's not a surprise he's desperate to take action where he can.  He's not interested in the pesky details.
 

What Will Be

What awaits Horus' spear-tip on the moon of Davin? How much of Erebus' tale is going to prove to be true?

The cursed sword is going to get used.  Or maybe they'll blow up the moon.  Can you blow up a moon?

Not with a cursed sword.  But I'm sure there's a way to do it.

Would it be easier than blowing up a planet?

Yes. By definition.

Why?

Moons are smaller.

But they could have other stuff going on.  Other materials.

OK, fine. Almost by definition.

Jupiter is made of gas.

That doesn't mean it'd be easy to blow up.

But it might be easier than a moon made of rock.

I'll ask around.

Why didn't Erebus tell Horus about Davin earlier? Wouldn't a planet sliding away from compliance be more important than a bunch of space hippies with magic swords?

Are you asking why Erebus waited to mention Davin, or why no-one else has thought to wonder about it?

The latter.

I figure it's the same old problem.  No-one amongst the Astartes can conceive of asking questions like that.

Has Erebus done something to Lorgar? Maybe even killed him?  Or has Lorgar approved Erebus' mission? Does Horus end up killing Lorgar?

No comments, obviously.

Dammit! When do I start getting answers?

In an opening trilogy?  Take a guess.

Exclude Someone From Our Gathering

False Gods: The Betrayer (II)


A Davinite (copyright Games Workshop)

Welcome, citizens, to the Truth.

"Almost human". Such a small phrase for so expansive and complicated a concept. In a galaxy of such variation and extremes, and where the rules of biology must ultimately bow before those of environment, who can even say what it is to be human anymore?

From a philosophical standpoint, that question may be unanswerable.  From a practical perspective, some combination of the Inquisition and the Administratum - with perhaps input from the Ecclesiarchy - must sit in judgement. What should interest us, however, is less the identity of those making the decisions, and rather the mechanism by which those decisions are made.

Consider the abhumans permitted to live amongst (or beside) us in the 41st Millennium. The Ogryns. The Ratlings. Even some of the less feral Beastmen.  With the Squats we went so far as to recognise their independence (for all the good it did).  What qualities lead these near-human variations to be judged worth sparing, or even integrating, and offers others no fate other than cold-hearted extermination?

It is not, after all, as though the Imperium is allergic to grand quests aimed at galactic-scale change. The unification of every human civilisation? The extermination of all sentient life that cannot trace its genetic roots to Terra?  It can hardly be lack of will that sees these cousins of humanity remain comparatively unaffected by the Imperium's xenophobic zeal.  In fact, the answer is in the end entirely mundane: practicality.

There is a strange obsession among those who would divide people into the "pure" and the "impure" to sub-divide the latter category to the maximum possible extent.  On the surface, this seems strange. If one insists that only the pure are of any relevance - that it is there destiny not merely to rule all others, but to exterminate them - the specific make-up of the genetic have-nots should surely be of little interest.

Instead, cataloguing these undesirables takes up an utterly astonishing amount of time.  Partially, no doubt, this is because each new division - and never has cruel bigotry been more pedantic and precise in form - reminds the self-appointed master race of their superiority. Beyond that, though, there lies an additional advantage: if the "others" differ in how far they lie from perfection, they can differ also in how much their superiors can hate them.

This realisation is critical to understanding how seekers of genetic "purity" operate.  It is acceptable - not necessarily desirable, but acceptable - to find common cause with one group of lesser people, so long as it is done in the interests of destroying some even less acceptable group.  Thus, Ogryns and Ratlings can be employed to aid the Imperial Guard in battling the alien.  The Squat homeworlds can be left undamaged in an uneasy alliance, to provide a buffer zone against innumerable Ork empires and enclaves.  These abhumans buy their lives anew each day with their devotion to persecuting the more obvious enemies of their parent race, or at least they do until they themselves come under direct threat (as did the Squats) at which point they are no longer our concern.

(The astropaths and navigators enjoy a similar position; they remain safe for as long as there is no other way to effectively hunt down and destroy other, less palatable mutants.  This is a topic we shall consider in more detail when our thoughts turn to the Thousands Sons and the Council of Nikea.)

That this is a horribly cynical approach is obvious (though also beside the point; shamelessly using others being rather further down the list of sins than wholesale extermination of even the most benign alternative cultures). The dangers inherent in combining theological zealotry - even the negative image of theology pushed by the secularist iterators of ten thousand years ago - with the cold-blooded utilitarianism on display here should be likewise obvious. At least the truly uncompromising religious fanatics tend to burn out before they can cause too much trouble.

Or do they? The Word Bearers still blight the galaxy, after all, albeit only because they can rely on a rather more commonplace form of divine intervention than is available to others, and because the cynical abuse of people for whom they have nought but contempt is what their creed explicitly teaches in any case. Which brings us to this question: just what was it about the Davinites that led to their being spared sixty years before the Horus Heresy began?  It was the Luna Wolves who finished the job of pacification, true, but the Word Bearers took upon themselves the job of spreading the Imperial creed across the moon.  Perhaps they were left the decision as to what to do with these almost-humans.  Why?  What use did they see in the Davinites?

Is it possible that six decades before Erebus stole the anathame, wheels were already in motion?  Did the Word Bearers learn from their despised former Emperor the value of making use of a people to their own ends?  In just how many ways did the Great Crusade pave the road to its own sundering?

Well, it hardly matters now.  However that road was built, we are almost at its end.  We are on Davin now, surrounded by the the people Horus spared three score years earlier. An act of generosity with which we find no fault - there would always have been other Davins, other places tainted by Chaos where Erebus could have sprung his terrible trap - but which radiates a horrible and vicious irony. A civil war made inevitable by centuries of unremitting conflict and the utter rejection of mercy is about to be sparked by the after-effects of an act of generosity and peace.

Because the Davinites are about to betray the man who spared them.  In the final analysis, they may not be so different from humans after all...

------

What Was

So apparently sixty years - or eleven planets - ago, the Word Bearers were all about driving around newly-conquered worlds talking about how awesome the Emperor is.  What can have changed?  Is it just Erebus who's signed up to the cause of clandestine evil, or have his colleagues got themselves membership cards too?

How is that a past question?

I mention the past!

I see.  I can't imagine Erebus is acting on his own.  I'll stick with my previous answer. Presumably, Erebus nicked the sword to kill either Horus or the Emperor.  Either it's Horus, for not doing well enough in following the Emperor's vision, or they want to kill the Emperor himself.  Maybe they think he's no longer living up to his own rhetoric, or that he was lying all along.

What do you think has Loken so suspicious?

He knows about the sword? No, he'd have gone to Horus with that.  He recognises something in Erebus? Something like what happened to Jubal?

Possibly. It would explain why he doesn't think he can go entirely public.  Only he, Sindermann, Vipus and Keeler saw the beast.

Which may be why Keeler has been invited to the meeting.


What Is

How well would you say McNeill is doing keeping the characters he's inherited from Abnett consistent?

It's tough to say, since something has so clearly happened to shake things up.  We're not supposed to be seeing them in the same light.  There must have been some event that happened on the journey over. Or maybe during the war council.

I think it must have been before the war council, though the structure of the chapter makes it hard to tell what's happening when. But certainly Loken already suspects Erebus before the meeting.

Yeah, but only just before, maybe. And it might not have been something happened, so much as Loken has had time to think and piece things together. Torgaddon seems pretty much the same.

Anyone else? I thought Abaddon was, well, unusually dickish this chapter.  And it seems Loken has noticed that, at least in Mersadie's opinion. I didn't see how that followed from the last book.

I noticed that, but I'm waiting to see whether there's some confrontation that will explain the tension. It may be nothing more than the fact Horus kicked Abaddon out last time around and kept Loken with him.  Maybe Abaddon is scared Loken is gunning for his position as First Captain. 


What can have happened in the gap between the two novels to make Horus so obsessed with his legacy and how people view him?

He does seem different, doesn't he?  But then we've never seen him just with Maloghurst.  I wonder if he's stopped trusting the Mournival after Abaddon got so rebellious towards the end of the last book.  He might have taken more on himself rather than delegating them to the Mournival.  That might explain why he's so introspective.  Though he's also clearly worried about dying.  Was he in danger fighting the Interex?

Not really, I wouldn't have thought, though I suppose with so few men and weapons he was more in danger than at any other time since becoming the Warmaster. I guess the terrible cursed mega-weapons on Xenobia probably could've caused him some problems as well.

Perhaps the war with the interex made him think the Emperor has given him too inflexible and/or too difficult a job to do.

Is that why he's suddenly so obsessed with his legacy, rather than in measuring up to the Emperor?

I think they kind of go together, actually.  He's come closer than usual to getting killed, so he's thinking back over what he's managed so far.


Is it interesting and/or fun to read about Karkasy's methods of seduction and how well they've worked in the past? Is that just redressing the balance after watching Euphrati lusting over Loken's glistening pecs?

It reminded me of Leonard in Big Bang Theory.

I'm sorry?

Always banging on at Penny to marry him.

Ah, but which is worse.  Begging your sexual partner to get married, or begging someone who's clearly uninterested to fuck you?

Um... the second one.

Right. So Ignace Karkasy is worse than Leonard Hofstader.  That's now been established.  That's canon.  Does it bother you that there's only three female characters in these books with more than the odd line or two, and one of them sparks off multiple paragraphs about Karkasy trying to screw every woman in the fleet.

This is pretty much standard for novels, unfortunately.


Is there anything so important you'd like to have it tattooed on your face?

Wait. Someone has things tattooed on their face?

Yes! Erebus. In fairness, no-one mentioned them in the last book, but Karkasy picked up on them straight away.

Maybe the Astartes are just used to face art.

Perhaps.  It could just be a shopping list. "Bolt rounds", "lapping powder", "Anathame" underlined three times and then crossed out.

I'd like a fifty pound note on my forehead.  No, that wouldn't actually work.

No.

Everyone would be able to use it.

What? No-one would be able to use it, because it's stuck on your face!

I suppose.

Unless skin grafts cost forty-nine pounds or less.  That way you could make a profit.  Though you'd still be trying to pay for goods with a soggy note, one half of which is just blood and skin cells.

Fine. Then I'd like a tattoo of a prettier face.

Not possible.

Aw! You're lovely.

No, I mean scientifically speaking. Two dimensions isn't going to cut it; that's a cosmetic surgery job.

Thanks.

I asked this wondering if there was anything you might want to keep as a memory aid. Like in Memento?

Memento?

I'm sure you've watched Memento. Have you ironically watched it and forgotten?

What's it about?

It's a film that goes backwards.

I do remember a film that goes backwards.

It doesn't matter. Imagine your on a ship, and a storm blows you out to sea.  You wash up on a desert island with no possessions.  Wouldn't you want something to read? Just to pass the time?

Why can't I write things in the sand?

Because you can't remember them!

So you're postulating a scenario in which I have exactly zero books but at least one mirror?

You could use the reflection of the surf?

After a storm? If I've got no books, I'm dedicating all my energy first to escape, and then to suicide.  The point at which the latter kicks in will depend on how many snakes this island has.

This question may have been a mistake.

What about you?  What do you want on your face?  A return address?

And a fifty pound note.  Postage is so expensive these days.


What Will Be

It's early days yet, obviously, but have the first two chapters given you any inkling as to what the Sons of Horus are going to come across on Davin?

Something that's going to split the Legion apart.

Any Graven Image

False Gods: The Betrayer (I)

Not really much of a looker, is he?
(Copyright Games Workshop)

Welcome, citizens, to the Truth.

We re-join the forces of the Luna Wolves - now, of course, named the Sons of Horus - in orbit around the moon of Davin. It is here that the Emperor's vision of a rationalist secular society spanning the entire galaxy faces, and fails, its final test.

It might be wise, then, to begin the task of analysing the Emperor's dream, and identifying the cracks which ultimately appeared in it. Were they brought about by tragic coincidence?  Or were the fault-lines ultimately structural in nature? Here the prosecution calls its first witnesses, Moderati Primus Jonah Aruken, and Moderati Primus Titus Cassar.

In truth, these two men threaten to bring our trial to an end before it even gets going.  Why did the Emperor's hope for mankind find itself dashed against the rocks of history? Because humanity requires precisely five things: air, food, water, sex, and gods.

And in the absence of actual gods, mankind will produce their own.  Aruken finds his divinity in forty-three metres of armour and weaponry, a divine warrior construct all but invincible as it stalks its chosen battlefields. For Cassar, divinity is found instead in the Emperor himself, beloved by all, architect of a new age of humanity.  It seems to bother Aruken not a jot that the object of his awe was constructed by people no more supernatural than himself, or that the object of his veneration is somehow simultaneously a feminine object of desire, a nurturing mother, and a masculine brute of war.  Similarly, it seems of not the slightest concern to Cassar that his chosen deity has himself explicitly rejected the role [1]. "Only the truly divine deny their divinity"? A five year-old child could point out this forces the corollary that all those not truly divine must insist on their divinity. Life would be all the more interesting were this the case, but it is not. The theory is so hilariously incorrect it seems a line one might find in the most outrageous comedy.

In short, the actual mechanisms by which faith comes into existence and finds its target seems to be entirely beside the point. It will simply spontaneously happen, like decay in an isotope or mutation in a gene strand.  The reasons for this are, in part, astonishingly simple: people like to believe they belong to something bigger than they are.  For Aruken this is an Imperial war machine, for Cassar it is the Imperial war machine, but in both cases they see a method by which their own short, frail lives can hitch a ride on something larger, stronger and (in theory) more long-lived than themselves.

Except... that cannot be the full story. If it were, our Moderati should be content simply to be tiny cogs within the Emperor's new galactic order.  There must be something else that worship offers a person that simple purpose fails to deliver.  The answer to this riddle is not one that reflects well upon Aruken, or Cassar, or upon any of us. Religion offers us the ability to exclude.

One need only observe Aruken and Cassar sniping in the hangar deck to recognise this impulse.  It is not enough that Aruken sees in Dies Irae the footprint of the divine, and that Cassar has thrown in his lot with an outlawed cult.  They must mock each other for failing to conform to each other's idiosyncratic conception of the sacred. They must have people they can point to and say "here are those who refuse to understand".  How can a mortal judge themselves close to God except by recognising those people who are manifestly further from God than they are? How can we find worth in ourselves without having some metric by which it can be found absent in others?

For centuries, those who had lived their lives outside the Emperor's light fulfilled this need.  With the Great Crusade drawing to an end, this is no longer the case. The God of Expansion is close to drawing Her final breath, and new deities are required to fill the oncoming void.

We are, after all, only human in the end.  We need something to be more than us, because to believe our haphazard stinking frames that sloppily carry around our worthless feral thoughts might actually be the greatest triumph the universe has managed is to invite lonely, howling madness.  For all his might and power - because of all his might and power - the Emperor never grasped this fundamental truth, and so imposed conditions upon humanity that only he could ever stand to bear.

We re-join the forces of the Luna Wolves - now, of course, named the Sons of Horus - in orbit around the moon of Davin.  It is here that new gods will arise, and tell us what we always want to hear.  That there is strength in blind belief, and honour in hatred. That divinity can be measured in what we choose to tear down in its name.

The time of the Godless is at an end. The new pantheons will be born in a welter of boiling blood and shattered metal.

First, though, it must find a host. First, Horus must fall.


[1] This is a formidable problem, meaning as it does that those who cling to the sloppily-printed pamphlets of the Lectitio Divininatus are constructing a religion centred around a figurehead who has no role in that construction. Attributing first divinity to an outside agent and then attributing one's own inclinations about how such divinity operates has historically led to disaster time after time. We have always all too willing to go to war over what man says God desires.

------

What Was

Let's start off this week talking about the Mechanicum.  It's mentioned here about how they are part of an alliance with the Imperium. Any ideas about who or what they might be?  And what do you think of the Dies Irae?

By "Mechanicum", are we talking about the Titan people? Aren't they the war engineers? I don't remember anything about an alliance. They're obviously human, though. Why do these guys get an alliance and not the interex?

So how 'bout them Titans, huh? I looked this up, and the Dies Irae just so happens to be the same size as the hospital you work in. Impressive, don't you think?

I guess.  That's not all that helpful a comparison, though. You never look up at buildings that much, do you?

Not unless they're coming towards you firing a cannon the size of the Orient Express at you, I suppose.

Whilst showing off their shapely legs.

I was going to ask you about that. What kind of depraved mind decides he wants to design his next armoured vehicle to show off curvaceous hips, rather than just being another tank?

He talks about it being like his mother, too.

Yeah, I think seeing objects that simultaneously remind you of sexiness and your mum displays some fairly major issues, even before the giant fucking robot aspect is added.

None of that bothers me as much as the security system onboard.

I'm sorry?

Well, OK. You've got the guards, fine. But if you can fool them, all you need is a voice recording and you can get control of the titan?  That's ridiculous.  Shouldn't they have a more high-tech approach?

It's part of the Imperial ethic. This weird mixture of high and low technology.  The Astartes are the pinnacle of genetically engineered warriors, but they basically carry assault rifles and drag around suits of armour.

At least the armour is motorised, though.

What about Lucius, then? That guy spends his entire life practicing how to more effectively cut people with sharp pieces of metal.  Though I acknowledge that any argument that amounts to "It makes sense because Lucius does it" isn't one to place much weight upon.

Especially when we still have people who need to be experts with cutting people with sharp pieces of metal. You may have heard of "scalpels", in fact.

The key difference between the two being that no-one has found a way to remove an appendix by shooting at it.

Depends what you shoot at it.

What? An appendix-shaped bullet?

A laser, my love.

Oh.  I hadn't thought of that.

One of many reasons my colleagues won't let you come visit me at the hospital.


What Is

This book starts off far more quietly than Horus Rising, insofar as they're preparing for combat rather than actually blowing a city to bits.  Which of the two approaches did you prefer? Did you miss any of your old favourites?

Yeah, I hope the old guard show up before too long, though mainly that's because I don't get on with that new remembrancer woman. I guess the first chapter here doesn't grab you quite the same way as Horus Rising's did.  But then it's doing a different job. It's not designed to be read as a stand-alone book, and it's giving itself a chance to build on what's gone before. I also have to say I'm happy the book's going into a little more detail about what's going on, particularly the titans, which confused me a great deal last time around.

What should we make of the fact that the Lectitio Divininatus "cult" has now made it into the armed forces of the Imperium?

Is that a surprise?  Well, I guess it's a surprise that he's comparatively open about the whole thing.  And maybe that it's someone that's not rank and file.

Yes, he certainly is... high up?  Get it?  Because he's sixty-three metres up in a death machine?

No he isn't.  He's at the bottom.

He was at the time.  That doesn't mean anything.

I thought that's where he lived.

Yes. He lives in the bunions of the universe's killingest giant robot.

How can he get annoyed about anthropomorphising the titan and yet insist the Emperor is a god?

Again, though, that sees to be part and parcel of the Imperiun.  Last book Sindermann couldn't go five minutes without insisting their Emperor had taught them religion was wrong and he was so utterly and unbelievably awesome that not believing his words was ludicrous.

What do you think of Petronella? Do we need another remembrancer character? And why does she need a bodyguard?

I don't like her.  She's just so pompous.  Why has she had her bodyguard's voicebox taken out?  That's just wrong. As in morally wrong.  She's got nothing but contempt for the other remembrancers, and for Sindermann, who everyone else thinks is phenomenal. I assume she's got a bodyguard because of her importance.

I figured it was because she was so utterly unbearable. But I guess that's a bit chicken and egg, really.

Are you in favour of a pen that writes what you're thinking? It's too late to get you one for Christmas, but...

It would have its advantages. I was always in trouble as a kid for having crappy handwriting, because I was always thinking five words ahead.  So it would cure that. On the other hand, every time your mind wanders you'd end up with a huge paragraph of mumblings in the middle.  And if it picks up other people's thoughts, that's even worse.

I'd be more worried about it writing down everything I was thinking about the people around me.  It would make it impossible to write when there was a chance anyone could see what you're doing, which is a bit of a problem for a guy who gives lectures to people.  It'd be much harder to pretend not to notice gorgeous postgrads on the front row when you've got a stream of consciousness running through your equations.

If you can choose what thoughts the pen does and doesn't pick up, that would be fine, but that sounds like it'd be fiddly and difficult.

You could set the pen to only pick up thoughts conceived in an outrageous accent, maybe?

Or a different language.

That sounds too much like work. Why learn French when you can just pretend to be Inspector Clouseau?


What Will Be

What might be the significance of the claw-handed prophet-spinner we see on the surface of Davin? What significant events might be about to take place there?

Has she been visited by the Emperor as well? Chosen like Horus has been chosen? Is she a new Primarch?  Some kind of Matriarch?  Or is she a prophet of the Emperor's religion?

Set up by the Emperor himself?

Why not?  "Only the truly divine would deny their divinity". Isn't that what his cultists tell themselves?

Among others, yes.

Horus Rising: The Gallery

Since I couldn't seem to find any picture of the Kinebrach on the web, I asked my very talented sister to draw me one so this 'ere blog could claim to be the first place where such a picture exists.  Behold!

Copyright Jill Crossman

You'll notice this example of the species has longer hair than the Kinebrach warriors the interex brought onboard the Vengeful Spirit, but then this is clearly a youthful member of the species; full of innocence and naivety. All it really wants to do is smoke two doobies in its three lips and order out for some alien pizza.

(This isn't the best quality version of my sister's picture, but she had "technical issues" - by which I mean she dropped a pot plant on her laptop - so this is the best version I currently have.  The actual sketch should arrive from Canada at the weekend).

Merry Christmas to you all.  Don't forget to come back for the start of False Gods on New Year's Day.

Infinities Of Reflection (Last Words On Horus Rising)

(As mentioned last week, Fliss is busy skipping through fields of autumn flowers now she's been temporarily released from the nightmare future of the 31st Millennium.  With the place to myself for the next fortnight, this seems like a sensible time to offer some general thoughts on Horus Rising as a whole.)

Mirrors are awful things. All they do is sit there and accurately reflect the hideousness of the world onto anyone unlucky enough to glance their way. They're horrible.

And yet somehow we feel compelled to seek them out. I'm as vain as the next overweight balding thirty-three year old. I shouldn't need an unusually shiny static surface to daily remind me of the orientation of my features - the basic set-up I've been staring at for three decades, and the changes over the years have been pretty much uniformly negative - but somehow, there I stand every morning, attempting to tease what remains of my hair into some semblance of order, trying to keep my eyeline high enough to not take in my spreading gut.

It would be enough to make any rational observer weep, which is why self-deception is so important when we find ourselves staring back at us.  Too much honesty is bad for the soul. Of course, too little honesty is just as corrosive, and oftentimes not simply to oneself. One should be particularly cautious with mirrors that themselves are less than truthful.

Horus Rising is a book deeply involved with mirrors. More particularly, with distorted and mistaken reflections, and whether people focus on the differences or the similarities. When Loken stares at the moon the Mournival have pressed into service as a replacement for Luna, he looks not at it directly, but through a pool of water.  A distorted image of a counterfeit object. Torgaddon assures us such variation is of no consequence for the purposes of their initiation, and perhaps he is correct, for all that flaws in the in the approach of the Mournival brought about so much, well, chaos.

Other differences are more pronounced, both for characters and for the reader. The initial attack on High City, for example, is quite deliberately structured to involve Horus attacking a world calling itself Terra and ruled by a false Emperor that he then saves the day by destroying. A mirror, in other words, of what Horus will eventually come to believe he is doing.  The implication here is hardly subtle: many of those who choose to follow Horus in the schism that approaches will do so for no worse reason than believing the Warmaster was as right the second time as he was the first.

This has enormous repercussions for those who would consider the loyalist Space Marines out and out heroes. Bred for war, incapable of fear, one cannot truly view the Astartes unswerving devotion to war for what they believe a just cause as some great virtue. One might as well praise a shark for swimming and for killing. It is not clear how one can celebrate the defeat of Sixty-Three Nineteen yet pour scorn on those that broke from the Imperium at Davin - or rather we can, but only because our villains were so good as to birth their new order in deliberate acts of mass murder (that said, it's always easy to argue honour binds us to the rules of war when those rules will almost inevitably hand you victory).

There are, I think, very broadly speaking, two types of people who identify with the Imperial forces in the 40K universe. There are those who appreciate the Space Marines despite their bloodthirsty, fanatical devotion to murdering anyone they consider anything less than pure, and those that appreciate them because of it. I can't speak as to which camp Abnett himself belongs to, but Horus Rising certainly asks the kind of question you would expect the former group to raise. Whilst the book encourages us to see the reflection of the Siege of Terra in this minor skirmish in the end days of the Great Crusade, it also demonstrates how completely the Luna Wolves fail to see their own image cast back at them. A people zealously devoted to their Emperor to the point where suggesting another human authority might exist is an immediate death sentence?  That no-one draws the obvious conclusion is remarkable.

Of course, it isn't hard to understand why: the iterators in general and Kyril Sindermann in particular exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that link is never made. These people believe they must be right.  But they cannot be right, because they disagree with us.  And we know we're right. Therefore they can only think themselves correct, and we all know how thoughts can be wrong.

Whatever the uses of this strategy for maintaining morale and cohesion during wartime, Sindermann's efforts ultimately did nothing but cause the one weakness of the Luna Wolves to fester in darkness. By insisting the Emperor was always correct, and that Horus was the mirror of the Emperor - distorted, yes, but not in ways that meant any more than the variations in planets' satellites - the iterators both ensured utter devotion to two contradictory thoughts, and ensured those thinking them could never possibly realise that fact.

It is not a pretty picture. Fanatics so fanatical they pour scorn on other fanatics for not being fanatical enough.  Soldiers boundlessly proud of the fact that they cannot even conceive of questioning orders.  Such breathtaking hubris may not be of any real consequence while the pool is still and the reflection of the moon still looks more or less like the moon itself. But then Garviel Loken finds himself amongst the glittering bottles of a chaos fane.

A reflection in a limpid pool is singular, faithful, easily decipherable.  A reflection in a half-full bottle made from low-grade glass is fractured and fuzzy. It moves in ways you do not expect. The glistening droplets that coat the outside invert and distort your image until you cannot recognise yourself.  Loken is surrounded by these torn, mocking fragments of himself when Xavyer Jubal turns his heels and attacks.

When Jubal falls to the lure of Samus, he becomes one more fractured reflection in the tunnels beneath the Whisperheads.  His identity shatters, taking his mind and much of Loken's worldview with it. Surrounded by the chaos of war and the chaos of reflection, and staring at Chaos itself where once stood a comrade in arms of unquestionable loyalty, Loken had every opportunity to recognise himself and every other Astartes in the horror that claimed Jubal - once the life-or-death struggle had come to an end, at least.  Instead, inspired by the equally wilful blindness of his Primarch, Loken chooses to see only the differences in Jubal's broken reflection of the Luna Wolves, not the similarities.  Perhaps Loken is simply more concerned with convincing himself he can never become Jubal than he is in discovering how Jubal became Jubal. We all lie to ourselves when looking in the mirror.  Got to get through another day somehow.

The Deceived, then, is essentially an exercise in watching prideful men use that pride as a vehicle by which they may drive past the point at great speeds and distances.  You can feel the accumulated weight of the mistakes borne of cupidity threatening to topple the narrative over.  It's almost a shame that this is then shoved to the corner whilst the Luna Wolves deal with the situation on Murder.

It's not that I don't understand what Brotherhood in Spiderland is doing, or that it isn't doing its part to feed into the more general narrative.  I mean, if you want to spend some time watching Astartes tussle with the 30K analogue to Tyranids - with added storm spells and Simmons-esque death trees - then I wouldn't dream of holding that against you. But there's more going on here. Whilst in the first part of the novel the hierarchy of the false Terra reflected the intransigent mindset of the Astartes, the second reflects back their obsession with genocide.

In itself, there's nothing to object to here. It's one more facet of the Space Marines to explore, and one more indication as to where everything will eventually go wrong. If The Deceived reminds us that the Astartes are dangerous fanatics who can only be labelled heroes because the forces arrayed against them are so horrific, Brotherhood in Spiderland reminds us of that horror.

So what is my problem here?  Partially, it's a question of timing.  The kind of genocidal war the Imperium finds itself embroiled in might underscore the problematic approach of the Astartes in general, but the sheer viciousness of the Megarachnids makes that dedication to extermination defensible. Remember, there are two types of Space Marine fans; those that can accept their excesses, and those that actively enjoy them.  Both these groups would find little objectionable in the war on Murder.  But the first section of the novel has already made an effort to split those two groups, and The Dreadful Sagittary will push them apart still further. Placing almost the closest thing possible to a justifiable war (it doesn't quite qualify, since the Imperium is capable of simply bypassing Murder entirely) in between the two seems like a stumble in the narrative. It might have been preferable to start here, where the Astartes have their most defensible reason for hostility, and then bring in the shades of grey later.

Of course, doing that would mean losing an opening that mirrors the close of the entire Heresy, which is a wonderful slice of circular narrative that I am entirely in favour of, so perhaps here we have the lesser of two evils.  That said, the problem we have here is no less real for the most obvious solution causing its own issues.  If nothing else, moving the caster of reflections from the Luna Wolves to the Emperor's Children dilutes the narrative somewhat. Yes, we gain something as well by allowing the two Legions to see their reflections in each other, but we learn too little of the III Legion to justify sidelining the building complications with the XVI.  In the final analysis, Brotherhood in Spiderland is far from a failure, but it feels like a short story sandwiched between two halves of a novel, which is a shame.

By the time we reach The Dreadful Sagittary, we are back to the central theme, which is just as well, because we are also running out of time. There's a sense of a dash to the finish line here, possibly as an attempt to jump-start the escalation after seven chapters dallying on Murder.  The result is a denouement that feels breathless and rushed, though I confess I can't see how padding the section out would help in this regard - any tinkering that might improve things here would probably have to take place in amongst the Megarachnids.

There my complaining ends, however, because the third and final part of Horus Rising completes the series of distorted reflections. At Sixty-Three Nineteen, we saw a twisted image of the Astartes philosophy. On Murder, it was their approach. Finally, here in interex space, we come across a reflection of the Legions' aims.

With thirty or more systems living in harmony, and all alien threats neutralised (one way or another) the interex is, if a little on the petite size, essentially represents a model of how the primary goal of the Imperium: a united and secure humanity. And yet when they come across such a society, not only safe but free from the endless war which carving out the Imperium seems to require, the first instinct of almost every Astartes present is to try and smash the mirror.

Why does this matter? Because by this insistence, we finally understand what a Space Marine sees when they look in the mirror. Not a warrior tasked to protect humanity at all costs, but a flawed image of the Emperor himself.  Of Horus himself.  Every part of the tragedy that follows stems from this simple fact: there was nothing the Astartes desired more than to have someone to emulate through slavish, thoughtless devotion. When the pool was still, the image was clear, and all was well.  But throw a stone into that pool, maybe even a small one, and the images begin so separate. Devotion to the Emperor and devotion to the Primarch no longer look like the same thing.

When the image you see in the mirror becomes unbearable, when the reflection no longer matches what your soul tells you you are, there's not really much more you can do than break it, especially when its reflecting a past you no longer wish to lay claim to.  For some, smashing the mirror itself isn't enough; you have to grind the shards to powder. Two centuries of inflexibility and unhampered aggression have conspired to create a mindset whereby no arrangement can be wonderful enough to not need tearing down if it hasn't been created at the whim of the right personality. Against such obsession, not even the past can stand.

Niggles notwithstanding, it would be hard to imagine a more thorough way to set the stage for the explosion soon to come. Indeed, the one irredeemable flaw here is that the build-up to the conflagration ultimately proves more interesting than the inferno itself.

Not that this is Abnett's fault, of course.  With False Gods, we'll start working out exactly where the blame does lie.

8/10

Horus Falling

Horus Rising: The Dreadful Sagittary (IV)

The stealer and the stolen (copyright unknown)

Welcome, citizens, to the Truth.

At last we find ourselves, twenty weeks after our first broadcast, concluding the tale of Horus' rise. At least, such is how it is always described. One could be forgiven, perhaps, for asking why.

There are only three campaigns Horus prosecuted whilst both Warmaster and a loyalist. In the first, he lost a member of his Mournival and saw one of his sergeants suffer the earliest case of daemonic possession of an Astartes outside the Word Bearers Legion, a development which resulted in no obvious change of operational procedure; all to capture a single human world of no noticeable strategic value. In the second, Horus committed a significant portion of his Legion to exterminating an alien species later found to be incapable of leaving their world, ultimately without either ridding Murder of the Megarachnids or securing the planet for Imperial use. And in the third, Horus allowed himself to be tied up in diplomatic games for weeks before losing several Astartes in a sudden attack which came perilously close to seeing him captured or even killed.

Our point here is not that Horus made obvious mistakes in any of those situations. Indeed, Horus judged himself far more harshly here than we are inclined to. What is important here is not the degree to which the Warmaster can be blamed for his failures, but that all those around him insisted that his star was unquestionably ascendant. The reality of course is that Horus was already falling, albeit on the most gradual on inclines relative to the cliff's edge that awaited him at Davin.  The irony here is notable: the whole of Imperial society assumed Horus was rising, because that was simply what should have happened next in the story of the Emperor's first-found and favourite son, but in fact all that was rising in Horus was his willingness to question that very narrative.

We arrive at one more tragedy in a tale already heavy and stinking with them. From the moment Horus gained his new title, it would not his pride at being Warmaster in name that brought him low, but his guilt at failing to be Warmaster in fact, at least in his own judgement.  His feelings of abandonment already rankled, to be sure, but what pushed them to the forefront was his guilt over his own failings. 

The human mind finds it almost impossible to process guilt. There exists no mechanism by which it can be safely decanted. It can only be ignored, relived or converted into other forms. Almost invariably, people take that third route, it being the only way to clear a dataslate otherwise filled to capacity with feelings of horrific, blinding inadequacy. They transmute their guilt into the most readily available alternative to be found, anger. Why feel guilty for having failed someone, after all, when you can be furious with them for having put you in a position to seemingly fail?

Nowhere is this process more obvious than with children and their parents.  Apparently, in the final analysis, Horus shared more with the humanity he once swore to protect than anyone imagined. He felt he'd failed his father, he became angry at the idea, directed that anger back at the Emperor, and the rest is tragic, bloody history. Rising from the shadow of your father is impossible when you don't insist on dragging that shadow forwards with you, blaming him every step of the way for the fact you remain in darkness.  Otherwise, in the inky blackness of your self-imposed inferiority, it is all too easy to lose your way.

Especially when others lurk in the darkness, waiting for their chance to strike.

------

A change in format this week, both because we're now at long last at the end of Horus Rising, and because a four page coda doesn't really give us much to work with.

1. Ooh! Erebus is the thief!  What's going on there, then?

Well, he's from the Word Bearers, who from their name are presumably directly responsible for upholding the Emperor's edicts.  Erebus must have hated the Kinebrach even more than Abaddon, because he's even more invested in what the Emperor says. Maybe that's reached the point where the Word Bearers have signed up to the idea of the Emperor being a god.

In retrospect, it's a bit suspicious that Erebus, who's described both as very reasonable and charming and as being essentially equivalent to Abaddon in rank didn't put any effort into befriending the interex. Though I suppose that might just have been Horus ordering everyone to keep quiet out of concern Abaddon would say something stupid.

None of this explains stealing the sword, though.

Given the way he's described in the last chapter - very much a Gollum kind of a deal - it wouldn't surprise me if he'd been infected by the Warp.

Is there anything specific he has in mind, though?

Oh, it's the cursed sword, isn't it?  Maybe he's stolen it for the Warrior Lodge, that's certainly suspicious.  Perhaps his Legion has had their own "Whisperheads moments" already? Or is he in the Emperor's Cult?

Wouldn't they hate the idea of cursed swords?

Fair point.  The question is who he plans on using it.

Yes, it probably is.

There's two obvious potential targets here: Horus and the Emperor. Though if it's Horus, I don't know why he hasn't attacked already.  Maybe it's too hard on board the ship whilst Horus is surrounded by his "sons".

That, or it would be really shit to kill the title character in the last four pages of the book.

Seen it happen. Talk to Cecilia Dart-Thornton. Maybe she'll apologise again.

2. How well does the title of the novel fit with the events it depicts?

Well, I don't know. Sixty Three Nineteen was his first campaign, wasn't it?

First as Warmaster, yes.

So it started with a win, and somehow he's managed to start getting requests for help from people who never used to, despite not having done anything new for them.  That's about as far as his rising seems to have gone.

Unless it means "rising" in the sense of becoming increasingly able to question what's going on around him.  He's getting more and more willing to think outside of what he's being told to do.

Is that really doing any good, though?  All we've gotten out of the deal is Erebus running around with a cursed sword.

We won't really know what we've gotten until the next book, though, will we?  Anyway, that's the only way I can think of that Horus has risen. Really this is the story of Loken rising.  And the remembrancers, I guess, since now at least some people seem to have a bit of respect for what it is their supposed to be doing.  Tarvitz might be on the rise as well, though possibly not in his own Legion.

3.  Time to mark the book.  I figured we'd have a brief chat about three aspects of the action, and then get you to mark them out of ten.  Then you can give us your overall mark for Horus Rising.

a) Plot

I found it quite bitty, which makes sense given the structure of the book, but the link between the parts seems quite tenuous.  There didn't seem any obvious reason why the Emperor's Children were on Murder, too.

I think you needed someone there so you get an idea of how other Legions might view the Luna Wolves.

Though I'm not sure how well that came across anyway. I really liked the build-up to the spiders, but the execution let them down a bit. They could have done something more more interesting with them.

I don't know.  In themselves there weren't spectacularly original, perhaps, but I loved the idea of the murder trees. It was quite reminiscent of the Shrike from Dan Simmon's Hyperion, which can't be a bad thing.  Were there any bits of the bits that you did enjoy?

I'm enjoying the way things are being built up. The interactions and politics of the Mournival and Horus are definitely interesting. There's a lot of unanswered questions, though, so a lot depends on how things develop.

7/10

b)  Characters

It's interesting how many of the main characters we seem to end up knowing so little about.  Abaddon, for example; there must be a lot going on in there that we're not seeing. But then that's probably deliberate given how the Luna Wolves are.

I like Loken, which is just as well.  Karkasy is interesting as well.  Mersadie I wasn't so big a fan of.

Why?

Er... (struggles for words) she's quite... sneakative.

Understood.*

Sindermann is interesting; I can see how he could lead to some interesting dynamics.

What about the Big Dog himself?

Horus?

From context we'll assume I'm not talking about Bill Clinton.

He's clearly hiding an awful lot.  There's possibly a lot of intrigue there.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I like him, or find him tremendously gripping, but he'll do. 

What about Lucius and Eidolon?  Love to hate? Or just love to wish weren't in the book?

Depends if more people punch them in the face multiple times. It's very cathartic.  You need irritating characters in books, so you've something to compare the good guys to.

I also want it known that it bothered me how the writing kept switching between people's first names and their surnames.  There's too many characters with hard-to-remember names for that to work.

* This is a lie

8/10

c) Setting

I wasn't a fan in general. Some things just got sketched over. Like the ship. There wasn't enough there for me to get a handle on it, which is a problem for the only location that stays more or less constant over the novel. High City got short shrift, too. Other than the rotating towers and the slums - which I guess were well-described, just not at all fun to visit. Murder had some good ideas involved, but as a location it was a bit barren.

I thought it spent too much time focused on the dismissive attitude of the fleet to people, too, flying through space pouring scorn on anyone who doesn't agree with them. That got old pretty quickly. Um, this is all getting a bit negative, I think.

How about you give us your three favourite ideas from the setting; end the book on a positive. We might not be able to do that too often, actually.

Um, OK. Third is the idea of a weapons museum.  Humanity goes to space, we get separated as a species, and what's the first thing we do when we get back together? Check out each other's weapons.

Second can be the Murder Trees, I think.  It's just such a cool concept. The shield-storm idea, rather than the stabbing-people-and-eating-them angle. And it makes me wonder why the interex didn't take it from the arachnids. Maybe they just couldn't understand how.

First is the fight under the waterfall surrounded all those empty bottles. It was phenomenally described. Kind of confusing in places, though that's what the arrival of this completely unexpected event needed.

5/10

Overall:

7/10

That's it for chapter analysis this year, folks.  Fliss is taking a well-deserved break from the Heresy over Christmas, though I'm hoping to have something up on the 18th and on Christmas Day for you all.  The blow-by-blow account of my girlfriend's journey into the 31st Millennium will resume on New Year's Day with the first chapter of Graham McNeill's False Gods.

Numbers Of The Beasts

Horus Rising: The Dreadful Sagittary (III)

Ten thousand years after the Horus Heresy, a Red Corsairs Chaos Lord models
the alien weapon that caused all the trouble in the first place (copyright me)

Welcome, citizens, to the Truth.

There was once, upon Old Terra almost forty thousand years ago, a group of intellectuals dedicated to the concept of chaos numbers.

The casualness with which these men and women named their discipline reflects the frightening naivete of humanity at the time. To them the term implied nothing sinister; they considered chaos simply a facet of the universe, no more evil and seductive than acceleration, or gravity.  Despite their complete ignorance of the truth, however, the name they gave to their field is not entirely inappropriate.

Put in its most basic terms, the first theory of chaos numbers is that there are some processes in our reality which are simply too complicated to predict.  Not complicated in the sense of being too hard to understand their principles, but in the sense of there being so many contributions and interactions within and alongside them, each causing so many changes to whole with the slightest change to itself, that we simply lack the raw processing power to sufficiently model the phenomenon. This is sometimes summarised as the flitterfly effect.  It is not that a flitterfly flapping its wings on one side of Macragge causes a storm on the other, but that the millions of interactions that combine to generate the weather are so numerous and so phenomenally sensitive to change that it would take only the motion of a flitterfly wing to change events beyond our ability to predict them.

The second theory of chaos numbers is this: as above, so below. There is no quantitative difference between the mountains of the Khum Karta range seen from twenty kilometres away and the tips of those mountains' peaks viewed at close range under the strongest magnification possible. The very fact of chaos' reliability to be chaotic causes baffling fractal patterns at all levels of reality.  It is here that chaos becomes Chaos.  The temptations of Chaos lie deep within us, however much we might deny it.  It takes but a single careless moment for us to be utterly lost.  And from that single moment within a single soul, ripples expand, colliding with events around them, changing the world.  The flitterfly flaps its wings and the storms of war are unleashed.

A father rebukes his son, and Lorgar is lost to Chaos. An Astartes steals a sword, and the galaxy is torn asunder. A fractal pattern of betrayal. We can point to how easily it all could have been averted - if only Erebus had arrived too late, or the interex had not wasted so much time keeping Horus at arm's length - but such suggestions counter only the specifics, not the underlying concern. We have spoken before of our belief that the Heresy was inevitable in some shape or form; those that studied chaos numbers would have considered it a mathematical certainty. Some systems quite simply lie outside our ability to control.  A ruler may fool themselves into believing they are all-powerful; their armies unstoppable, their enemies battered into helplessness by their might. Societies can be created that seemingly neuter all effective resistance, or even the thought of such resistance.  But for all the brute force on display, these systems simply respond to those ripples which break the surface. Underneath lie endlessly complicated patterns of shifting circumstances and effects.  We cannot predict what we cannot understand is happening, and it is in those things we cannot understand that everything truly important takes place.

It is in these dark, empty places where Chaos finds its greatest advantage. We cannot best it without understanding it, but understanding is impossible. Worse, attempting to understand can serve Chaos itself, because it is in thinking we can comprehend and plan for chaos that we leave ourselves most vulnerable. Our hubris is our downfall.

We knew that, of course. We might lament the interex's failure to enlighten Horus on the true threat humanity faces in this universe, but it is not hard to understand their fear they were already too late.  Nothing feeds Chaos so effectively as war.  Not just the rivers of blood in which Khornate daemons bathe. Every alliance betrayed and general outwitted is grist for the mills of Tzeentch. With war come pestilence enough to sate Father Nurgle.  Even the loathsomely beautiful face of Slaanesh must shine with pleasure to see each debauched victory celebration and each city sacked by adrenaline-crazed soldiers treating enemy citizens in ways best left unconsidered. Our warlike nature damned us to be devotees to chaos before we had any idea what that meant.

Because somehow, we have persuaded ourselves that war is the only instrument of control. Because we refuse to seee how each new attack and each new front generates its own new set of ripples; ranks of fractal teeth that grow and spin and ensnare all that surround them. In the Great Crusade we used chaos to fight chaos. Five hundred generations later, we use chaos to fight both chaos and Chaos, all in the name of imposing order above all. One might just as well try to build a house from flames.

Still we continue. And dark and terrible gods grow fat with power in the space we cannot see, and where all the numbers are against us.

Places where Horus is soon to walk, and so damn us all.

------

What Was

Apparently the interex has spent an awfully long time concerned about this issue of Kaos. What do you think it is, and how does it tie in to discoveries and theories from earlier in the book?

Well, they've said it's something from the Warp.  Maybe it's nothing more than something which drives you mad, though since they're worried Horus brought it with them it might be some kind of plague. Clearly it drives people mad so that they start killing everyone who's even a little bit different to them.

Satire!

What?

Oh. I thought you were making an hilarious joke about how that's what the Imperium does anyway.

That was my point, yes.  I just don't think it qualifies as satire.

Well, let's not quibble. What about Tull's comments about "Warmaster" being a potential signifier of "kaos"?

It's probably all a piece with the general bloodthirstiness of the Astartes.  Why would the Emperor name Horus 'Warmaster' whilst warning him to watch out for the Warp - which I still don't quite understand yet, by the way - over all other things?  Is it supposed to be a title of defiance? If you're worried about this sort of stuff, shouldn't Abaddon and Maloghurst constantly insisting that the interex be wiped out be ringing alarm bells?

How, as Warmaster, can you tell when your troops have gone too far?  Or is that what the iterators are for?

I'm not sure they could do an awful lot about it anyway.

They could flag things up to Horus, I suppose. Though it's not like Sindermann knows what's going on with the Warp, I suppose.

I'm not sure anyone else does, except maybe the other Primarchs.

Surely not.  That's a recipe for disaster.  They'd all contanstly be watching for signs of kaos in Horus. They'd never leave him alone.


What Is

This is effectively the book's finale, with just a four page epilogue to go.  How successfully did it tie things together for you, and was the Battle of Xenobia impressive enough for you?

I think Loken made a big mistake, there.  Why not give over his weapon?  It's not like he needs it to defend Horus.

I think it probably helps.

Yeah, but you're just guaranteeing the worst possible outcome.  I liked the difference in the way Loken and Tull fight. Aside from all the crazy weapons, the battle here seems reminiscent of the fight in High City; Loken travelling through the battle, coming across unexpected foes, whether they be invisible or centaurs.  There's clearly been some kind of misunderstanding; starting a war just because a museum burns to the ground.  It's a bit OTT, even for people who are as fond of their museums as these people are.

Did it work as a action-packed finale, then?

It came out of nowhere a bit, was the problem.  It didn't build up.  Everything just suddenly goes wrong.  And it's clearly set up for the next book.

Yeah, but plenty of ongoing series take pains to end books with a big explosive ending.  Like how George R R Martin used to do.

The interaction between Loken and Tull was quite nice; it seems like that was the first time the Astartes had gotten anywhere with the interex, which makes the fact that it all goes to crap just so... I mean, what were the rest of them doing for three weeks?  Why didn't they get anywhere?

I think the idea there is that three weeks of Horus and Naud sparring and surreptitiously checking each other out for Chaos has gotten them nowhere, and Loken just blindly stumbles into the solution because he doesn't know any better.  Or at least, he would have.  Speaking of which...

Who, if anyone, started the fire?

It can't be Horus or Loken.

Thanks for that.

You're going to disagree with me?

No, I guess I was just hoping you'd, you know, put some effort in.

Well get ready, then! Prepare for my hypothesis!

This is something I have to brace myself, now?

Yes! This hypothesis will blow your mind!  It was: Erebus!  Acting under the orders of Sagittarius!

Who?

I mean Sanguinius!  Erebus did it because Sanguinius told him to.  How convenient the Primarch has "left the system".  And Erebus got really fighty really quick.  Maybe Chaos has got to him.  Abaddon could have done it to start the war he's clearly desperate for. Sindermann might have done it because he hates how the interex talks about the curses of their weapons.  The Kinebrach might be making a bid for freedom.  The eldar might be causing trouble, whoever the hell the eldar are.

You're a big fan of reading. Would you like a device that holds books open and you can flick through by touching the air in front of it? And would you prefer it to a Kindle?

It'd be kind of cool.  Like looking at books in museums, except that your not forced to read just whatever page they've decided you can see.  A good way to avoid sweat damage. It might be noisy at night, though.

You mean the humming?

I mean whatever mechanisms are involved in turning the pages.  You might find it tough to sleep if I'm using it.

I wasn't really suggesting you bring it to bed.

It would be better than a Kindle, because you'd get the smell of the book.  I'd worry about RSI from all the flapping around, though.  Still, on balance, I think it's a good thing. Begin working on the technology immediately.


What Will Be

What's next for the Imperium's relations with the interex now so many people are dead?

Now that both sides have overreacted so much, I don't see how there's any way back.  They can't just apologise and move on. About the only way I can see things working out is if they find and decapitate the arsonist.  Or maybe the Emperor could sort things out.  It's weird that Tull was so focussed on Horus and not the Emperor, now I think about it.

I guess this far out, Horus is the only game in town.

It still seems like they've been underplaying him.