Editing Horus Heresy (section)

==The Primarchs Series==
Because Black Library don't seem satisfied confusing us with all their anthologies, audio-books, and short stories, they have begun releasing a spin-off series of Horus Heresy novels centered on the Primarchs. The series don't really take place in a specific time, but generally focuses on expanding on the titular Primarch's backstory and motivations during events before the Horus Heresy (though some of them also have events occurring after it). Why Black Library lists it as part of the Horus Heresy series when that isn't always the case is beyond our comprehension. Hopefully the Horus book finally shows us his conquest of Ullanor.
 
===Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar===
Centers on Papa Smurf himself and his trying to deal with how the Emperor used him like a rusty hammer to smack Lorgar in the head at Monarchia. Uses a conflict against Orks squatting on human ruins as a vehicle for him and the smurfs to express their angst over the event. He eventually discovers that the original humans went extinct from literally a war of red shirts vs blue shirts. A subplot details the conflict of morality the Ultramarines legion had with their Destroyer companies, especially the [[Nemesis]] Chapter (later a second founding) who held on to their Terran roots. Guilliman didn't much like their use, but eventually saw their necessity (especially when Imperium Secundus came swinging around).

===Leman Russ: The Great Wolf===
Focuses on Leman Russ' notorious rivalry with the Lion, explaining why to this day whenever the Chapters meet they throw the gauntlet down and beat the stuffing out of one another. Notably it reveals some interesting stuff like the Lion being aware of the Space Wolves' furry issue and keeping a lid on it, also that the Lion shanked Russ in the Imperial basement in front of a fresco of the compliance where they previously fought. Establishes clearly that even with overpowered Mech suits, baseline humans will always lose to legionary soldiers.

===Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero===
Depicts the unlikely friendship between Magnus and old Pert with a joint venture between their legions to evacuate a planet that's getting torn apart by accelerated magnetic polarity shifts. Things go wrong on the planet due to totally not Chaos cult nonsense, and it does a decent job of showing Magnus' flaws, specifically his inability to leave things that have "do not fuck with this" written on them alone; something Pert tries and fails at making him understand. Crucially it's set early enough in the Crusade that the use of psychic powers by Astartes is uncommon and the Thousand Sons basically have to keep a lid on how powerful they really are. They do not succeed.

The original colonists of Morningstar survived by rounding up all the psykers into their seed ship and splitting them from their psychic powers throne room of the emperor style. However since they didn't dissipate these psychic powers, the souls of the psykers just floated around inside the ship until they joined up into a single entity. When their jailers realized what was happening, they ran and sealed the ship but the psychic gestalt had already infected their minds with a doomsday meme, resulting in the shenanigans that Magnus and Pert arrive to. The entire Morningstar government fell victim to this meme and built a continent sized machine to destroy their planet which Pert & Magnus somehow didn't notice. The surviving natives of Morningstar are obliterated in space to stop the meme from spreading, and shortly before the Siege of Terra Magnus Pókeballs the psychic gestalt from its prison in the ruins of Prospero into his book so he can use it to get past the Emperor's psychic shield.

===Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia===
Probably the book in the series that did the most character building of all. This book shows Perturabo's childhood on Olympia alongside a "current" day conflict against the Hrud, the former showing why Pert is the odd genius manchild guy he is, while the latter does a great job of showing why fucking with an alien species capable of controlling time is somewhat of a stupid idea. However, the real draw of the book is that it is mainly written as an attempt to merge together the seemingly contradictory depictions of Pert we've had over the years, showing how the ruthless dick who decimates his legion for not being good enough in the Forgeworld books is the same guy who just wanted to be a builder in Angel Exterminatus. Also he may or may not have wanted to bang his adopted sister.

===Lorgar: Bearer of the Word===
Yep, the first(ish?) heretic himself gets his own obligatory messed-up childhood novel. Focuses slightly more on Kor Phaeron rather than Lorgar himself, showing him to be a manipulative dick who beat Lorgar as a child and never really bought into this whole "fatherhood" shtick or this whole concept of [[Emperor|One True God]], but allowed Lorgar his fantasies and the takeover Colchis (by "Word" or by "Mace") while Phaeron benefitted from increased power and secretly kept the faith of [[Chaos Gods]]. By the end Kor Phaeron wonders if Lorgar just let him think that he was manipulated and could have disposed of him at any time. The book does introduce a contrasting character to Kor Phaeron who actually shows Lorgar compassion growing up and was far more worthy of being named "father" but was far less useful to Lorgar's goals. The book shows that Lorgar isn't as stupid or naive as everyone thinks and does indeed realise that people have been using him for their own gains, but he only really cares about doing the work of the gods; so long as they both align he doesn't seem to care.

=== Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix ===
Fulgrim tries to conquer the newly discovered planet Byzas with only 7 men. Byzas has devolved to steam power and bolt-action bolters, but capital palace has DAOT gun defenses and anti-grav airships (think blimps without gasbags). Along the way Fulgrim encounters a brotherhood much like his own that wants to work with him; he dismisses them as a bunch of idealists. It's implied that he COULD have gotten the same results (Compliance) working with them but unfortunately that would have meant calling in backup and Fulgrim didn't want to do that. In the end Fulgrim takes the world but nearly dies from a hidden hydrogen bomb which he disarms. Several other characters such as Cyrius (who gets shanked by a squad from the brotherhood while wearing armor and has to be saved by Fulgrim) and Kasperos Telmar) later become prominent champions of chaos, while the others were blown up on Istvaan III. Also makes the first (but all too brief) direct mention of one of the Missing Primarchs, as well as the amusing spectacle of Fabius Bile in formal attire.

===Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa===
Ferrus is overseeing joint exercises between the Iron Hands and the Emperor's Children when he learns about a noncompliant human empire called the Gardinaal who have just humiliated a compliance force of Ultramarines and Thousand Sons. He decides that he'll conquer them singlehandedly so as to impress the Emperor and his brothers and maybe even get appointed to that Warmaster position everyone's whispering about. He throws his weight around when he arrives and tells off the Ultramarines commander for getting his ass kicked, then learns that the Gardinaal are actually some tough mothers, with their own genetically enhanced soldier caste and a willingness to nuke their own cities if it'll kill some Imperial troops. Ferrus quits fucking around after the Gardinaal try to assassinate him under the pretense of surrender negotiations and orders his fleet to demolish their entire capital planet before personally going down to smash faces in until they finally give up. In the end, he admits to Fulgrim that he doesn't have the patience to be Warmaster, and that he'll back whoever gets the job.

Probably the highlight of the novel is that we get a look inside Ferrus' head while it's still attached to the rest of him. Ferrus is a zealot who gives no fucks about anything beyond conquering systems in the name of the Emprah and being the best there is at what he does. In his own way, he was just as obsessed with perfection as Fulgrim, which is why they got along so well. He's also got a lot of built-up resentment toward Dorn, since Dorn once called him a dumbass on the bridge of his own flagship in front of a bunch of his sons. He doesn't seem to like Guilliman very much either at this point, probably because the G-man encouraged restraint when dealing with noncompliant planets and Ferrus just wanted to smash everything and let someone else pick up the pieces.

===Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris===
Basically a recap of some of the White Scars' more important pre-Heresy campaigns, including conquering the Nephilim homeworld and killing a shitload of Orks on a planet made of psychically resonant crystals. The main thing the book does is confirm that Jaghatai was always meant to be a wild card. More importantly, it shows that while he didn't really agree with the Emperor about anything, especially the Imperial Truth, he was still willing to serve the Imperium in his own way (read: killing xenos on the edges of the galaxy while everyone else built an empire behind him). Also shows the Khan trying to plan ahead for the [[Council of Nikaea|inevitable showdown]] between pro and anti-psyker factions in the Imperium, and how the warrior lodges were first introduced to the Scars. A meeting takes place between Sanguinius, Magnus and the Khan to talk about protecting the Librarius but Magnus is dismissive as ever about it and doesn't seem to take the issue very seriously. The White Scars fight together with the Luna Wolves against Greenskins and the former legion uses their Librarius against the Orc shamans, in order to not miss a conquest deadline set by the Khan, who of course likes to go very fast in all manner of ways. This has a subtle backfire for the Imperium, as the Luna Wolves disapprove of the Librarius. Horus himself is implied to give Jagathai the cold shoulder as a result of this, due to Horus trying to be on his most neutral, goodie good boyscout behavior, in anticipation of winning the title of Warmaster. The Khan thus loses support of Horus regarding the psyker dilemma. On a side note, we learn that the V Legion's original name was the Star Hunters, and that they relied heavily on armor and mechanized infantry before the Khan and his Chogorian posse taught them to love jetbikes and going ''real'' fast. Oh, and they became known as the White Scars because of a mistranslation, not unlike the Vlka Fenryka/Space Wolves. Much better book than most in the Primarchs series, as it's basically a Horus Heresy book and not a novel about a no-stakes Crusade campaign (Guilliman's book) nor a deep dive into the Primarch's life before the Emperor (Lorgar's). This is also a companion piece / prequel to Brotherhood of the Storm (this book directly intertwines with Brotherhood near the end) and Scars.

===Vulkan: Lord of Drakes===
Vulkan is united with the Terran members of his legion while they're on campaign against a fuckhueg WAAAGH! on a volcanic death world. The main takeaway from the book is that the XVIII Legion were stubborn badasses ready to lay down their lives for civilians right from the start of the Crusade. Without Vulkan around though, they kept throwing themselves into desperate last stands, to the point that other Imperial forces were starting to call them suicidal. Some of the Nocturnean legionaries even suggest that the Emperor kept Vulkan away from the legion for so long because he was waiting for all the Terrans to get themselves killed, but Vulkan dismisses that idea out of hand and nothing comes of it. There's also a pretty nifty sequence where Vulkan and a bunch of his sons surf a modified Termite assault drill into an attack moon and blow it up from the inside.

===Corax: Lord of Shadows===
Corax and the Raven Guard are sent to bring the Carinae system into compliance. The system is basically a thousand floating space station hive cities, all independent of each other with a thousand different governments, orbiting a star. Typically they hate each other's guts but are able to come together and combine firepower to a devastating effect when an Imperial compliance fleet gives them a common enemy. The leaders aren't keen on handing over all their power to the emperor. He initially tries to use stealth and surgical strikes to get them to surrender peacefully with minimal casualties, but a real Imperium hater forms a coalition and death stars the first city to surrender. When Corax targets him for surgical elimination, he releases a zombie virus on the whole station and escapes via a stealth shuttle to a hidden station masked by the sun's emissions. A pissed-off Corax orders his legion to hunt the dude down and disable the station engines, letting him broadcast his 5 stages of grief to the whole system while he descends into the Sun. This also comes at the cost of dragging out the compliance and thousands of unnecessary casualties since the remaining orbitals are able to consolidate their strategic/tactical positions and form actual armies. There is also a subplot about Corax’s home planets of Kiavahr and Deliverance which shows that Imperial compliance didn’t actually make things all that much better for the people living there; the Kiavahr tech-guilds and the Mechanicum can barely tolerate each other and people from Deliverance are still routinely discriminated against to the point where some of them have turned to terrorism to express their displeasure. Corax himself admits that he didn't have time to fix everything before leaving but pledges that he'll come back and set Kiavahr to rights once the Crusade is over. Doesn't stop him from executing one of his best friends in the rebellion for being uppity.

The book shows us that Corax was an idealist who believed in the principles of the Great Crusade and genuinely didn’t understand why people would reject the Imperium. It’s shown that while he was a proponent of treating normal humans as equals, he could still be astoundingly arrogant when dealing with them since he was a genetically-engineered transhuman demigod and all. He is also shown to be constantly grappling with his need to deliver justice at any cost, aware that he might turn into another Konrad Curze if he’s not careful. We also get a look at what the Sable Brand is like through the eyes of an afflicted Raven Guard legionary; basically, it's a watered down version of the Black Rage that causes them to hallucinate and become suicidal, which some of them deal with by joining the [[Moritat]].

===Sons of The Emperor===
A collection of short stories showcasing the contrast between the Primarchs and the rest of mankind, getting down to how they really perceive themselves and how humanity sees them.
:'''The Passing of Angels:''' Sanguinius leads a Destroyer host to completely obliterate an abominable culture. He has his men adopt anonymity so they do not need to shoulder the burdens of what they do, but argues that since he was designed for dark deeds he cannot set aside what he is. Primarchs might be angels, "but angels were not created for kindness".
:'''Mercy of the Dragon:''' Recounts a conversation between Vulkan and the Emperor that shows us how Vulkan was always intended to be the "most human" of the Primarchs, and to be able to teach his brothers how to be more like him. Possibly hinting towards a plan after the Great Crusade that involved the [[Warhammer High|Primarchs settling down into civilian life.]]
:'''The Abyssal Edge:''' Shows a conflict between Curze and Magnus that was kept confidential, because the rest of the Imperium were not allowed to see the Primarchs in disagreement with each other. Crucially shows a side of Curze that ISN'T a terrorizing murder junkie edgelord. Sevatar leaves the choice up to the investigating officer, and it's implied the officer chooses to hush up the report. Also the first chronological appearance of Khayon from the Black Legion series as well as Sevatar back on his finest snarking form.
:'''Shadows of the Past:''' Set some point after the Horus Heresy, a "daemon" starts killing its way through some Word Bearers. Turns out Corax has ascended into a creature made of pure darkness and gets into a duel with Daemon-Lorgar. Corax wins, but the Word Bearers act as a mass human shield to allow Lorgar a chance to escape. Shaken from the fight, Lorgar heads to his room and slams the door behind him for a few millennia.
:'''The Emperor's Architect:''' A biography of Perturabo showing what he was doing before awoke halfway up a mountain, then later. Hints that Perturabo's projected image was carefully stage-managed, and ''oh'' how he hated to be upstaged. He had a sculpt-off with a prodigy artist, and just like Fulgrim he made a perfect statue. But the artist worked for a decade to make a cool statue of some hero that showed a different facet of his life/personality from the angle you were standing, and practically everybody who saw them side by side said that was better than Pert's 3D-printed like replica. Pert slapped the statue and never spoke about it again. He was destroying [[Rogal Dorn|artwork that embarrassed him]] long before he was discovered by the Emperor.
:'''Prince of Blood:''' After Angron gets Daemon-Prince'd by Lorgar, he goes mad and gets locked up in the bowels of his flagship, causing all sorts of disgusting changes to take place. Kharn goes to talk to him and finds that Angron has been stripped of his sense of self, completely lost to Khorne. Angron warns them against his form of slavery, though it appears that Kharn and the others followed him down the same path simply because he was their father, but there is also a promise that they will [[Blam|"thank"]] Lorgar for what he did to them.
:'''The Ancient Awaits:''' Long after the Heresy is over, Magnus sends a Thousand Sons squad to an abandoned planet to find a repeating broadcast that says only "the Ancient awaits". In a deep underground hangar they find an ancient Dreadnought and realize that the planet is Istvaan III, and that the Dreadnought is [[Ancient Rylanor]] of the Emperor's Children, who's been sitting there ever since Horus Exterminatus'd the planet millennia ago. Fulgrim appears to try and seduce Rylanor into joining up with the endless party machine that is the III Legion, and Rylanor goes "Surprise Motherfucker" and detonates a virus bomb he was sitting on. The Thousand Sons feel sympathetic to how honorable Rylanor is (despite being a bit cuckoo from sitting on his ass) and let him do it. Fulgrim's ego is wounded from seeing that even after several millennia Rylanor rejected all the pleasures he had to offer. [https://youtu.be/X2Hb4bngxJ8 A story forever immortalized in song form].
:'''Misbegotten:''' The Sons of Horus take over most of a system without having to fight, but have to deal with one holdout planet defended by Frankenstein-like creatures spliced together from multiple human donors. Their creator (Basilio Fo) is a five thousand year old bioengineer who encountered the Emperor at some point on Terra and then got the fuck out before the Great Crusade kicked off. He sends a big ball of human hands to surprise strike Horus in his command post, but Horus naturally defeats it messily. For all his own abominations, Fo admits that he sees the Primarchs as representing something far worse than even what he could have created. The epilogue shows him laughing his ass off in his cell on Terra when the Siege starts because he's kind of been proven right.

===Angron: Slave of Nuceria===
Covers the events leading to the World Eaters' adoption of the Butcher's Nails and the Ghenna massacre. Ever since taking command of the Legion, Angron has been ordering them to complete every planetary conquest they undertake in thirty-one hours, this being the length of a single day on Nuceria. When and if they fail, he has them kill one in every ten Astartes; the same thing Perturabo did when he took command of the Iron Warriors. This has happened so many times that the World Eaters are starting to suffer some serious daddy issues, and the only way for them to earn his approval is to accept the Butcher's Nails. Unfortunately for them, the implants keep failing, sometimes explosively so, until they're sent to bring a rebellious Imperial world back into compliance and find that it's been turned into a planet full of androids who were created with some of the same tech used in the Nails; with this, one of the Legion's Apothecaries is able to create a stable version of the Nails. Kharn is the first to successfully undergo the procedure, and the Nails make him [[Rip and Tear|RAGE]] so hard the book literally blacks out for a couple of pages. Angron orders the entire legion to be implanted, which triggers a brief spate of infighting between the World Eaters who want to earn Papa Angron's approval at any cost and those who think that he's a broken psychopath who needs to be taken to the Emperor for help. The one World Eater captain who still thinks the Nails are a terrible idea gets killed by Kharn in a duel and the rest of them submit to the procedure. The story ends right as Russ shows up with the entire VI Legion fleet, having decided that Angron needs a talking-to about all this nonsense. We all know how this ends, of course. There's also an epilogue where Kharn happens to ransack Ghenna 10,000 years later and comes across an embellished statue of the World Eater captain he beheaded, and has a rare moment of clear headed dispair for what he and his broken legion have become.

The book gives Angron some character development beyond "giant frothing berserker" which turns him into a pretty tragic figure. As it turns out, he didn't get the Butcher's Nails immediately after landing on Nuceria, but received them as a punishment for refusing to kill his adoptive father in the arenas. Before the Nails he was a pretty bro-tier guy who loved his fellow gladiators and used what appeared to be latent psyker powers to absorb all their nightmares so they could rest properly while he dealt with all their accumulated fear and anger. This Angron would have probably made one hell of a general for the Crusade. Then the Nails got pounded into his head and he Hulked out and killed his adoptive father, which broke him and turned him into the psychotic death machine we're all familiar with. [[Slayer|He also has a death wish caused by the Emperor yoinking him from his last stand with the other gladiators on Nuceria and has spent the entirety of the Great Crusade looking for something tough enough to kill him.]]

===Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter===

Grimdark Batman finally gets his very own standalone novel! The entire thing is told in flashbacks framed by Curze talking to a statue of the Emperor he stitched together out of human flesh while waiting for M'Shen to come and kill him. Most of it involves explaining how Curze got out of the stasis coffin that Sanguinius stuffed him into at the end of ''Ruinstorm''. As it turns out he was adrift for a few decades after the end of the Heresy, until he got picked up by the crew of a sub-light freighter who planned to sell the coffin for a packet; instead Curze woke up and decided to [[rip and tear|play some tag]] [[grimdark|with the stupid humans.]] He left one of the crew alive and told him to drive the ship to Tsagualsa, mutilating the poor kid whenever he got bored. The kid had a chance to escape after dropping Curze off but followed him instead and was predictably [[grimdark|killed by the Night Lords when Curze decided he was done with him.]] Konrad also struggles under the weight of his visions throughout only for the Emperor to contact him and explain Konrad's great mistake: his visions of the future were not fixed and Curze could have chosen a different and better path if he had not been so convinced of the inevitability of fate. The Emperor also tells him two very interesting things: he does not consider any of the traitor primarchs irredeemable, and he forgives Konrad for all that he's done, just as Papa Sang had said he might. Konrad freaks out and insists he cannot be forgiven because there is no justice in that, then tears the statue down before leaving to get ready for M'Shen's imminent arrival.

Other highlights include some flashbacks to Curze's days murdering people on Nostramo, including killing a woman [[derp|who was about to commit suicide]] and Curze eating his victims [[grimdark|because he enjoyed it.]] Also Curze hated Corax, not because Corax was good, but because Corax was a better ninja than him. Oddly enough he also says he didn't hate any of his other brothers, even the ones who were dicks to him like Fulgrim or Dorn. So he really just tortured the shit out of Vulkan for shits and giggles, what a dick.

Seriously though, this summary doesn't do it much justice. It's still a pretty good book. And it's barely 200 pages, read it anyway.

===Scions of the Emperor===
A second short story collection and cocktease extraordinaire, originally a Weekender exclusive.
:'''Canticle:''' Focuses on Ferrus Manus during his early days on Medusa, fighting his way through hordes of cyborg monstrosities while he scavenges for armor, weapons, food, and equipment; battles the extreme weather; and tries to find a name for himself. He encounters a woman who tries to hold him up, but when he shows no fear of her and gives her his weapon on the grounds that she's earned it, she instead suggests he join her clan. He refuses, stating that he has something to do (namely killing Asirnoth). Amusingly, the story reveals that Primarchs can literally eat sand and metal to stay alive.
:'''The Verdict of the Scythe:''' Set during the Great Crusade. Having been yelled at by his brothers for trashing yet another planet, Mortarion tries being nice for once when bringing the world of Absyrtus into compliance. He roams the streets for a bit after the official compliance ceremony and realizes that the witch-cults which dominated Absyrtus before his arrival weren't limited to just the ruling tyrants but are completely integrated into the planet's society, so he deems the planet beyond saving, [[Exterminatus|nukes it from orbit]], and decides that being Mr. Nice Guy isn't for him (Liberating Humanity from Life<sup>tm</sup>).
:'''A Game of Opposites:''' Set during the Heresy. An Iron Warriors warsmith tries to outthink Jaghatai Khan and loses hilariously because the Khan [[Oinkbane|is too subtle for him]]. Jaghatai easily defeats the trap the Iron Warriors tried to set, then explains to the warsmith why he lost before executing him: the warsmith may have studied the Khan's writings, but he failed to grasp their true meaning, and so he was doomed to defeat even if the Khan had not been present. 
:'''Better Angels:''' Follows Jehoel, a line legionary of the Blood Angels, throughout the latter days of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. Sanguinius chooses to be his patron as Jehoel commemorates the battles the legion has fought by making glass sculptures, all the while lamenting the destruction and loss wrought by the Heresy. Just before the Siege of Terra, he finally asks his father why Sanguinius chose to be his patron, and the primarch explains that he sees himself in Jehoel more than he does any of his other sons; he is the best expression of the Blood Angels' highest ideals.
:'''The Conqueror's Truth:''' A remembrancer gets herself assigned to the Night Lords so she can see some war, and Curze and Sevatar oblige her in the same way a jackass genie might grant your wish for a ton of gold by dropping it on you: they bring her to a city under assault by the Night Lords and allow her to record the civilian population being dumped en masse into its geothermal furnaces. When she declares that she will find some way to show this atrocity to the people of Terra, Curze tells her that's what he wants. He says that the citizens of the Imperium must know what kind of war is being waged in their name and that he'll use the footage to show other worlds that there are only two options for them: compliance, or death.
:'''The Sinew of War:''' A flashback to Guilliman's younger days on Macragge as he returns from putting down a tribal uprising to find Macragge City in flames and his adoptive father dead. He quickly realizes that his father's co-consul, Gallan, is responsible, and busts Gallan in front of the entire Senate. He fights down the temptation to just murder him, thus holding true to Konor's ideals. One of his bitterest enemies is so impressed that he swears allegiance to Roboute, and so does the rest of the Senate, thus setting Guilliman on the path to becoming the Lord of Macragge.
:'''The Chamber at the End of Memory:''' Also known as light touching above the clothes. Some workers fortifying a forgotten corner of the Imperial Palace in preparation for the forthcoming siege are killed by a psychic booby trap. When Rogal Dorn investigates, he discovers that they accidentally broke into the personal quarters of the Lost Primarchs, which have been heavily warded with psychic defenses forged by Malcador himself. When Malcador shows up, Dorn realizes that he can't even remember his brothers' names, and starts to tear into the Sigillite for having sealed his memories. Malcador counters by revealing that it was Dorn's idea to begin with, and further explains that he and Guilliman were able to save the II and XI Legions from being purged alongside their primarchs; they were mind-wiped and absorbed into the other Legions. He then unseals Dorn's memories long enough for him to realize that whatever his lost brothers did was so horrible that the Imperium would have long since fallen if they were still alive.
:'''First Legion:''' Also known as a gentle groping of your mental bits. Lion el'Jonson and the Dark Angels are in the midst of the [[Rangdan Xenocides]] when a mysterious legionary calling himself Alpharius turns up and requests an audience with the Primarch of the I Legion. He offers to secretly take over the war effort so that the Dark Angels may withdraw and rebuild their strength as this will improve the Lion's chances of one day being named commander of the entire Imperial war machine, which "Alpharius" believes is necessary for the Imperium to survive. The Lion rejects the offer immediately, stating that he will see the Xenocides through.

===Lion El'Jonson: Lord of the First===
While the campaign for Ullanor takes place, the Emperor tasks the Lion with pacifying an irrelevant little world on the galactic fringe that had already been considered compliant. The Lion begins fortifying the world and bringing in more troops and fleets, keeping his true intentions to himself, while his senior commanders are keen to move on and earn real glory elsewhere. As it turns out, the planet was being used as a feeding world for the [[Khrave]], a race of uber-psychic xenos from before the [[Fall of the Eldar]] that can read minds, crush tanks with a gesture, and possess people in their millions from outside of a solar system. The book shows how clever and callous the Lion could be by [[Alpharius|coming up with a massively convoluted plan]] that he needed to keep secret from a race of mind readers, even going so far as to issue seemingly contradictory orders to his men to confuse the enemy as well as [[Perturabo|knowingly sacrificing millions of mortal lives]] in order to escalate the conflict and draw out the Khrave's leader in order to destroy them. This is all interspersed with some of his brief meetings with the [[Emperor]], highlighting how similar the two of them were in mindset. As the dutiful firstborn son, the Lion seemed to always know what his father desired and was the one most trusted to enact it. At one point, the Lion laments that his own contribution to the Imperium is nothing but ash and destruction, but the Emperor explains that this is the point of him and the I Legion: to do the things that even Konrad Curze and Leman Russ cannot, such as the complete erasure of opponents too troublesome to allow to exist (including obliterating all memory of them), and to do it without the need for recognition, accolades, or ceremony. To briefly retouch on a previous point though: the book does a good job of fleshing out the role of the I Legion. If the VIth are the Emperor's executioners, and the VIIIth his terror Legion, then the Ist are his exterminators. This, combined with the previously mentioned unparalleled trust Big-E has for his first son is likely why, alone of the rest of the Imperium (probably not including the Custodes) the Dark Angels are trusted with archeotech from the Dark Age of Technology so dangerous that not even the Cog-boys know it exists, including weapons so destructive that they probably outclass anything but Necron-tech, which is really saying something. The book even ends with the Lion having potentially [[Grey Knights|mind wiped his own Space Marines so that they cannot remember who they just fought.]] What the novel does best is illuminate the labyrinthine inner workings of the Dark Angels, showing why even the Alpha Legion saw they were too tough a nut to crack. There are orders and cabals and subdivisions of orders and cabals threaded throughout the legion's structure, reaching across rank, station, and specialization, all of which are linked by a complex and ever-expanding web of coded heraldries, hidden symbols, and secret passphrases that only the Lion seems to fully grasp.

The book also reads like a tie-in novel to the recently released Horus Heresy 9: Crusade. It has many references to items and formations that were first introduced only months earlier such as the ''Fusil Actinaeus'', the Excindio battle-automata, Dreadwing Interemptors, Firewing Enigmatii Cabals, and the various hidden Orders of the Hekatonystika. It also disappoints because it actually shows the secret arsenals of those orders that are tantalizingly NOT represented on the tabletop, such as Fire Raptors equipped with psionic lance weapons, assault psycannons, archaeotech pistols [[Grimdark|that erase their target from memory]], and the Lion wearing a psychic dampening cloak.

===Alpharius: Head of the Hydra===
Long story short, everything we’ve been told about Alpharius is [[Meme|true, from a certain point of view]] (or maybe not). Alpharius himself (unless it was actually Omegon) lands on Terra after the primarchs were scattered. He immediately senses that [[Omegon|some part of him is missing]], but before he can ponder this too deeply the Emperor finds him and brings him back to the Palace. He's raised in total secrecy by Malcador, who explains that he will be the Emperor’s hidden blade, the son who can strike from the shadows and weave deceptions of surpassing subtlety. The Emperor further explains to him that Alpharius' job will be to preserve the Imperium at all costs, no matter what he might have to do. Alpharius interprets this to mean that he should test the Palace’s defenses, so he breaks into the Imperial Dungeon, kills a Custodian and steals his armor, and sets up a fake assassination attempt on the Emperor. Constantin Valdor stops him, but Alpharius reveals that he had already hacked into an AA battery on the other side of the Palace and could have just shot down the Emperor’s shuttle at any time, proving his point and annoying Valdor. Alpharius and his legion go on to wage war in the shadows throughout the Great Crusade, using wetwork teams, deep-cover sleeper agents, and psyops to defeat the Imperium’s enemies. The XX Legion apparently has agents seeded throughout the galaxy, even on worlds that haven’t yet been contacted by the Imperium, and uses them as appropriate to destabilize governments or cripple armies and infrastructures prior to the arrival of other Legions. Alpharius claims to have fought alongside the Dark Angels in their first deployment (as seen in Valdor’s novel), and also claims to have been present for the rediscoveries of several of his brothers, disguised as members of their legions. He and his legion are shown to be content with their role as black operatives, though also a bit bummed that they don’t get to stomp around kicking ass and gaining glory like the rest of the Astartes do.

He later unmasks his legion’s existence to the Lion during the Third Rangdan War, and the account of this meeting directly contradicts the one from ''Scions of the Emperor'', in that this time Alpharius merely offers his legion’s support to the Dark Angels, rather than suggesting that the Angels withdraw and let the XX Legion take over. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two accounts. While fighting the Rangdan behind the scenes and dealing with civil insurrections, Alpharius gets wind of a mysterious warrior who may possibly be his missing twin on a world behind enemy lines. When he goes to investigate, he discovers that the world is being overrun by the [[Slaugth]], so Alpharius takes a small team in to find his brother. Most of his legionnaires die, but he finds Omegon (unless it's really Alpharius), and they sit down for a friendly chat. Omegon tells Alpharius that he fetched up on a deserted planet and stole a ship belonging to some space pirates in order to escape (unless he’s lying). They wonder if the Emperor had deliberately engineered them as twins or if they had been divided somehow by their passage through the Warp. Either way, they decide to keep the truth concealed from the rest of the Imperium, then escape the Slaugth together and start planning how to reveal Alpharius' existence to the Imperium. They decide to stage an attack on the ''Vengeful Spirit'', so Omegon sneaks onto the ship and fights his way to the bridge. Horus recognizes him immediately and is overjoyed to have found his last brother, who introduces himself to the Lupercal as Alpharius. This is followed by the last line of the novel: “This was a lie.” So does that refer to Omegon calling himself Alpharius, or does it mean that the entire story was all one big lie? Hydra Dominatus, ladies and gentlemen.

Throughout the novel, Alpharius comes across as a surprisingly philosophical person, often ruminating on his nature and that of his brothers. He isn’t particularly impressed with any of them except for Horus (Alpharius even expresses a foreboding worry that Horus is carrying too much on his shoulders), The Lion to a certain extent (whom Alpharius speculates was the only brother to see through him and sense the truth), Sanguinius (but he might be lying), and he reveals that he distrusted Rogal Dorn so much that he decided to plant some sleeper agents on Terra just in case. (Of course, one of these sleeper agents was Alpharius himself, according to ''Praetorian of Dorn'', so does this mean that the Alpharius who was narrating this novel is a disguised Alpha Legionnaire?)

===Blood of the Emperor===

Oh, look, another short story anthology. Only six stories this time.

:'''Lupis Daemonis:''' Turns out Cthonia is even shittier than we were told it was, ranking as possibly even shittier than Nostramo and Barbarus combined. Horus, who goes without a name until the end of the story, is the runt of his gang in the utter shitheap that is the Cthonian underworld and is only spared from getting shanked by the other members of his gang because the gang leader realizes he isn't normal. We find out Horus was made differently from the other Primarchs in that his Primarch-level growth rate was intentionally stunted until psychically activated by the Emperor from afar, for some reason. Long story short, Horus evolves into his current form Pokémon style at the end after killing his gang leader/foster father, who was the one who gave him his name. Also apparently the Justaerin got their name from a violent gang on Cthonia who enjoyed impaling people on stakes.
:'''Skjalds:''' We learn Russ returns to Fenris every once in awhile to fuck with the locals, in this case a hunting party trying to kill a warp tainted creature who killed a whole village. Also we get confirmation that, yes, he does indeed smell like a dog.
:'''The Sixth Cult of the Denied:''' Magnus soft-exiles a member of his legion (and disbands an entire cult of the Thousand Sons) for consorting with demons in the quest for forbidden knowledge, specifically how the fuck he managed to cure his legion of the Flesh Change. Oh, the irony.
:'''The Will of the Legion:''' Dorn and the Imperial Fists happen upon an opportunistic bunch of void-dwelling bandits who attack their fleet and are a hair's breadth away from destroying every single one of them with extreme prejudice until they surrender at the very last moment. Basically a reminder that just because Dorn is a loyal good boy to the Emperor doesn't mean he isn't still a mass murderous dick at the end of the day.
:'''Council of Truth:''' Alpharius "confesses" to doing things the hard way as a means to constantly test himself and the Alpha Legion in preparation for the day that might see them standing as the Imperium's last line of defense. Basically confirms that Alpharius saw the Heresy coming a loooong way off. 
:'''Terminus:''' Two Death Guard at the Siege of Terra, fresh off the events of 'The Buried Dagger', wonder if they're (gasp) the bad guys, what with their rotting flesh and awful smell and such.

===Mortarion: The Pale King===
Set during Mortarion's early days in the Imperium, just after the events of ''The Verdict of the Scythe'' and flashing back to the Conquest of Galaspar, his first campaign as primarch of the Death Guard. As he's settling into command of his legion, Mortarion learns of a noncompliant human empire known as the Order in the Galaspar Cluster. Billions of people are enslaved, kept permanently drugged up, and forced to work themselves to death for the enrichment of the High Comptrollers, a pack of oligarchical assholes who refer to their slaves as "labor units" and have them executed and turned into nutrient sludge because their baking wasn't up to par (no, really). The Order's similarities to the Overlords of Barbarus piss Mortarion off to the point where he rejects the other Imperial commanders' suggestion that they blockade and besiege the cluster and decides to do a Leeroy Jenkins-style decapitation strike instead. He takes his fleet and barges clean through the Cluster's exterior defenses before ramming a cruiser into the side of the largest hive on Galaspar Prime and going out to kick ass the Death Guard way: fistfuls of rad grenades, rivers of phosphex, and power scythes, all topped off with plenty of orbital bombardments. No one who belongs to the Order is allowed to survive; Morty and the legion kill most of the Comptrollers even when they try to surrender and leave a few to be torn to pieces by their former slaves. Mortarion expects to be praised for his work, but the Emperor seems upset and sends Horus and Sanguinius to call him to account. Both primarchs are stunned by the level of destruction Mortarion has wrought, and when he tries to justify himself to his brothers, Horus points out that all he's done is replace one kind of tyranny with another. Mort has a brief moment of clarity and wonders if there is a better path forward for him and his legion. Ultimately, however, he concludes that the examples of Galaspar and Absyrtus justify his way of war and decides to become an embodiment of unstoppable, unrelenting Death, [[Nurgle|and we all know how well that worked out for him.]] Also features [[Typhus|Calas Typhon]] and [[Knights-Errant#Nathaniel Garro|Nathaniel Garro]] in their early days as line legionaries. Typhon falls into a disgusting sewer at one point and runs into a psyker who seems to know what he'll become, while Garro is the sole survivor of a kill team sent to take out the Order's chief asshole, which is probably what set him on the path to becoming battle-captain of the Seventh Grand Company.

===Rogal Dorn: The Emperor's Crusader===

Fafnir Rann and Sigismund are standing around on the walls of the Imperial Palace just before the Siege, wondering why their primarch got the job of fortifying Terra, when Malcador pops out and reminds them of the Night Crusade, whereupon all three of them start reminiscing about it.

Six decades into the Great Crusade, ten years after Dorn was recovered and shortly after Lion el'Jonson was found, Dorn, Fulgrim, Horus, and the Lion are ordered to deploy into the Occluda Noctis, an area of the galaxy obscured by a major Warp storm. Their goal is to bring the area into Imperial compliance and find the source of an unknown threat that’s already destroyed multiple expeditionary fleets. All four of them have their own ideas about how best to prosecute the campaign; the Lion wants to work his way in from the periphery of the Occluda, while Dorn’s plan boils down to “drive my fleet into the heart of the Occluda and get shit done”. He and the Lion disagree about who’s right to the point where Horus and Fulgrim have to try and calm them down, but Dorn insults the Lion, who demands an honor duel. The Lion’s champion wins because Dorn forgot he had Sigismund, and Rogal immediately apologizes to his brother for insulting him. Ultimately, they agree to do both plans. Dorn’s works surprisingly well, though the Fists don’t rack up nearly as many compliances as the Dark Angels and Emperor’s Children since he's insisting on a diplomatic approach and the fleet has to be careful when making Warp jumps in the Occluda. They eventually encounter the unknown enemy, which turns out to be a lost human civilization called the Kapikulu Continuum that uses cloaking tech and special warp gates to get around, requiring Dorn to up his game to counter them. He manages to outsmart and defeat the Continuum's fleet and convinces its leaders to join the Imperium. At the peace negotiations, he learns that the Continuum used to be the slaves of a xenos race that altered their brains to grow a special neural web that lets them use all their nifty technology (and also makes their heads explode if a psyker tries mind-probing them), which means that they’re not technically human anymore. Dorn concludes that he can’t risk letting them join the Imperium and orders them to be wiped out, following the exact letter of the Emperor’s orders: “Remove this hidden threat.” He is genuinely distressed by this outcome, but sucks it up and moves on.

The whole point of the story turns out to be summing up Dorn’s character: he was made the Praetorian of Terra because he can be trusted to do exactly what he is told to do, fulfilling both the word and spirit of the Emperor’s commands, and there’s no one else the Emperor would rather have guarding his capital world. Also a funny sidenote: Perturabo is found during the course of the Night Crusade and Dorn sends him a friendly welcome message, which one character declares will certainly lead to a greater fraternal bond between them in future.

===Sanguinius: The Great Angel===
A disgraced remembrancer joins the IX Legion on campaign and learns more about the early days of the Blood Angels, possibly including some of their more unsavory secrets.

The book starts with a prologue lowly scribe bribing a clerk to enter a restricted archive.

During the Great Crusade, the narrator is being brought aboard the Red Tear. He's a disgraced remembrancer whose work always risks both his career and [[Blam|life]] due to his [[Heresy|scathing criticism of the Crusade and Astartes]] from the more brutal legions. He's been brought at the behest of the Blood Angels lead remembrancer, a woman more focused on maintaining the legion's (and crusade's) image. [[1984|To her propaganda is everything. The truth means nothing compared to what people think the truth is]]. Her plan is to get a glowing review about the legion and Great Crusade from this guy, because of the immense propaganda value that comes from a critical man like him giving praise. [[Derp|She thinks a private investigator-type of remembrancer who's an expert at uncovering ugly truths about the Astartes will suddenly abandon his journalistic integrity at her behest when the rest of the Imperium's ire couldn't rattle him]].

The disgraced remembrancer arrives on the Red Tear as it's en-route for Baal so the legion can group after the Ullanor Triumph. He notices other unmarked ships going in the same direction too. After a while he talks to Sanguinius. Sangy wants the remembrancer to record everything, even the inconvenient truths about the legion. He promises his full support in the endeavor, ensuring the remembrancer has full access and protection for as long as the Angel lives.

There's a segment where the legion attacks some non-compliant humans called the Elekim. Despite Sangy's efforts to solve the war diplomatically, his captains correctly point out that it's impossible. The remembrancer notices that there's lots of Blood Angels chaplains watching the legionnaires, which makes him suspicious. Then they go to the planet Murder, where the legion is fighting the massive fuckoff battle. Horus and Sangy chat. The narrator talks with Iacton Qruze, revealing information on the Revenant Legion.

The narrator starts getting visions about the Blood Angels while his suspicions grow. He fails to find a space marine who was previously open with him, and finds some creepy art in his room. When he stumbles into a shrine deep on the ship he finds an exsanguinated corpse surrounded by bones, freaking him out. He tries to run but a chaplain finds him and brings him to Sangy. Hawk Boi reaffirms his vow to let the remembrancer document the truth, but asks him to hold off until the war is over when Sangy believes he would've cured the legion of The Flaw.

100 years after the Siege of Terra, the low level scribe brings the lead remembrancer of the Blood Angels the book written by the protagonist remembrancer. She's now an Inquisitor. It's currently Sanguinala, where her propaganda image on the Cathedral of the Emperor Deified is under construction. She kills the protagonist remembrancer and destroys what is revealed to be the final copy of the book documenting the full story of the Blood Angels. She will preserve the image of the Blood Angels, truth be damned.

The book is a mixed bag for readers. Some will be pissed off the book subverted their expectations by keeping Sangy's presence to a minimum and amounting to nothing in terms of the plot. Others will like how Chris Wraight shook things up and chose to show the Blood Angels from the perspective of a disillusioned remembrancer, while showing their uglier side.

===Heirs of the Imperium===

Hey, remember the three anthologies they already released for this series? Now Black Library is cramming them into a single mega-anthology to juice yet more money out of their readers, with five new stories included to try and justify this thing's existence.

===Audiobooks===
'''<u>The Sigillite</u>''' Despite not being a Primarch, his short story is included in the Primarch sub-series of the Horus Heresy. It covers a discussion between Malcador and a Stormtrooper named Khalid Hassan about the nature of the Emperor's plans and whether or not Malcador agreed with everything the Emperor thought(hint: he didn't). Khalid had brought the Rosetta Stone to Malcador without fully understanding its significance, whereupon Malcador reveals that he is part of an ancient order dedicated to the preservation of humanity's knowledge and history, and whose symbol will later become the Inquisitorial =I=.

Malcador also reveals the doors to the Golden Throne and indicates the awesome battle going on behind them, foreshadowing the events of the Webway War that are covered later on in the main series.

'''<u>Malcador: First Lord of the Imperium</u>''' In the story Malcador visits his elderly personal astropath who is on her deathbed. The pair have a few conversations where Malcador shows surprising compassion and humanity. During the conversations there are some major revelations about Malcador and the origins of the Heresy. You should listen to it yourself as it's cheap and short (25 mins), but in case you don't care about spoilers here's some stuff: he's 6718 years old, he helped the Emperor go from being just the biggest warlord on Terra to... well, being the Emperor, and he explains who the Sigillites are and what their role in the Imperium is. After the astropath despairs about the countless billions who've died in the Heresy, he drops the mother of all bombshells: the Heresy was planned by him and the Emperor from the beginning. Just as how the Thunder Warriors served their purpose and were betrayed and wiped out, the plan was to eventually pit the Primarchs against one another and have them wipe themselves out. He says the two of them carefully maneuvered the Primarchs into specific roles and situations, as well as the Emperor showing unequal favour between them, in order to foster hostility. The ones who "couldn't be controlled" never made it to the endgame (possibility referencing the lost Primarchs). He admits though that his failure was underestimating Chaos who caused the Heresy to happen much sooner than expected, which turned it into the calamity that it is.

After she dies Malcador he admits he lied but doesn't say exactly which bit he lied about. Some people think the truth is they planned to wipe out the Primarchs and Astartes, but the Heresy was never planned and was instead a lie intended to comfort an old woman on her deathbed (by saying they have it under control, sorta). Some other people think the lie is where he tells her that the Emperor "will catch her" when she dies (hinting at an afterlife and saving her soul from Chaos). The truth is we'll probably never know as this is typical Malcador obfuscation. If there's even a shred of truth to the origins of the Heresy, though, the implications are staggering: Horus was right in turning against the Emperor even if his reasons for doing so were wrong.

'''<u>Perturabo: Stone and Iron</u>''' A minor story largely about showing the differences between the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists, so doesn't provide any major revelations for the series. The Iron Warriors are supposed to be supporting an Imperial Fist position that is currently under assault, but Perturabo holds back and uses the opportunity to instruct his officers about how the Fists prosecute their own wars.

'''<u>Konrad Curze: A Lesson in Darkness</u>''' Pretty skippable, really just Curze giving his thoughts on why the Emperor made him like he did and the Night Lord definition of "compliance" during the Great Crusade. Hint: It involves flaying. Lots of it.

===Short Stories===
'''<u>Grandfather's Gift:</u>''' Mortarion has a lab accident and knocks himself out. He wakes up in Nurgle's Garden, wanders around for a bit, and has a nice chat with [[Ku'Gath]] the Plaguefather, whose name is misspelled [[Derp|for some reason]]. It's revealed that Nurgle has tracked down his foster father's soul and will let Mortarion capture it as a gift for joining his service. The timeline is a bit squiffy due to warp fuckery. Mortarion knows what daemons are and knows that he's fought alongside them, but doesn't recognize Ku'Gath. Ku'Gath knows Mortarion, but also says that they haven't met yet. Morty himself doesn't know where he is or what's going on at first, but eventually his memories return, and he mutates into his daemon primarch form and captures his foster father's soul.

'''<u>A Lesson in Iron:</u>''' Ferrus Manus chases some orks into a warp rift and stumbles across an Iron Hands ship from a few thousand years in the future. The boarding parties he sends are attacked by daemons which fuck them up, and Ferrus himself finds a dead future Iron Hand whose bionics look like a shitty hack-job to him, so he gets pissy and orders everyone to leave. When his Mechanicum adept points out that they might be able to mine the databanks for advanced technology and info on [[Drop Site Massacre|future events]], he declares that he wants no part of this future. Also reveals that Ferrus had seen enough shit on Medusa to know that the Imperial Truth was a "useful lie".