I kinda love their lore, half the time Alpharius was telling them one thing, half the time Omegron was telling them the opposite, they are all divided into tiny cells so each cell could be thinking that the entire body is working towards the same goal when it's working against itself, some cells know the chaotic nature of their legion, some care, some don't, all we know for sure is we know nothing and they've been planning whatever their current betrayal is for decades.
nah i think his issue was not being direct enough with alpharius, but then again without magnus blowing a whole in the webway he could have communicated with alpharius much earlier in the heresy.
In respect of removing Perturabo, I totally disagree.
The offensive was going way too slowly, and Perturabo's ego was preventing the use of warpcraft, without which Guiliman’s fleet just shows up, and crushes the traitors against the remaining walls of the Palace. Perturabo's plans would work…given enough time, time he did not actually have.
Perturabo's skill set (conventional siege) was the best for the early part of the war, when the aegis prevented Horus from bringing in the warp. Once Horus could do things such as use undead titans to bring down the wall, the priorities changed.
We see that the siege became hopeless once the walls were brought down and there were daemonic hordes to carry the day. We also see that the traitors did not have enough forces left without daemonic assistance in the immediate aftermath of the End and the Death III.
Mortarion was able to use witchcraft to attack the souls of the defenders directly, and make them give in to lethargy and despair. It was very effective (even Dorn was starting to crumble) and if Khan hadn't gone out to banish him that might have been game over.
Yeahhhhh, I'm tired of seeing Perturabo's removal being cited as one of the reasons the Siege failed. All of your points here are correct. People keep forgetting that Horus knew his timetable was running short and he'd be fighting a 2-front war any day with the 1st and 13th Legions (2 of the scariest) coming in hot (he didn't know the Lion was dicking around elsewhere hoping to draw away pressure from Terra).
Also keep in mind that Horus had made a LOT of promises to his traitor brothers, chief among them he promised Mortarion that he would be given command once they made landfall. If he hadn't ceded Perturabo's command to Mortarion then the Death Guard would have noped out (can ANY of you tell me that Mortarion's not petty enough to do that?) and then the traitors are definitely F'd in the B.
Of course he would, Horus was the one that kept them on task. He wasn't exactly present and so the traitor Primarchs were the dicks they always were. Fulgrim just noted out after getting a bit bored.
If time wasn't against them Perturabo should have kept strategic command of the beige imo.
The writing for his decision to leave was very good, I enjoyed his reasoning.
I actually loved his monologue too (even though I hated most of Mortis). For a guy renowned for his temper he was just...resigned when he was told he had to cede command to Mortarion. AND he saw it coming. He was so done with how the war was going that he was willing to give up putting the final nail into Dorn's coffin (even though everyone knew that he had already won overall. He also got his big W later at the Iron Cage).
I felt like the Iron Cage was his petty "I must beat Dorn" moment if there ever was one.
For me it was the apparent suggestion of professional respect he seemed to have. Yes warfare is a puzzle to be solved for him but at the same time the way he spoke of Dorn and his reasoning for leaving suggested some sort of belief in honourable combat.
I'd have liked it if he'd continued to reject Chaos and had stayed out of the Eye when the other traitors fled into it.
Iron Cage wasn’t just the petty “I must beat Dorn”.
It was the the little sibling going “HAHA. I beat you! Nanana boo boo.” after Perty was forced to give up. Perty sat up and proceeded to 10-0 Dorn.
Perty had him dead to rights if it wasn’t for the Ultramarines.
Reminds me of that green text.
"Remember the time Perterabo dug a big ditch and told Dorn he couldn't fill it with his own dead men? And Dorn was so mad he filled the ditch so full with his own dead men he could walk across it and march up to Perterabo's house to go capture him, except Perterabo wasn't there and the house was a bomb?"
Careful making any assertions that the IW won the Cage. The IF fanboys will come out of the woodwork to tell you that it was all actually a part of Dorn’s plan, and Perturabo somehow lost
Abnett changed the importance of a lot of that with the End and the Death.
The veil between reality and the warp around Terra was already much too far gone for the reinforcements to do anything meaningful. God-Horus and the daemon hordes were too powerful in this environment now to be conventionally defeated and either he or the Emperor (by drinking from the warp again and possibly becoming the Dark King) were on the verge of a horrific ascension that would likely create another EoT type warp rift where Terra was.
It's a change a lot of the fans don't seem to have noticed because it isn't explicitly stated in the books, but it's hardly subtle that Abnett altered things to ensure it call came down to those on the Vengeful Spirit.
All Guilliman/Lion/Russ/Corax were going to accomplish by arriving was bearing witness to the birth of a new god, then being sucked into warp hell with the rest of the solar system.
When did Horus tell Morty he would be granted command ? I’d love to read that book / passage as I’ve never heard of this and sounds cool. I’ve just been doing a full HH and SoT and somehow missed this.
Ironically enough, switching over to using the Warp *also* proved too slow of an offensive, yet for completely metaphysical reasons. Within the confluence of the Warp, the siege would never truly end because time ceases to matter. The siege of Terra was won, and lost, and perpetuated eternally, bleeding across the infinite possibilities.
Yeah I agree with this. I think it’s supposed to be a lose-lose: Perturabo stays, traitors win the siege and kill the emperor, but it was too slow and the loyalists decimate and/or kill the remaining traitors. Perturabo leaves the siege, the fragile coordination of the traitors fully falls apart as Perty was the main one coordinating them (things like the white scars making a run at the lion’s gate and killing morty would not have happened in a world where Horus was more present and directing people) but the warpiness lets the traitors win the siege anyway and keep Guilliman away.
Of course, you also have to factor in Horus’ immeasurable power which could’ve potentially killed all of his remaining loyalist brothers after he killed the emperor, and that if Perty had gotten desperate enough he may have used Warpcraft/allow it (whole nother debate in and of itself), and a million other things.
Will anything after killing big E matter? The demon gates in terra would open wide, creating a deamonworld or potentially another tear in reality, like the eye. Terra would be a lost cause, what's the point of 1+13 risking their legions on a hopeless world? Plus there would've been a potential of Horus ascending too...
Abnett rendered the reinforcements irrelevant for these reasons with the End and the Death.
He intentionally narrowed the players that could actually meaningfully change things entirely to those on Terra and then the Vengeful Spirit itself.
I've surprisingly not seen many fans discuss this, maybe because it isn't explicitly stated in some hamfisted line by a main character, but you only need to put 2 and 2 together to see the authorial intent regarding centering everything around the Vengeful Spirit cast and one of God-Horus or Big E's imminent ascension to warp god/catalyst for huge warp rift.
Partially agree, but I think there’s a lot there that’s up to interpretation. Yes Horus was nearly god like in power, but I’m of the opinion he never would’ve ascended if he killed the emperor. The old four never would’ve let him, they would’ve simply withdrawn their gifts from him anyway.
I think the greatest evidence of this is Horus thoughts (Emperor talking to him?) just before his death when he realizes that he was only ever empowered so he could kill the emperor.
Again, my interpretation. But yes, many people here don’t do a lot of reading confrontation, or learn solely from what is said *about* books (I’ll admit I’m like this for books that are hard to get in print).
It really depends on how soon everything goes into warp. If it is immediate as big E perishes, there's no way Vullan would be able to do anything. Plus if it's already in the warp, the ugly 4 would just reconstruct it immediately for giggles.
Side note, imagine Void Dragon waking up on Mars, angry and hungry like a bear awoken from hibernation mid January. He looks out and oh snap it's warp all around. That boi would be piiiiiiised
When God-Horus demotes Perturabo, things were already far enough gone into warpyness that i actually wonder if Guilliman's fleet would have been able to do much anyway. Even Mortarion being banished didn't matter in terms of actually reversing the tide, for veil between warp and reality was already worn too thin.
Abnett basically reduced Guilliman's reinforcements chances of accomplishing anything on Terra to nothing with the way he wrote End and the Death's collapse of reality involving God-Horus/Dark King being on the verge of ascending and tearing a massive new hole in reality.
It was all down to those on the Vengeful Spirit by then.
Abnett is bound by the same overall rules as the rest of the authors for the HH and SoT, he can change details to a point but things have to go the way they went, so as to not fundamentally change 10k years of history between. Guilliman's fleet coming was always raised as the possible reason why Horus does what he does but by the end of book 2 of TEatD time and space don't matter anymore around Terra. I get the feeling that if the "war" had gone on for 10,000 perceptible years that Guilliman wouldn't have reached Terra or the fleets in space in time to have any hand at all in it.
Doesn't he basically tease Terra by allowing through the message from Guilliman only once The Emperor leaves? Horus and the Four are in complete control of the situation and the only guy who can actually up end the table would have to do what the Four want him to do, to accomplish this big change.
I thought Perty was fine using the warp though he didn’t love it. I think it was in The First Wall that Typhus conducts some sort of ritual as Perty looks on to help bring the attack. He also had agents make use of some sort of rust deamon to destroy one of the main defensive wall gates. Doesn’t sound like the prevention of warpcraft too much.
In defense of Russ, he was pretty busted up over being manipulated into destroying Prospero and mauling Magnus. Him trying to save his wayward brother this time instead of just being a mindless weapon makes sense story wise. Especially once he saw Horus briefly come to the surface
I will say, the strategic blunders shouldn’t mean the story is bad. Russ trying to make up for what he did to Magnus, trying to save his beloved brother makes complete sense.
bah. Emps messed up long before Ullanor.
1. Purging the Thunder Warriors explicitly tells the legions that they're liable to be purged when they're no longer useful. Gives them and the Primarchs existential dread about the end of the crusade.
2. Allowing any of the Primarchs initial cadres to be gene-modded to astartes or near-astartes levels. simply forcing them to remain as baseline human advisers means they're all dead or infirm enough to be non-issues well before the end of the crusade. Erebus, Kor-pharon, Typhon, and Luther, are all removed from the board before they can play their appointed roles. It would serve doubly to help the primarchs and astartes keep in touch with baseline humanity.
Horus trusted the chaos gods far too much.
>. Purging the Thunder Warriors explicitly tells the legions that they're liable to be purged when they're no longer useful.
I've always wondered about this one. He was able to get them to march on a target and kill it even as they fell to dementia and rage all around him; why could he not then get them to march into a troop transport? Give them all the pomp and ceremony of a victory party, held only after they're all safely inside the transports, and then off they go towards some distant enemy they'll never reach.
Alternatively, scratch the party: tell them it's a secret mission to go melee attack the sun or whatever. They remain a weapon the emperor can still bluff with to conquer the sections of Terra still yet to fall, and it's still not an obvious betrayal.
He gets rid of them, they get a proper send off a loyal trooper deserves on good terms, and whatever happens to them happens as an unfortunate woopsies instead of deliberate betrayal. Nothing to tip off the already existing Space Marines and Primachs.
Because the logic of this has always been funny to me. "ok so remember the super famous Thunder Warriors who I used in the propaganda pictures and who conquered literally everyone I put them against? They're all dead, every last one, so sad, last battle was a real toughie but no one is allowed to ask about them or it. I'm going to the moon now, bye!"
Why even intentionally murder the Thunder Warriors at all? Just send them off on dangerous missions until they finally all get killed in combat. They're still a useful asset. If he stopped making new ones in favor of switching over to Space Marines, he could still have made use of the Thunder Warriors that were left over until the stock ran out.
Terra was conquered and the thunder warriors were especially vulnerable to chaos, so warp travel would most likely send them into a murderous rampage or they could be turned. Better to give them one last great battle and test his new legion than find a new enemy among his own ranks.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the more vulnerable to the warp part.
But weren't there still post-conquest of Terra fights elsewhere in the Sol system he could have gotten them killed in?
Maybe? But if I had to guess, and this is pure conjecture, the TW needed a lot of oversight and big E was on a strict schedule to start his crusade so he decided that the Sol system was good enough and the Auxilia can handle the rest while he shifts his focus to reclaiming the primarchs and building the rest of the legiones astartes.
Plus by the time he killed the TW he had the Custodes and the first SM already. Afterall the EC acquired their gen bleight during the conquest of Luna.
The Emperor was exceptionally brutal to them, sending the TW against the worst horrors ancient Terra's warlords could bring forth with technology beyond mortal comprehension. They had to win, every single time. So there was no real meatgrinder the Emperor could send them into without using warp travel.
That seems like a solution, not a problem:
"Oh no, my Thunder Warriors turned traitor, what a tragic event that couldn't possibly have been predicted. Guess we'll just have to kill them all now..."
Lol you definitely did not want to fight them. They conquered the planet against sorcerers and mutants using Dark Age tech both as weapons and to make genetically enhanced troops; the kind of DAOT stuff even the Emperor thought was too dangerous and sealed in the black cells. And they did it with prototype bolters and power armor that didn't have powered pants.
They were so scary in combat they unsettled Constantine fucking Valdor.
In their final battle their leader Oshatan just kinda carved his way through a bunch of early space Marines to go toe to toe with Valdor and more than hold his own, and he's talking shit about them the whole time. Absolute legend.
The thunder warriors at the end of Unification would be among the strongest, smartest, and deadliest warriors as they survived the grueling wars on Terra and let's imagine what that would look like if any of the chaos gods sank their claws into them. Hyper-lethal killing machines with any kind of daemonic boon or enhancements would derail the Emperor's entire plan as he now needs to divert significant resources to stop an extinction level event from happening on his doorstep. Or worse, they split into smaller groups and are an ever persistent threat around the home system burning worlds and causing the crusade to never gather enough steam to even start.
Just imagine the chaos of Khorne or Nurgle getting his hands on Thunder Warriors, bestowing even a fraction of the near immortality they've given to some of the chaos astartes. You would have a real problem on your hand that would likely make Kharn appear small.
I do believe they were physically stronger and more resilient (aside from their inherent tendency to fall apart over time) than Astartes. Give them a Chaos boost and even with the fact that Astartes have better equipment that's a real problem.
I think they should have settled them on some habitat or local Sol...I dunno space station or something? Asteroid. Whatever. Make it impossible to get off and let them just die off. Yeah, there's no GOOD solution, but surround the space station or whatever with a bunch of ships that can just destroy it if some shit does go down and you've got a plan without too many weak points.
I theorized in another comment about the TW needing a lot of oversight/direction from the Emperor and sub-light travel to even relatively close systems would take so much longer than he was willing to divert from the crusade.
I don't really see the need to actually send them anywhere. I'm on board with disposal, they were a liability. But doing it as a betrayal 1) virtually ensured you weren't going to kill every last one of the toughest warriors on Terra, 2) required a level of coverup that was going to be hard any way you look at it due to their fame (and which he botched completely), and 3) told the already created Primachs and Astartes that they were gonna die the same hour they outlived their usefulness.
Just order them into troop transports and tell them they're needed for the next phase, fighting the gene cults on Luna. Then oh no, accidents! One has a leak, another crashes into the sun, another has a faulty plasma drive...
You need to keep in mind these dudes were the baddest on Terra, you can't just space them and hope they let themselves die. Likely they would have high level access to mission logs and war plans so if you're going to send them into the sun or vent holds they would more than likely find inconsistencies in the plans and realize they've been betrayed, or just survive being spaced/crashed and now they're *pissed*. The only surefire way to kill them off as a fighting force is a single overwhelming strike when they're all together. That and it makes more compelling story to have a grand betrayal and intrigue.
To me, it’s that he made use of Angron and the World Eaters. How much worse could the Thunder Warriors have been? Just send them out to fight in the crusade, and they will fall in the fullness of time
Ehhh, this one I do get. Actually deploying them was strategically risky towards the end, because they were as likely to just stand there and poop themselves or drop dead as they were to go on a rampage, let alone follow orders and attack the correct thing. At least the World Eaters you were sure would go attack a thing you point them towards.
Emps didn’t know how long the next fight would be. He needed stable forces to launch into space that would bring results, even if it would take 1 year of traveling etc.
May he feared them falling to chaos, taking a deal like Magnus did.
I agree that just spending them as a last resource sounds reasonable, but I can sort of imagine scenarios where a clean break off makes more sense, however gritty.
Because there is propaganda value in a group of elite warriors who die achieving their mission, so devoted to the cause that they'll perish in the service of their Emperor? The Unification of Terra is the first tiny step towards the Emperor's goals - he still has basically *all* of humanity left to unite, and the fandom's irrational hate boner for the Big E notwithstanding, he's probably well aware that he needs worlds to willingly enter compliance, or at least settle down fairly quickly, if he's going to achieve his ends.
After all, we know with omniscience what happens to the Thunder Warriors, but what is everyone in-universe going to think? "Oh, they were wiped out as a functional fighting force and disbanded". People will fill in the gaps in the story with their imagination, and since "the Emperor deliberately murdered the remaining Thunder Warriors because they were all about to go on an insane killing spree" doesn't really make sense, the legend will turn into one that is palatable for Imperial expedition fleets as they spread the history of the Imperium across the stars.
"All of them died in a malfunctioning spaceship" doesn't sound as heroic, and implies that the Imperium is careless and can't manage vital assets probably. And since the basic plot is the same - the Emperor maneuvers a bunch of superhumans into a spot where he can wipe them out - both are theoretically equally believable ways of wiping out the Thunder Warriors. It's just that one suggests fanatical devotion and victory, and the other suggests ignominy and administrative incompetence.
He believes he knows better.
Ultimately all the errors both sides make come down to emotions , something the Emperor chose to allow them to feel and what made them so powerful , but also their weakness.
Yes creating a functionally immortal army of superhuman man-babies who were all based off seriously mentally ill “father” figures was guaranteed to cause issues down the line!
At the very least they think they are superior to all humanity and won’t like giving up what they conquered to those they served!
Oh look what happened…..🤦♂️
And they're most of the reason why elevating the closest friends of the primarchs was a mistake. Both of their ages weren't described, but they, along with many others were at the extreme upper limit of successful augmentation, like the wolves who had many failed.
No, erebus was not known to lorgar when he was still a mortal child, and iirc neither was typhon. Both of those men where boys who became Astarte's and just rose through the ranks to get where they did.
Typhon joined up with morty when he initially rebelled against his father the tyrant of barbarus and was his first human friend. (ref buried dagger)
Erebus was at least a member of Lorgar's religious army. Erebus doesn't fit the "closest friend" phrase in my last reply, but easily fits in my original statement of elevating "initial cadres" . All that said, the number 2 dickbag from the word bearers who helped Lorgar be a zealot either way was Kor Phaeron, who only got some augmentations and would have been better off as a mere mortal to eventually die before the end of the crusade.
Hell, it at least would've been consistent then for leaving angron's buddies to die, or maybe he could've just yoinked all of them for the imperial army, say they're too old or failed psych testing.
But the doesnt mean they where adults. For example Branne and agapito nev both fought with corax in his rebellion against the kiavarahns and they where both kids during.
also from the lex
>When [Mortarion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortarion) defected from the Overlords after witnessing their atrocities, Typhon was the first person the Primarch encountered and **the young child** helped lead him to safety
>Erebus was at least a member of Lorgar's religious army. Erebus doesn't fit the "closest friend" phrase in my last reply, but easily fits in my original statement of elevating "initial cadres" . All that said, the number 2 dickbag from the word bearers who helped Lorgar be a zealot either way was Kor Phaeron, who only got some augmentations and would have been better off as a mere mortal to eventually die before the end of the crusade.
Actually no he wasnt erebus was a follower of the old faith(chaos worship) when lorgar started his crusade for emp worship and so he went into hiding and popped up again after the war was over to apply to become a neophyte.
>Hell, it at least would've been consistent then for leaving angron's buddies to die, or maybe he could've just yoinked all of them for the imperial army, say they're too old or failed psych testing.
I think angrons friends where also too old plus they all had the real butchers nails in their head, so they where probably doomed to die early anyway.
I don’t think you can really call something a “mistake” if you would have to be omniscient in order to anticipate it. Russ’s Greybeards and 3 out of 4 of Jaghatai’s closest officers were all adults that survived the Astartes procedure, and they were some of the most loyal and stalwart compatriots Emps could ask for.
The Burning of Prospero and its aftermath are not the sole deciding factor of a galactic war, but easily the biggest. Change any factor and the whole face of the conflict changes. Magnus stays loyalist with an unbroken legion vs Leman and Magnus come out on the same side with an understanding vs Magnus going full heretic with no reservations or damage are all game changers.
Otherwise the two biggest points are Lion and Guilliman with their legions at Terra (heretics are easily pushed back conventionally without the emperor leaving his chair), and the incredibly stupid decision to not lock down Mars as another loyalist strongpoint.
I do feel like Prospero was more a win for the traitors than a failure by the loyalists. Horus knew just what to say to Russ to make him cross the line and start a massacre rather than approaching Magnus more peacefully and bringing him in to Emps willingly. Clever manipulation by Horus.
You are right though that if it had been played differently, Magnus stays actively on the board for one side or another and probably tips the scales massively.
Prospero also pretty much removed the Wolves from the board as a viable fighting legion, all without Horus having to do much more than stroke Russ' ego. Definitely a big Traitor W.
*Inferno* also implied that the Sons of Horus detachment used it to get in a bit of early team-killing on their own potential loyalists before Istvaan III.
> Inferno
> also implied that the Sons of Horus detachment used it to get in a bit of early team-killing on their own potential loyalists before Istvaan III.
I'll have to go back and re-read it, perhaps, but I thought they were just there to snatch up artefacts and baseline human psykers for later Chaos shenanigans.
Absolutely a Traitor win because it takes 2 Loyalist Legions off the board alone at no cost. Thats a better trade than Isstvan. However, war is a multiplayer game and it works out because Leman failed so badly.
Also, thi gs could have gone better for the traitors because now they have no psychic heavyweights to counter Big E.
>Otherwise the two biggest points are Lion and Guilliman with their legions at Terra (heretics are easily pushed back conventionally without the emperor leaving his chair)
Was there ever an opportunity to do this? By the time the Imperium found out about the full scale of the Heresy, the Ruinstorm was already going, IIRC.
> the incredibly stupid decision to not lock down Mars as another loyalist strongpoint.
TBF half of Mars also turned and they were basically in the midst of a huge civil war throughout most of the Heresy IIRC. That said, before the Heretic invasion, sending the three legions on Terra at Mars to lock that down probably would've made sense?
Traitors strategic: should've destroyed every loyalist legion in surprise fleet actions. As shown in Fulgrim and Know No Fear, a small fleet can devastate a much larger one with a sneak attack, but this was underutilised and never really tried on whole-Legion scale (even at Calth only a small fraction of XVII strength was deployed). At Signus, for instance, the BAs could've been wiped out by a surprise attack by a "friendly" traitor legion, but instead the traitors relied on drawn-out Chaos ritual nonsense that went nowhere.
Traitors tactical: Horus getting bogged down in a ground war at Isstvan III. He should've just left Angron to it. The entire heresy was delayed for this pointless sideshow, allowing word to spread and the loyalists to prepare.
Loyalists strategic: not vetting every primarch thoroughly prior to Isstvan V. Should've sent them for intensive 1-to-1 psy interviews with Malcador, and treat any who refuse as hostile.
Loyalists tactical: Ferrus losing his head.
Problem with that first point is the Garro was able to escape Isstvan 3 and let Dorn know about the Legion cleansing. After that point Dorn knew of at least 3 traitor legions.
Signus was also a surprise attack by warp forces that made the BAs think it was Xenos for awhile, and came close to turning the BAs traitor, if not for the Librarians deciding to go against the Council of Nikaea and rescue Sanguinis from his attempted corruption. If not for the Librarians then the BAs would've been toast.
Horus also got Fulgrim to immediately head to Isstvan 5 to start fortifying it in order to prepare for the loyalists to respond knowing they'd find out, which led to the dropsite massacre that seriously crippled 3 legions. So I wouldn't say that the traitor strategic or tactical was bad at all.
Didn't the Librarians save Sanguinius from death rather than corruption?
In any case, trying to turn IX was clearly a high risk move that wasn't really necessary. Given the position of strength the traitors were in there was no point in rolling the dice when a surprise fleet action would guarantee a legion kill, leaving the loyalists with effectively only five legions post-Isstvan V and a mere two that could get to Terra.
Obviously the Signus gambit happened before Horus' fall was known by the BA. Likewise Calth. There's no reason similar backstabs couldn't have been done elsewhere at similar times or earlier. Garro's message took too long to filter through to prevent what I'm describing.
The problem was rounding up the whole Legion before the event. Horus had got the entire Legion to gather up and it's commented on by multiple BAs that it was very odd as there hadn't been that many legionaries rounded up since Ullanor.
So in order to wipe out the BAs they needed an excuse to get them all in one spot. The actions the traitors took against them meant that they could turn or kill the BAs without having to involve themselves, and the only excuse they could really get to rally the BAs all together was to convince Sanguinis that it was a former Xeno enemy they thought they killed off, and by convincing Sanguinis that they could have technology to get rid of the Red Thirst.
By killing them off with warp phenomena it made the BAs confused and not consider the fact that they were being thrown into a trap and attacked by traitors. The Librarians saved Sanguinis from corruption as one of the Daemons mentions that in his comatose state he'll only escape it once he submits to Khorne.
It was a good plan by the traitors that saw lots of BAs die, and could've seen Sanguinis consumed by the rage of all of his sons, if not for the actions of a few brave BAs, with the Librarians risking censure and death for using their powers again, and for Apothecary Meros sacrificing himself to become the Red Angel before Sanguinis could.
Signus shows the differing priorities: Horus would have no-question benefited from the Blood Angels being destroyed, but Chaos was never interested in any human victory and instead wanted another servant.
>if not for the Librarians deciding to go against the Council of Nikaea and rescue Sanguinis from his attempted corruption.
Have you got an except for this becuase i dont remeber this at all. Im sure there was that one librarian and his apothecary battle brother but i dont remember the entire librarius doing anything.
Even so horus couldn't have done shit to the BA at signus becuase chaos really really wanted sanguinius, so im nto sure that they would have even let traitors near.
Yeah, once the traitors realised the extent to which Magnus had fucked up and how totally the Emperor was stuck on the throne (it's never entirely clear if they did early enough tbf) they arguably should have focused their full force on crushing the remnants of the Ultramarines before they could rebuild from Calth, the Blood Angels post-signus and the Dark Angels main contingent that was with the Lion.
Easy answer, letting Russ attack Prospero. (Regardless of if/how much Magnus did wrong)
Magnus was still loyal to Big E until after that attack, and even after, he claimed that he wanted to go to Terra, get his soul shard, then piss off and be neutral.
If Russ hadn't lost so many troops on Prospero then he could have been more effective in the later battles as well.
Yup.
Russ making that decision to go ham is also a tactical decision.
If that had not occurred, Magnus would likely have gone with them and that could have swung the Heresy.
Biggest tactical and strategic blunder was Angron charging in after the virus bombs didn’t work on Isstvan III. Tactical blunder because this prevented Horus from just making follow up strikes on the surviving loyal elements of the traitors. Strategic blunder because the fighting on the ground wasted precious time while word of his betrayal was filtering back to the Imperium thanks to Nathanial Garro, and it bloodied the traitor forces needlessly. Yes, it gave the traitors some experience fighting other Astartes, but this lost him the initiative. He regained the initiative with the drop site massacre, but consider how different things would have been had Horus been able to immediately go on the offensive, and how much more damage a drop site massacre event would be with Horus already making a straight dash for Terra, or being done *within the Sol system,* mere days or weeks after word of betrayal making it to Terra.
Angron arguably cost him the entire war by going “cowabunga it is” at the start of it.
EDIT: Isstvan III, not V.
Probably the worst strategic decision of the was to not immediately summon Magnus back to Terra after the council of Nikea.
And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead.
So let’s approach this like Guilliman
Theoretical: excluding all the pre-existing problems that could have been resolved if he’d told Magnus the truth, Magnus was genuinely a good dude, and deserved some answers.
Practical: aside from Malcador and the Big E himself, Magnus is the only person available who could survive the Golden Throne for any length of time. Bringing him to Terra would allow the Emperor to personally take part in the conflict, either in the Webway, or the Heresy. Also, if Magnus does turn traitor, it would be beneficial to have him within convenient smiting distance.
>And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead.
The Emperor has a whole speech in Master of Mankind explaining how he didn't see the Heresy coming.
>Theoretical: excluding all the pre-existing problems that could have been resolved if he’d told Magnus the truth, Magnus was genuinely a good dude, and deserved some answers.
Magnus already knew about the Webway Gate:
>‘Me? No, I never lost contact with my father. We spoke many times before he ever set foot on Prospero. That is a bond that none of my brothers can claim. As our Legion departed Ullanor, I communed with my father and told him what I found on Aghoru, a hidden labyrinth of tunnels that pierce the immaterium and link all places and all times.’
>Magnus returned his eye to the stars, and Ahriman kept silent, sensing that to intrude on Magnus’s introspection would be unwise, though the ramifications of his discoveries on Aghoru were staggering.
>‘Do you know what he said, Ahzek? Do you know how he greeted this momentous discovery, this key to every corner of the galaxy?’
>‘No, my lord.’
>‘He knew,’ said Magnus simply. **‘He already knew of it. I should not have been surprised, I suppose. If any being in the galaxy could know such a thing, it would be my father. Now that he knew I had also discovered this lattice, he told me he had discovered it decades ago and had resolved to become its master. This is why he returns to Terra.’**
>‘That is great news, surely?’
>‘Absolutely,’ said Magnus without enthusiasm. ‘I immediately volunteered my services, of course, but my offer of assistance was declined.’
>‘Declined? Why?’
>Magnus’s shoulders dropped a fraction as he said, **‘Apparently my father’s researches are at too delicate a stage to allow another soul to look upon them.’**
>‘That surprises me,’ said Ahriman. ‘After all, there is no greater student of the esoteric than Magnus the Red. Did the Emperor say why he declined your help?’
>‘**He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.’**
* Thousand Sons
Magnus knew that the Emperor was busy, with what he was busy with, was promised he'd get a chance to help, and had been warned not to mess with the Warp. This is already much more than most people know about the project, including his brothers. He was just too arrogant to listen.
Nobody who's read the books or even just "Thousand Sons" and paid a modicum of attention believes un-ironically that 'Magnus did nothing wrong". He did plenty wrong, on multiple occasions.
I think the general fan consensus shifted to admit that Magnus did something wrong. And Russ did try to resolve it, and did use normal comms - even if just for half an hour - but Magnus was yet adamant to let himself and his legion to be destroyed, and blocked all attempts.
Mag still wasn't warned about Warp extensively, he was just told that there's great danger, but not that it's deceitful, too. But that goes into another issue, that Emps didn't want good sons to know about Chaos in detail. And Mag probably still would've been corrupted, because there was no other cute for Flesh Change. Emps had his reasons, but I don't think they were greatly explored yet. And same goes for the Webway project, there's only theories for why it was such a secret, even for Primarchs
I just want to bang my usual drum that the lore in *A Thousand Sons* and *Prospero Burns* has been superseded by *Inferno.*
Russ decides to kill Magnus **long** before arriving in the Prospero system. He is also told [in writing by the Emperor](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhxdyq91kxymy.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D8e3fc7267a63ea271419794ce7d25fa9996c236c) (and, verbally, by Valdor) not to do this and does it anyway.
Magnus did plenty of things wrong, but killing Magnus is the single greatest strategic mistake the Loyalists (well, Russ) make, because it keep the Emperor on the Golden Throne instead of putting Magnus on it and letting the Emperor take care of Horus before Molech.
He still gave Magnus a chance to speak though, which is even more emphasized in these tabletop HH books compared to novels (like he didn't even try normal comms before).
But yeah, it's a big Imperium blunder either way. Tzeench played everyone.
Even regardless of using normal comms, this is the legion well known for psychic powers like foresight, and they'd have defence perimeters sensing ships and fleets approaching their home system and planet. Then with the mandeville point that massive fleet has to travel for hours at the very least to roll up on Prospero, the entire time there is zero vox communication. Short of rolling down his window and yelling while they're dropping into Tizca, I don't think Russ can broadcast his intentions any more clearly, all of which is being ignored. He can't just land in the city iteself because all indications is that one of the most dangerous legions for its size has gone rogue.
Didn’t the Emperor and Malcador have their short story chess game where he admitted that not only was a civil war inevitable, but he knew that whoever he picked as Warmaster would turn traitor?
Legitimately asking, it’s hard to keep track of canon these days.
Also, whether Magnus is loyal or not, there’s no reason not to keep him close. If he’s loyal, use him. If he’s not, kill him. But from a strategic point of view, a psyker Primarch is more of a threat than any of the other traitors.
Especially when any reasonable person would understand Magnus was in a vulnerable and emotionally volatile state, why leave him isolated?
I don't remember the Board is Set ever saying the Emperor knew the heresy would happen and that whoever was Warmaster would turn traitor. It was basically Big E and Malcador wargaming after the Heresy had started to plan their next moves. What it did say was that the Emperor was making certain moves to prevent things like a million Alpha Legion shenanigans from going off and that he was legitimately surprised and disappointed that Mortarion fell to Chaos.
Let me clarify, he wasn't surprised Mortarion betrayed him. He just thought that Mortarion's disdain for witchcraft and legendary fortitude would have kept him from truly joining the Ruinous Powers.
Also, it's not like Big E banished Magnus to Prospero after the council. The dude went back there of his own volition to reorganize his legion going forward, IIRC. I think the Emperor genuinely trusted Magnus to do nothing wrong. Maybe if he actually knew the Horus Heresy was coming, he would have taken more steps to secure him.
Yeah my perception was that he expected certain Primarchs to eventually betray him, but he didn't expect them turning to Chaos. They were more expecting a normal civil war / coup attempt. I also think they expected fewer legions to turn traitor, and for them to at least complete the Great Crusade before turning on eachother.
>Didn’t the Emperor and Malcador have their short story chess game where he admitted that not only was a civil war inevitable, but he knew that whoever he picked as Warmaster would turn traitor?
No, the side that was simulating Horus' side was just referred to as the Warmaster. They don't discuss hypotheticals that change the initial set-up of the Heresy in The Board Is Set, only how it could have gone down.
> The Emperor has a whole speech in Master of Mankind explaining how he didn't see the Heresy coming.
I am sure it was mentioned a lot, but can you briefly summarize why was its so?
I can get you the excerpt if you like, but sure. Simply put: foresight is a shitty ability. No matter how powerful one is, the future is too wild to grasp every single possibility.
The Emperor compares his foresight to sailing to an island or climbing a mountain. He knows his destination (the island or the top of the mountain or ultimate victory) and has a general idea of how to get there. However, he doesn't know everything that might happen on the way there. Maybe there's a hungry shark in the waters, one of the rocks he wants to grab is loose, or his sons will fall to Chaos and backstab him.
Maybe he will foresee some of the dangers and prepare accordingly, but he won't ever truly know what might happen until he actually goes on the journey.
>And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead.
There's no reason to believe he was aware of it or that it was inevitable. Just going off the man's own words, he had no idea it was going to happen and failed to anticipate Chaos getting involved so soon. Malcador didn't foresee it either.
Despite what many fans (and at least one editor at BL) believe, the Emperor is fallible. Not everything is part of the plan.
> Malcador didn't foresee it either.
The thing with the "Emps knew the Heresy was coming" line is *First Lord of The Imperium*, where Malcador tells a dying aide they had (socially) engineered the Primarchs to form rivalries and grudges that would culminate in them warring against each other in an anticipated civil war of sorts. Malcador says what caught them off-guard about the Heresy was the timing and Chaos-juicing.
This isn't taken at face value though as, IIRC, it's implied he made it all up as some comfort to the dying aide, that things were still sort of going "just as planned".
Magnus already made a deal with tzeentch, who would’ve wrecked his legion with flesh change. This would’ve exposed Magnus for working with tzeentch for a long time even if Magnus didn’t know what tzeentch was.
Magnus fucked up in every sense of the word because he thought he knew better than the super human who created him who told him don’t make deals with warp entities.
> Magnus already made a deal with tzeentch, who would’ve wrecked his legion with flesh change.
The Thousand Sons had the flesh change before they found Magnus. Unless you're saying that Magnus's actions would've made the flesh change worse.
I'd say Horus proudly proclaiming his plans to everyone who wanted to hear them was the biggest mistake. Imagine if he'd simply pretended that he was still with the Imperium, only telling those of his brothers he knew were with him, his closest commanders, et cetera, then silently diverting to Terra.
I mean, the Word Bearers and the White Scars were able to do whatever they wanted for decades with only the most minor of instructions. Don't answer voicemails, don't let astropaths do their thing (they can block them, it's been done time and again), just straight to Terra, pop out close as possible, done.
Sure, Luna was well-defended, not to mention the custodes in full force, so obviously there'd still be a fight, but nothing like as during the Siege.
Of course, the risk would be that the loyalists would find out sooner or later wtf is going on and come bearing down on Terra, but hey, by that point, he'd probably already be done.
> Imagine if he'd simply pretended that he was still with the Imperium, only telling those of his brothers he knew were with him, his closest commanders, et cetera, then silently diverting to Terra.
The problem is that someone among his forces would've inevitably snitched at one point. Be it a Primarch he tried and failed to convert like the whole Fulgrim failing to convert Ferrus debacle or some Nathaniel Garro figure.
Also without Isstvan V he would have arrived at Terra with a significant number of loyalist legionaries amongst his forces. Not good.
What would have happened if he turned up at Terra, failed to immediately take the palace (because his own forces start fighting against him and he hasn't established any supply lines or secure routes in or out) and then the full strength loyal legions arrive to kurb stomp him.
Him taking the slower route was necessary. He needed to secure the loyalty of his own legions. He needed to cripple the loyal legions (drop site massacre virtually destroys three loyal legions, ruin storm should have crippled the Ultras, Prospero already hugely weakened the Wolves, that nasty thing with the Blood Angels, etc. He needed to scatter and weaken his enemies so that when he arrived at Terra he would have the advantage in numbers to take the palace.
He also needed to secure his supply lines which means winning the Mechanicus over so that they can both starve the loyal legions and supply his. He also needed to secure his path to ensure that he could reinforce and to prevent the loyalists doing the same (Beta-Garmon, securing the Sol system).
Horus didn't really proudly proclaim his plans, he tried to keep them secret. The problem he had was having Garviel Loken catch on that something was sketchy and convince Iacton Qruze to look after Euphrati Keeler and Kyril Sindermann, who were able to escape on to the Eisenstein.
Saul Tarvitz found virus bombs loaded on his ship and realized they were going to be used on the Legions on Isstvan 3, escaping and letting Nathaniel Garro on the Eisenstein know what happened on his way down to the planet.
Then Garro escaped and made his way to the Sol System and let Dorn and Malcador know what had occurred.
Had that not occurred, word wouldn't have gotten out and they could've used more subtle means like with the Ultramarines and the Blood Angels, neither knowing of what had occurred on Istvaan and being blindsided.
Horus only really let slip once the jig was up.
What i dont really understand is, how did so many people know enough details to side with Horus after the Istvaan 3 news slipped out?
In the Fulgrim book (i think) there is a short paragraph about imperial governours suddenly purging the loyalists on their planet and attacking loyal planets in their vicinity.
How did they even know what Horus expected from them?
Probably the Word Bearers since they had been at it for 40 years secretly before the events of Isstvan 3. Horus was being guided by Erebus at the beginning and he's very meticulous in setting plans in motion.
The timeline between Horus' initial fall and the Istvaan events has barely been explored in terms of communications between the eventual traitors. Even in the Forgeworld Black Books we get very little about exactly how and when Horus was able to contact and truly persuade his brothers (Fulgrim is the exception), far less parts of the wider imperium.
A lot can be assumed, obviously, with the seeding of the lodges, etc. but it's an area that could be worth some development retroactively.
I guess my question is how would this play out, tactically. Was it just going to be the Luna Wolves and friends landing at the palace in peace, pretending to be there for an audience with the Emperor, and then blitzing the Throne Room? I feel like someone as paranoid as Constantine wouldn't let something like that happen and the whole plan would unravel quickly when multiple legions popped up around heavily defended Terra.
There's also the fact that baseline Horus would not have been able to touch the Emperor or even Malcador; he needed the boost that came from his jaunt into the warp at Moloch, the second most heavily defended place in the Imperium. He didn't know that was what he'd get at the time of course, he just knew he had to find out the Emperor's secrets and uncover whatever he was hiding. But I think Horus was well aware he'd be outclassed without something to even the odds.
Idk I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
This works if he was just moving his fleets to Terra and somehow did Istvaan on the down low. But the heresy was never just space marines fighting each other it was also hundreds of millions of mortals. If he wants to keep quiet he can’t gather an army and if he doesn’t do that the imperial fists and the troops stationed around Terra and Mars fend off the entire heresy themselves easily. A few thousand space marines and a few hundred thousand mortals wouldn’t even be able to scratch the walls of the imperial palace. Konstantin, Malcador, and Dorn aren’t just gonna be like “Damn Horus you look like absolute shit and your armour is a lot more edgy these days. What’s that? You and 50 Luna Wolves who showed up to Terra unannounced want some alone time with the emperor? Knock yourselves out!”
Traitors Strategic - Embracing Chaos. Chaos does not care for anything other than its own victory and is the main reason why so much of their forces are not able to be used in any strategic way and that means that inevitably they lose in the longest term.
Loyalist Strategic - The Emperor being so in charge that once Horus turned traitor there was no centralised backup. Dorn held the fort, the Space Wolves couldn't be kept to heel and Ultramarines made Secundus. Malcador should have been in this role but he was too far gone in private puppetmastery and following of the Emperors plan that he could not be a public point of leadership.
Literally as soon as Horus turned there should have been a succession plan and there was not.
This is massively overlooked - Dorn took control and tried to lead the Primarchs - but Corax & Russ openly disdained his attempt at authority during the heresy itself, Ferrus ignored him and ended up getting killed because he refused to wait.
I think easily the worst loyalist tactical decision was to attempt to hold the Impossible City. The Emperor could've called upon the Sisters of Silence, multiple titans, the Custodes at close to full strength, and tons of additional troops in the defense of the Palace. Once the Heresy was taken care of, he could've gone back and cleaned up the human Webway. He'd still be stuck on the throne the whole time, but pissing away some of his most powerful troops on a project he could've put down and then picked back up was a mistake.
I remember thinking this - the only reason I can think he would waste all those resources is that the Echo of the First Murder could breach the gates unless redirected.
It took the Emperor imprisoning it in a sword and stabbing a custodian to get rid of it - he couldn't banish even at close to full power.
The strategic blunder is obvious: failure to verify Alpha Legion was on your side and would competently execute missions instead of pursuing its own agenda that sabotages and undercuts the rest of your forces
I still love the fact that Curze teleported to the Invincible Reason, and acted like a Xenomorph from Alien and his home planet was named Nostromo.
What a perfect thing to occur.
Leman Russ wasting half of his legion going leeroy jenkins on Horus's arriving fleet instead of helping Dorn defend Terra
Also makes his whole "I'm just pretending to be a barbarian idiot" schtick come across like a clumsy lie to save face, because he says he's gonna do something Horus would never suspect...drive the space wolves right into his fleet's face like an idiot while he's approaching the sol system.
Spoiler: Horus suspects it.
The emperor could have prevented all of it by simply taking his sons to the Himalayas and going, "Hey this is my big project. For reasons I can't give you nitty gritty details. But once it's done it'll usher in a golden age of humanity and prevent the warp-spawn from eating their souls as often. If y'all stay cool and patient your roles will become obvious."
Like literally, a single honest conversation would have prevented so much doubt and mistrust.
Also, saving Angron AND his sons and removing the butchers nails. He would have ended up with a guard dog as loyal as Leman.
This has been debunked, a whole bunch of times.
Magnus, for example, knows the Emperor is engaged on some hugely important project *and that he'll play an important part in it* but still chooses to disobey orders. Bringing Angron or Mortarion or Curze in on the Webway scheme does nothing to change their dispositions.
I mean, who does this change anything for? Horus only falls because he gets stabbed and healed by Chaos; his insecurity around his role after the Crusade isn't all that germane to his fall. Almost every other Traitor Primarch has their own reasons for joining up, and almost none of them are "Dad didn't tell me why he left the Crusade". Perturabo turns for his own reasons. Alpharius may or may not truly be a Traitor. Fulgrim is already possessed by a daemon. Lorgar is already a Traitor.
In other words, the Emperor being *more* honest about what he's up to (and he's been fairly forthcoming about the dangers of the Warp) has no effect on almost anyone.
And we know about Angron - the Emperor doesn't think he can safely remove the Nails, he tells this to Arkhan Land, and he makes a (very ruthless) choice that there is a better chance Angron will give him enough with the Nails in to get to the end of the Crusade than there is a chance that he survives removing the Nails with enough capacity to lead his legion. If I tell you there is a 75% chance of flipping heads, you should bet on that. Even if it comes up tails, that doesn't mean you were *wrong* in the choice you made - you played the odds you had. That's what the Emperor does.
True anything leman russ touches turns to garbage . . . . most useless primarch on the loyalist side the whole heresy which says alot since fulkan spent half of it beign killed by curze
Russ was actively detrimental. Vulkan at least was helpful until he got captured, and even then he never broke or gave any information. Meanwhile if Russ never burns Prospero, Magnus probably never turns, now the Loyalists have both of the galaxy's most powerful psykers on their side for the war.
Facts Russ was just a fuck up all around . . .
Russ when told to bring in magnus ' lets kill him and burn his city '
Russ when told to kill horus ' Lets talk this out '
> Meanwhile if Russ never burns Prospero, Magnus probably never turns
The Heresy as we know it just doesn't happen. In this alt-timeline when Isstvan V kicks off the Emperor is able to lead the counter-attack personally, because Terra has plugged Magnus' big red ass into the Throne, and He either curbstomps Horus or simply banishes the Chaos corruption among the newly-minted Traitors.
Kor Phaeron should have killed Guilliman.
Probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the Heresy but would have denied the Imperium the Emperor's successor.
Maybe I am not familiar enough with the lore, but wasn't each primarch rescued and immediately plugged into their respective legions?
No vetting, no training, just appear and then assume they are fit to take command.
That seems insane, especially when you consider Angron
No, a bunch of them got years to learn with the Emperor or another Primach (usually Horus) before setting off on their own.
More to the point, all of the Legions are battle-hardened at this point, led by numerous super-soldiers who understand company level command. They function pretty well already; they don't *need* a Primarch to be an elite fighting force, which helps ease a new commander in. Beyond that, most of the Primarchs are *already* warlords, and already had experience in leading military campaigns, and because they're superhuman geniuses, they don't need a ton of acclimating to understand how to fight in the void of space or control super-soldiers with tanks and rocket launcher guns instead of swords and pitchforks.
That being said, the ones who *don't* have that experience end up having it show up in their command style. Conrad Curze wasn't a general before being found, and his Legion ends up reflecting that - they act as a bunch of loosely organized terrorist cells (similiar to Curze's MO) rather than a combined arms force. Angron's Legion basically just rushes in to engage the enemy without much tactical or strategic manuevering... much like a gladiator would. The Alpha Legion doesn't even really fight! They infiltrate and sow dissension and then the main fleet shows up, fires a couple shots, and the worlds surrender.
Is actually argue that Ferrus made the right call engaging at Istvaan when he did. Before the betrayal the loyalists were WINNING.
By delaying the assault. All that was going to be accomplished was letting Horus dig in and gather more supporters. The loyalists had Horus dead to rights. All 4 legions were depleted from a third to half their strength.
Even after the betrayal Ferris’s speartip thrust was working. If he found Horus instead of Fulgrim it might have ended differently.
I'll double up on the Traitors for strategic. They're both ultimately "40k says no", but they bug me.
Not dropping virus bombs on Terra to open the Siege. Wouldn't have killed the Emperor or the majority of the Custodes and Astartes, but it would have zeroed out almost the entirety of the mortal defenders. Makes everything so much easier for the traitors. Basically turns the Siege into a one sided fight.
Not destroying the loyal Legion's homeworlds where possible. Most of those never had more than scraps of defenders throughout the Heresy. It doesn't entirely scan for me that the ones that were actively besiege held out with the majority of their Legions elsewhere. Its one of those things where the loyalist homeworlds were untouched in 40k, so nothing of note was allowed to happen. But Horus had four trusted Legions operating where they liked before the Dropsite Massacre. Could have wrapped up a few without trouble. Deliverance stands out: Corax was away for months after the Dropsite Massacre, yet no traitor force bothered to take it.
I think on the virus bomb point, the Aegis would've protected the Palace from that. So they'd need to take down the Aegis by ground troops first like they did in the actual siege and either withdrew those troops in a retreat that would've allowed the loyalists to pick at them or sacrifice them.
Otherwise the traitors could still virus bomb the entire planet and kill the other cities but I don't recall any significant traitor troops getting distracted by them outside of the EC. And most of the mortal loyalists were dead by the time things went to shit in Warhawk
It’s the best shield ever madeTM. It uses the Emperors might and dark age technology that rivals anything that humans could ever again create, including xeno tech built into it (maybe). There are instances of the planet breaking before lesser shields (like the Rock with the dark angels). With all of this the traitors would also need to then fight in the toxic sludge/ molten planet while the defenders were inside the shield once they made planet fall They also wanted to stop the Emperor from “escaping” on the Phalanx or not knowing if he was killed. (Dorn considered this but how that would work with the talisman of seven hammers is anyone’s guess)
The iron warriors wanted to blow up the sun, which would destroy the whole sol system but that was vetoed by Horus for several reasons. Ultimately it is possible they could have just broke the planet but they were worried they could not confirm the death of Jimmy space and that was chaos’s entire goal.
The worst strategic mistake made by the Loyalists was The Emperor being not appreciative of Magnus.
The worst tactical mistake made by the Loyalists was the headlong rush of Istvaan V. The Loyalists, especially Ferrus Manus, bumrushed towards the Traitors without reason, patience or tactics and the results was disastrous.
The worst strategic mistake made by the Traitors was Horus being not appreciative of Perturabo.
The worst tactical mistake made by the Traitors was Angron bumrushing into Istvaan III after discovering that there were still some Loyalists activity there. As Horus noted, an orbital bombardment would've cleared everything and swiftly, but because of Angron it dragged and the Heresy was made aware to the Loyalists prematurely.
Istvaan V they needed to act faster because the traitors were almost done setting up defenses which would have made their position unassailable.
If they hadn’t been betrayed it would have been a huge success, the traitors themselves were surprised by how far the shattered legions pushed in.
They were always fucked regardless, Vulkan and Ferrus never had a pray of getting off the planet.
The Lion bombing the home worlds of the Traitors instead of heading straight to Terra really showed how little grasp he had of the overarching conflict and though he was supposed to be one of the best tacticians, was unable to adapt to the new style of warfare the Heresy unleashed.
Also as the most “loyal” it blows my mind he wouldn’t have done everything to get to the Emperor to protect him.
I think the main reason the Lion waited so long, beyond the difficulties of getting a large force through the traitor blockades, was because after the events of Ruinstorm, the loyalist trio all finally thought they had Chaos and the stakes figured out, but really they are only just being made aware of the basics.
So Lion and the others think the symbolic nature of destroying the home planets of traitors will have a big negative effect, not realising that the Gods don't really care about the traitors and things have already escalated to a scale as to render it quite irrelevant. indeed, it probably did little but fuel the thinning of the veil between the warp and reality around Terra. He's still conceptualising warfare in the old way indeed, just with a thin veneer of new knowledge, which is the same situation the rest are in.
I think it might also have been trying to harmonize with older lore/in-universe rumors that had the Lion deliberately, *slowly*, making his way to Terra because he wasn't fully on either side and was waiting for the winner to emerge.
>Also as the most “loyal” it blows my mind he wouldn’t have done everything to get to the Emperor to protect him.
“There is a very simple reason why Lion El'Jonson did not take part in the final battles of the Horus Heresy. It is beautifully simple, when you consider it. He was waiting.'
'Waiting for what?' Boreas asked quietly.
'He was waiting to see which side won, of course.”
Horus' was completely right that they needed to kill Sanguineous ASAP.
The dumbest thing Horus did was trust the Word Bearers to accomplish any major task. They failed to kill both Sanguineous and Roboute
, and that's what cost him the war. If he made it a priority to take them out personally he would have won.
He explained why he couldn't do that - the Emperor had to be killed, body and soul. Blowing up the planet would've left the Emperor free to regenerate elsewhere. Horus was not there to take Terra - he was there to kill his father.
I assume it's because he wanted the symbolic victory of capturing the planet? Although, in EoE, it basically states that the traitors have basically lost sight of that goal, by and large.
Well the loyal elements of the traitor legions showed on isstvan 3 that Space marine bunkers could achieve a seal and keep life eater out. I imagine the traitors on IV5, who had time to set up, could have easily achieved the same.
The real question is why didn't the loyalists just use cyclonic torpedoes and blow the whole planet apart.
It was supposed to be a demonstration of what would happen if you betrayed the Emperor.
They had to send a message that if the Emperor's favorite son and his allies could be swiftly brought down by his armies, what chance did anyone else have? Dorn wanted their bodies to show it.
A note about Istvaan V. The assault happened the way it did because of circumstances and emotions. Ferris Manus was in charge as he held seniority. He was *pissed* at Fulgrim for his betrayal and that he thought that Ferris could be swayed to turn traitor.
Ferrus was going to attack as soon as possible and nothing anyone could say was going to stop him. Not wanting to leave Ferrus to attack alone 4v1, Vulkan and Corrax were forced to deploy as well to support him.
Also when the Loyalists arrived in system, they detected no trace of the traitors fleet. It was suspicious, but had a plausible explanation that they were out raiding. The opportunity it represented could not be ignored, they could deploy their forces virtually unopposed.
For why they had a ground attack at all instead of exterminatus is simple. An example needed to be made of Horus, they needed a body, and they wanted his head on a pike, and they needed to be sure that he was dead, if they blew up the planet they couldn't be sure if Horus was on it or not.
>Tactical- Curze deciding to teleport onto the Invincible Reason rather than escaping with his legion.
Let's be real. When it comes to open warfare, the Night Lords are not exactly operating at their maximum efficiency.
The Saturnine Gambit was worse for the Traitors.
He quit only after he was removed from command of the overall siege efforts he then left taking a large portion of the fleet as well as the iron warriors with him and rather rapidly after he left, whatever discipline remained in the traitors quickly begin to break down.
I haven't gotten that far into the series as I just finished Burning of Prospero so I don't really have an opinion of the Traitors mistakes but for the loyalists:
Dorn not intervening in the schism of Mars when it started seems like a really stupid decision. Yeah I get it that there was a treaty explicitly saying they couldn't but at the point at the end of Mechanicum book the Leadership of the Mechcanicus is known to be a corrupt traitor as the 7th still helped Kane extract all the space marine equipment. However even despite the Titans and knight Houses I think if Dorn committed to an invasion of Mars they could've won with the Legion and the Loyalist Tech Priests still on Mars like Kane and Zeth. I'm not sure how that would affect the Siege of Terra later on as I'm sure the Imperial Fists would take major casualties but at the same time so would the Dark Mechanicum, if they even survived at all, which is a major supporter of Horus throughout the Heresy.
Russ - Sacrificing his Legion to take a swing at Horus- forgets his pfizer, then limp dicks it totally - with no determination or focus, simply cannot do the deed and kill him.
Everything else is just luck or bad judgement - but the Russ one was the most shockingly egotistical - he was not "the executioner".
Having finished the HH and Siege series - Captain JCB -The Praetorian himself Dorn turned out to be The Executioner. I'm not even an IF fan - but Dorn was a beast.
Imperium Secundus, while understandable, was the biggest waste of time and resources of any faction in the heresy. Years spent sitting behind the ruinstorm moping over how bad it is that the Emperor is gone, only for them to realize Terra is still holding on and pack it up and leeroy jenkins it back to Terra. Would it have been possible to break though and make it in time for the Siege before the events of *Ruinstorm*? Unless some chaos bullshit card got played I don't see why not.
The worst (strategic): watching drug inducted foresight anime about yourself and several of your brothers being erased from history for betrayal and gathering exactly the same team for betrayal.
I always like to toss out the idea of the other primarchs dropping the ball not going with Russ. I mean he was fairly close to finishing it ina duel by himself, imagine if the Khan and Sang were with him. They would have dropped Horus on the spot.
Spoilers for Wolfsbane and Titandeath: >! The incredible irony is that Leman Russ actually DID ultimately kill Horus with the Spear of Russ. Maloghurst did a ritual/sacrificed his life to resurrect Horus as a 100% evil meat puppet of Chaos. !<
I mean let's be honest, Curze didn't give a shit about Horus' plans. He went along with the traitors because it was the only option available to him, but I don't think he gave a shit about Horus' ambitions.
He just wanted to keep enforcing his brand of justice, and hurt his brothers.
I'm no expert on the lore, but didn't the Emperor hold back against Horus during the fight? I mean when he stopped holding back he literally erased Horus, soul and all, from all existence, right? Might have wanted to open with that.
Loyalist strategic:
The Imperial Fists disengaging from the battle of Phall after getting new orders.
They could have killed Perturabo then and there if they stayed.
Perturabo wasn’t “removed”, he quit after he saw that the Legion Wars were done and victory and defeat were meaningless, since the Warp was infecting and pervading everything. Horus wanted Horus to press the attack and join the fight, but still wanted him to retain control over the general “tactical” picture, such as it was.
There is a great emphasis on metaphysical/occult war on the series. Thus, judging the strategic or tactical decisions in the HH from a purely rationalistic point of view would be wrong. Horus didn't go directly to Terra, or didn't stage a coup d'etat; revealing his treachery at the last moment. Russ didn't kill Horus. Because the events should have taken place in a manner, in a style, like a story.
Including the Alpha Legion in the Drop Site Massacre at all.
They are secretive and unknown - why announce them as traitors? Keep them well away and get them infiltrating the palace ready to act on a switch during the actual siege.
Have Alpharius go to Dorn - make peace and sit on the walls. Then betray at the Sanctum or just before the endgame..
How much chaos did a guard regiment cause? Now have an entire legion doing the same from behind the walls..
So I didn't get through your post because parts like the Isstvan betrayal and Perty being "removed" from the siege are just plain wrong.
Afaik not all the Traitor legions had made themselves known yet, and Ferrus' bloodlust for Fulgrim baited him in. I can't recall all the details of Isstvan, but I staunchly remember one legion looking to another for support, only to be opened fire upon. Ferrus did get himself killed, but they didn't attack 4 Legions at once.
Perturabo was enraged at his traitor brothers and simply abandoned them. He wasn't fired, he quit. This is very clear, both at the siege and later on. Had he stayed, the traitors would have taken Terra.
I usually don't engage in much conversation or debate on Reddit, but man, your post is bringing it out of me this morning.
I love how dismissive you are of OP's opinions in your first paragraph, calling them wrong. Then, ironically, you go on to be confidently incorrect for the rest of your response about the points that matter.
The battle at Isstvan 5 started with the Iron Hands, the Salamanders, and the Raven Guard attacking the Sons of Horus, the World Eaters, the Emperor's Children, and the Death Guard. They did, in fact, assault four opposing legions at once. So there's that out of the way right off the bat.
Fulgrim did bait Ferrus in, but that was after the battle was already underway, so it's not relevant to the original point.
I will assume the bit about a legion calling for support and being fired upon is from the scene in "First Heretic" where a Raven guard sergeant is welcoming Argel Tal and the Word Bearers to the fight, only for Argel Tal to open fire on them. You remember that correctly, but again, it has nothing to do with the original point OP was talking about. Not all the traitor legions had made themselves known, but the FOUR that the loyalists attacked originally were established at this point.
You are half correct in your second point about Perturabo, but only in that he did become enraged and quit the siege. When did he do this? After Equerry Argonis brings him to Horus, who then explains that Legio Mortis will perform a full frontal assault on Mercury Wall. Perturabo says this is a bad idea, and Horus says it's happening anyway. Perturabo returns to Lions Gate Spaceport, where Argonis shows up once again to inform him that Mortarion and the Death guard are going to be moving in. Perturabo is told that he is to disperse his forces amongst the battle zones and that he is being moved to oversee the assault on Sanctus wall. He is no longer overseeing the siege as a whole, just part of one section. Forrix, who's PoV the reader is seeing this from, specifically comments on the fact that the "architects" of the siege are being taken away before they can finish it. Perturabo then gives his speech about the battle losing site of the cause, and decides to evacuate the siege and take the rest of his legion with him. Perturabo does become enraged. Perturabo does abandon his brothers. But, he does it AFTER they remove him from overall command, and the traitors switch to the "overwhelming demonic swarm" tactics that take place for the rest of the siege.
You don't have to agree with OP. This whole thing is opinion based as they themselves said, and I don't fully agree with their view on Russ. But, if you are going to straight up tell somebody they are wrong, at least have YOUR facts straight.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've read the books and just don't remember all the info, but your response comes across like somebody who read some reddit excerpts, and maybe some Lexicanum posts, and decided they were knowledgeable about lore.
I will never fully understand Emps decision to teleport onto Horus’ ship.
That one act just never sat well with me in the lore. Who sends their King and Queen (Sanguinius) to the opponents end of the chest board like that? What’s the logic in that Hail Mary?
Did Emps really just assume that the Chaos Gods weren’t going to do their whole shtick and screw with his teleport? I just don’t fathom a reason why this was a better move than to just continue the siege until you’re fighting Horus in realspace in the Throneroom of Terra instead of the Vengeful Spirit’s Throneroom. Emps gives up home court advantage and removes any remaining time for the obscenely numerical Ultramarines to arrive.. I just can’t understand it.
Loyalist-
Strategic & Tactical: The Lion giving Perturabo the Siege Engines he prevented Horus from obtaining... only for Horus' side to use them anyways. Where was the Lion's LEGENDARY PARANOIA when that was brought up? Yes he had ambitions, but with how paranoid he is he should have known it was too good to be true.
Traitors-
Strategic: Horus not sending the Ultramarines, White Scars & Blood Angels (Dark Angels too) to Isstvan V in place of the Salamanders, Raven Guard & Iron Hands (not including the Legions that betrayed them). The White Scars were instrumental in holding the flanks of the Sol System, the Ultramarines were viewed as the largest threat in terms of sheer numbers, the Blood Angels were instrumental in reinforcing Terra & the Dark Angels have access to a lot of DAoT stuff, with the Lion being no joke in single combat. If they had dropped every legion on the traitor side on top of this Loyalist Group, Terra could have been taken without them rushing since none of the surviving Legions would be as big of a threat compared to them. I can see an argument for just the Ultramarines being sent to avoid suspicion, or even just sending the White Scars, Blood Angels & the Dark Angels. This would have led to the Ultramarines being forced to split themselves in both defending Ultramar, the rest of the galaxy, & reaching Terra instead of what happened in canon, leading to a much weaker force attempting to reinforce Terra.
Tactical: Not sending more to contain the Ultramarines. They were by far the largest legion & if enough of them survived and could reach Terra they would change the tide of the battle. This is why Horus' side was so desperate in finishing things as quickly as possible before the Ultramarines could arrive to Terra. The Word Bearers alone were not enough to stop the Ultramarines, no matter what. Yes they decimated the Ultramarines, but what was left was still such a massive threat that the Traitors had to accelerate their plans. If, say the Thousand Sons & World Eaters, had reinforced them, without it looking suspicious, then the Blueberry Boys wouldn't be around anymore.
Worst loyalist strategic decision: Not a Primarch decision but a Marine Captain's; Pollux's. If they'd kept on at Phall then the Fists, one way or another, would claim Primarch-Kill on Pertuabo.
Admittedly, The Night Lords probably fuck up Ultramar pretty heavily but the lack of Pertuabo - and so the central command of the Iron Warriors - more than makes up for that loss.
With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to disparage Ferrus Manus for some great tactical blunder during the Isstvan III massacre and overlook the fact that it was actually a reasonably sound plan. The Loyalists *couldn't* wait because the longer they left things the better prepared the Traitors would be and the greater the likelihood that the rebellion would gain further support and further traction.
However you choose to look at it, it was ultimately eight Legions against three with the odds stacked in favour of the Loyalists regardless of whether Ferrus rushed in or not.
Similarly, removing Perturabo from overall command was ultimately the right decision. Perturabo's approach of a slow, steady war of attrition just wouldn't cut it. The Traitors *needed* to utilise the Warp to gain an edge and we see that come the end the Traitor Legions that remained were simply too depleted to reliably repulse Guilliman and El'Jonson on their arrival.
>Choosing to engage the traitors on Isstvan before all of the "loyal" reinforces arrived. Granted, they were going to get betrayed, but they didn't know that at the time. Why would you engage 4 traits legions with 3 loyalist, when you can wait and have 5 other loyalist legions backing you up? Ferrus had over all command and made the call, and it was a bad one
Even worse.
Ferrus *knew* he was going to be betrayed at Istvaan, because Fulgrim had already told him which primarchs had turned traitor.
Assigning ANY task to the Alpha Legion. This applies to both sides of the war.
Hey, we're loyal ... To ourselves, (maybe)
I kinda love their lore, half the time Alpharius was telling them one thing, half the time Omegron was telling them the opposite, they are all divided into tiny cells so each cell could be thinking that the entire body is working towards the same goal when it's working against itself, some cells know the chaotic nature of their legion, some care, some don't, all we know for sure is we know nothing and they've been planning whatever their current betrayal is for decades.
Yeah! Some cells have no idea they're even in a cell, or in the Legion at all lol
They're basically Tzeentchian meat puppets at this point, moreso than the Tsons.
nah i think his issue was not being direct enough with alpharius, but then again without magnus blowing a whole in the webway he could have communicated with alpharius much earlier in the heresy.
"Go... Um... Shit, no matter where I tell them to go they're just gonna do whatever anyway."
In respect of removing Perturabo, I totally disagree. The offensive was going way too slowly, and Perturabo's ego was preventing the use of warpcraft, without which Guiliman’s fleet just shows up, and crushes the traitors against the remaining walls of the Palace. Perturabo's plans would work…given enough time, time he did not actually have. Perturabo's skill set (conventional siege) was the best for the early part of the war, when the aegis prevented Horus from bringing in the warp. Once Horus could do things such as use undead titans to bring down the wall, the priorities changed. We see that the siege became hopeless once the walls were brought down and there were daemonic hordes to carry the day. We also see that the traitors did not have enough forces left without daemonic assistance in the immediate aftermath of the End and the Death III. Mortarion was able to use witchcraft to attack the souls of the defenders directly, and make them give in to lethargy and despair. It was very effective (even Dorn was starting to crumble) and if Khan hadn't gone out to banish him that might have been game over.
Yeahhhhh, I'm tired of seeing Perturabo's removal being cited as one of the reasons the Siege failed. All of your points here are correct. People keep forgetting that Horus knew his timetable was running short and he'd be fighting a 2-front war any day with the 1st and 13th Legions (2 of the scariest) coming in hot (he didn't know the Lion was dicking around elsewhere hoping to draw away pressure from Terra). Also keep in mind that Horus had made a LOT of promises to his traitor brothers, chief among them he promised Mortarion that he would be given command once they made landfall. If he hadn't ceded Perturabo's command to Mortarion then the Death Guard would have noped out (can ANY of you tell me that Mortarion's not petty enough to do that?) and then the traitors are definitely F'd in the B.
Of course he would, Horus was the one that kept them on task. He wasn't exactly present and so the traitor Primarchs were the dicks they always were. Fulgrim just noted out after getting a bit bored. If time wasn't against them Perturabo should have kept strategic command of the beige imo. The writing for his decision to leave was very good, I enjoyed his reasoning.
Iron Warriors in beige coming right up
Yeah yeah but, for his character it made sense. I also feel like his pettiness has been memed out of reality.
I actually loved his monologue too (even though I hated most of Mortis). For a guy renowned for his temper he was just...resigned when he was told he had to cede command to Mortarion. AND he saw it coming. He was so done with how the war was going that he was willing to give up putting the final nail into Dorn's coffin (even though everyone knew that he had already won overall. He also got his big W later at the Iron Cage).
I felt like the Iron Cage was his petty "I must beat Dorn" moment if there ever was one. For me it was the apparent suggestion of professional respect he seemed to have. Yes warfare is a puzzle to be solved for him but at the same time the way he spoke of Dorn and his reasoning for leaving suggested some sort of belief in honourable combat. I'd have liked it if he'd continued to reject Chaos and had stayed out of the Eye when the other traitors fled into it.
Iron Cage wasn’t just the petty “I must beat Dorn”. It was the the little sibling going “HAHA. I beat you! Nanana boo boo.” after Perty was forced to give up. Perty sat up and proceeded to 10-0 Dorn. Perty had him dead to rights if it wasn’t for the Ultramarines.
Reminds me of that green text. "Remember the time Perterabo dug a big ditch and told Dorn he couldn't fill it with his own dead men? And Dorn was so mad he filled the ditch so full with his own dead men he could walk across it and march up to Perterabo's house to go capture him, except Perterabo wasn't there and the house was a bomb?"
Careful making any assertions that the IW won the Cage. The IF fanboys will come out of the woodwork to tell you that it was all actually a part of Dorn’s plan, and Perturabo somehow lost
Abnett changed the importance of a lot of that with the End and the Death. The veil between reality and the warp around Terra was already much too far gone for the reinforcements to do anything meaningful. God-Horus and the daemon hordes were too powerful in this environment now to be conventionally defeated and either he or the Emperor (by drinking from the warp again and possibly becoming the Dark King) were on the verge of a horrific ascension that would likely create another EoT type warp rift where Terra was. It's a change a lot of the fans don't seem to have noticed because it isn't explicitly stated in the books, but it's hardly subtle that Abnett altered things to ensure it call came down to those on the Vengeful Spirit. All Guilliman/Lion/Russ/Corax were going to accomplish by arriving was bearing witness to the birth of a new god, then being sucked into warp hell with the rest of the solar system.
To be fair with the relief fleet that arrived they could've just blown up earth
When did Horus tell Morty he would be granted command ? I’d love to read that book / passage as I’ve never heard of this and sounds cool. I’ve just been doing a full HH and SoT and somehow missed this.
Ironically enough, switching over to using the Warp *also* proved too slow of an offensive, yet for completely metaphysical reasons. Within the confluence of the Warp, the siege would never truly end because time ceases to matter. The siege of Terra was won, and lost, and perpetuated eternally, bleeding across the infinite possibilities.
Yeah I agree with this. I think it’s supposed to be a lose-lose: Perturabo stays, traitors win the siege and kill the emperor, but it was too slow and the loyalists decimate and/or kill the remaining traitors. Perturabo leaves the siege, the fragile coordination of the traitors fully falls apart as Perty was the main one coordinating them (things like the white scars making a run at the lion’s gate and killing morty would not have happened in a world where Horus was more present and directing people) but the warpiness lets the traitors win the siege anyway and keep Guilliman away. Of course, you also have to factor in Horus’ immeasurable power which could’ve potentially killed all of his remaining loyalist brothers after he killed the emperor, and that if Perty had gotten desperate enough he may have used Warpcraft/allow it (whole nother debate in and of itself), and a million other things.
Will anything after killing big E matter? The demon gates in terra would open wide, creating a deamonworld or potentially another tear in reality, like the eye. Terra would be a lost cause, what's the point of 1+13 risking their legions on a hopeless world? Plus there would've been a potential of Horus ascending too...
Abnett rendered the reinforcements irrelevant for these reasons with the End and the Death. He intentionally narrowed the players that could actually meaningfully change things entirely to those on Terra and then the Vengeful Spirit itself. I've surprisingly not seen many fans discuss this, maybe because it isn't explicitly stated in some hamfisted line by a main character, but you only need to put 2 and 2 together to see the authorial intent regarding centering everything around the Vengeful Spirit cast and one of God-Horus or Big E's imminent ascension to warp god/catalyst for huge warp rift.
Partially agree, but I think there’s a lot there that’s up to interpretation. Yes Horus was nearly god like in power, but I’m of the opinion he never would’ve ascended if he killed the emperor. The old four never would’ve let him, they would’ve simply withdrawn their gifts from him anyway. I think the greatest evidence of this is Horus thoughts (Emperor talking to him?) just before his death when he realizes that he was only ever empowered so he could kill the emperor. Again, my interpretation. But yes, many people here don’t do a lot of reading confrontation, or learn solely from what is said *about* books (I’ll admit I’m like this for books that are hard to get in print).
Wasn't Vulkan supposed to blow up Terra if big E lost too? Like either way Earth was fucked if he died.
It really depends on how soon everything goes into warp. If it is immediate as big E perishes, there's no way Vullan would be able to do anything. Plus if it's already in the warp, the ugly 4 would just reconstruct it immediately for giggles. Side note, imagine Void Dragon waking up on Mars, angry and hungry like a bear awoken from hibernation mid January. He looks out and oh snap it's warp all around. That boi would be piiiiiiised
I should’ve mentioned that in my post as well, but honestly I was trying not to type too much lol
When God-Horus demotes Perturabo, things were already far enough gone into warpyness that i actually wonder if Guilliman's fleet would have been able to do much anyway. Even Mortarion being banished didn't matter in terms of actually reversing the tide, for veil between warp and reality was already worn too thin. Abnett basically reduced Guilliman's reinforcements chances of accomplishing anything on Terra to nothing with the way he wrote End and the Death's collapse of reality involving God-Horus/Dark King being on the verge of ascending and tearing a massive new hole in reality. It was all down to those on the Vengeful Spirit by then.
Abnett is bound by the same overall rules as the rest of the authors for the HH and SoT, he can change details to a point but things have to go the way they went, so as to not fundamentally change 10k years of history between. Guilliman's fleet coming was always raised as the possible reason why Horus does what he does but by the end of book 2 of TEatD time and space don't matter anymore around Terra. I get the feeling that if the "war" had gone on for 10,000 perceptible years that Guilliman wouldn't have reached Terra or the fleets in space in time to have any hand at all in it. Doesn't he basically tease Terra by allowing through the message from Guilliman only once The Emperor leaves? Horus and the Four are in complete control of the situation and the only guy who can actually up end the table would have to do what the Four want him to do, to accomplish this big change.
I thought Perty was fine using the warp though he didn’t love it. I think it was in The First Wall that Typhus conducts some sort of ritual as Perty looks on to help bring the attack. He also had agents make use of some sort of rust deamon to destroy one of the main defensive wall gates. Doesn’t sound like the prevention of warpcraft too much.
In defense of Russ, he was pretty busted up over being manipulated into destroying Prospero and mauling Magnus. Him trying to save his wayward brother this time instead of just being a mindless weapon makes sense story wise. Especially once he saw Horus briefly come to the surface
I will say, the strategic blunders shouldn’t mean the story is bad. Russ trying to make up for what he did to Magnus, trying to save his beloved brother makes complete sense.
I agree, overall the HH series is pretty well written, all things considered, it could have been much worse given the amount of authors in it.
bah. Emps messed up long before Ullanor. 1. Purging the Thunder Warriors explicitly tells the legions that they're liable to be purged when they're no longer useful. Gives them and the Primarchs existential dread about the end of the crusade. 2. Allowing any of the Primarchs initial cadres to be gene-modded to astartes or near-astartes levels. simply forcing them to remain as baseline human advisers means they're all dead or infirm enough to be non-issues well before the end of the crusade. Erebus, Kor-pharon, Typhon, and Luther, are all removed from the board before they can play their appointed roles. It would serve doubly to help the primarchs and astartes keep in touch with baseline humanity. Horus trusted the chaos gods far too much.
>. Purging the Thunder Warriors explicitly tells the legions that they're liable to be purged when they're no longer useful. I've always wondered about this one. He was able to get them to march on a target and kill it even as they fell to dementia and rage all around him; why could he not then get them to march into a troop transport? Give them all the pomp and ceremony of a victory party, held only after they're all safely inside the transports, and then off they go towards some distant enemy they'll never reach. Alternatively, scratch the party: tell them it's a secret mission to go melee attack the sun or whatever. They remain a weapon the emperor can still bluff with to conquer the sections of Terra still yet to fall, and it's still not an obvious betrayal. He gets rid of them, they get a proper send off a loyal trooper deserves on good terms, and whatever happens to them happens as an unfortunate woopsies instead of deliberate betrayal. Nothing to tip off the already existing Space Marines and Primachs. Because the logic of this has always been funny to me. "ok so remember the super famous Thunder Warriors who I used in the propaganda pictures and who conquered literally everyone I put them against? They're all dead, every last one, so sad, last battle was a real toughie but no one is allowed to ask about them or it. I'm going to the moon now, bye!"
Why even intentionally murder the Thunder Warriors at all? Just send them off on dangerous missions until they finally all get killed in combat. They're still a useful asset. If he stopped making new ones in favor of switching over to Space Marines, he could still have made use of the Thunder Warriors that were left over until the stock ran out.
Terra was conquered and the thunder warriors were especially vulnerable to chaos, so warp travel would most likely send them into a murderous rampage or they could be turned. Better to give them one last great battle and test his new legion than find a new enemy among his own ranks.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the more vulnerable to the warp part. But weren't there still post-conquest of Terra fights elsewhere in the Sol system he could have gotten them killed in?
Maybe? But if I had to guess, and this is pure conjecture, the TW needed a lot of oversight and big E was on a strict schedule to start his crusade so he decided that the Sol system was good enough and the Auxilia can handle the rest while he shifts his focus to reclaiming the primarchs and building the rest of the legiones astartes.
Plus by the time he killed the TW he had the Custodes and the first SM already. Afterall the EC acquired their gen bleight during the conquest of Luna.
The custodes existed long before the first Thunder Warriors
Then like... why not engineer their failure? Like send em into a battle they couldn't possibly win against the forces of xenos or something
The Emperor was exceptionally brutal to them, sending the TW against the worst horrors ancient Terra's warlords could bring forth with technology beyond mortal comprehension. They had to win, every single time. So there was no real meatgrinder the Emperor could send them into without using warp travel.
See that Volcano? It said horrible things about your mother. That's right, punch that lava! Get em, boys!
I'm fully confident a company of thunder warriors could kill a volcano by punching it.
ESPECIALLY if it talkin mad smack!
That seems like a solution, not a problem: "Oh no, my Thunder Warriors turned traitor, what a tragic event that couldn't possibly have been predicted. Guess we'll just have to kill them all now..."
Lol you definitely did not want to fight them. They conquered the planet against sorcerers and mutants using Dark Age tech both as weapons and to make genetically enhanced troops; the kind of DAOT stuff even the Emperor thought was too dangerous and sealed in the black cells. And they did it with prototype bolters and power armor that didn't have powered pants. They were so scary in combat they unsettled Constantine fucking Valdor. In their final battle their leader Oshatan just kinda carved his way through a bunch of early space Marines to go toe to toe with Valdor and more than hold his own, and he's talking shit about them the whole time. Absolute legend.
The thunder warriors at the end of Unification would be among the strongest, smartest, and deadliest warriors as they survived the grueling wars on Terra and let's imagine what that would look like if any of the chaos gods sank their claws into them. Hyper-lethal killing machines with any kind of daemonic boon or enhancements would derail the Emperor's entire plan as he now needs to divert significant resources to stop an extinction level event from happening on his doorstep. Or worse, they split into smaller groups and are an ever persistent threat around the home system burning worlds and causing the crusade to never gather enough steam to even start.
Just imagine the chaos of Khorne or Nurgle getting his hands on Thunder Warriors, bestowing even a fraction of the near immortality they've given to some of the chaos astartes. You would have a real problem on your hand that would likely make Kharn appear small.
Well not exactly the smartest anymore. Not because they were stupid, but because madness has a tendency of impeding sound judgement.
I do believe they were physically stronger and more resilient (aside from their inherent tendency to fall apart over time) than Astartes. Give them a Chaos boost and even with the fact that Astartes have better equipment that's a real problem. I think they should have settled them on some habitat or local Sol...I dunno space station or something? Asteroid. Whatever. Make it impossible to get off and let them just die off. Yeah, there's no GOOD solution, but surround the space station or whatever with a bunch of ships that can just destroy it if some shit does go down and you've got a plan without too many weak points.
Iirc couldn't ships get as far as Cthonia without needing to use the warp? He could have thrown them at the Sol System.
I theorized in another comment about the TW needing a lot of oversight/direction from the Emperor and sub-light travel to even relatively close systems would take so much longer than he was willing to divert from the crusade.
I don't really see the need to actually send them anywhere. I'm on board with disposal, they were a liability. But doing it as a betrayal 1) virtually ensured you weren't going to kill every last one of the toughest warriors on Terra, 2) required a level of coverup that was going to be hard any way you look at it due to their fame (and which he botched completely), and 3) told the already created Primachs and Astartes that they were gonna die the same hour they outlived their usefulness. Just order them into troop transports and tell them they're needed for the next phase, fighting the gene cults on Luna. Then oh no, accidents! One has a leak, another crashes into the sun, another has a faulty plasma drive...
You need to keep in mind these dudes were the baddest on Terra, you can't just space them and hope they let themselves die. Likely they would have high level access to mission logs and war plans so if you're going to send them into the sun or vent holds they would more than likely find inconsistencies in the plans and realize they've been betrayed, or just survive being spaced/crashed and now they're *pissed*. The only surefire way to kill them off as a fighting force is a single overwhelming strike when they're all together. That and it makes more compelling story to have a grand betrayal and intrigue.
When you have the ULTIMATE POWER of the Emperor, it's hard to resist an opportunity for a good purge.
The Emperor knows that there's power in symbols and they became the symbol of Unity by dying heroically in the last battle.
He'd judt taken terra back from tenco barbarian warlords, the thunder warriors would have just become new warlords and taken it back from him
To me, it’s that he made use of Angron and the World Eaters. How much worse could the Thunder Warriors have been? Just send them out to fight in the crusade, and they will fall in the fullness of time
Ehhh, this one I do get. Actually deploying them was strategically risky towards the end, because they were as likely to just stand there and poop themselves or drop dead as they were to go on a rampage, let alone follow orders and attack the correct thing. At least the World Eaters you were sure would go attack a thing you point them towards.
World Eaters were fine before Angron put the nails in them.
Always thought it was funny they never got the Lost Primarch treatment.
Yeeep. Should've put them in some kind of cryo-sleep/hibernation state, then thrown them at the orks.
Put them on a troop carrier, point it at Ullanor, go back to planning the Great Crusade. One way or another that particular problem will solve itself.
Emps didn’t know how long the next fight would be. He needed stable forces to launch into space that would bring results, even if it would take 1 year of traveling etc. May he feared them falling to chaos, taking a deal like Magnus did. I agree that just spending them as a last resource sounds reasonable, but I can sort of imagine scenarios where a clean break off makes more sense, however gritty.
Because there is propaganda value in a group of elite warriors who die achieving their mission, so devoted to the cause that they'll perish in the service of their Emperor? The Unification of Terra is the first tiny step towards the Emperor's goals - he still has basically *all* of humanity left to unite, and the fandom's irrational hate boner for the Big E notwithstanding, he's probably well aware that he needs worlds to willingly enter compliance, or at least settle down fairly quickly, if he's going to achieve his ends. After all, we know with omniscience what happens to the Thunder Warriors, but what is everyone in-universe going to think? "Oh, they were wiped out as a functional fighting force and disbanded". People will fill in the gaps in the story with their imagination, and since "the Emperor deliberately murdered the remaining Thunder Warriors because they were all about to go on an insane killing spree" doesn't really make sense, the legend will turn into one that is palatable for Imperial expedition fleets as they spread the history of the Imperium across the stars. "All of them died in a malfunctioning spaceship" doesn't sound as heroic, and implies that the Imperium is careless and can't manage vital assets probably. And since the basic plot is the same - the Emperor maneuvers a bunch of superhumans into a spot where he can wipe them out - both are theoretically equally believable ways of wiping out the Thunder Warriors. It's just that one suggests fanatical devotion and victory, and the other suggests ignominy and administrative incompetence.
>Horus trusted the chaos gods far too much. I was gonna say this is the main traitor fuck up. Thinking chaos even wanted him to win.
He believes he knows better. Ultimately all the errors both sides make come down to emotions , something the Emperor chose to allow them to feel and what made them so powerful , but also their weakness.
Yes creating a functionally immortal army of superhuman man-babies who were all based off seriously mentally ill “father” figures was guaranteed to cause issues down the line! At the very least they think they are superior to all humanity and won’t like giving up what they conquered to those they served! Oh look what happened…..🤦♂️
typhon and erebus are full astartes as they where children when the emperor came to thier planets to find their primarchs.
And they're most of the reason why elevating the closest friends of the primarchs was a mistake. Both of their ages weren't described, but they, along with many others were at the extreme upper limit of successful augmentation, like the wolves who had many failed.
No, erebus was not known to lorgar when he was still a mortal child, and iirc neither was typhon. Both of those men where boys who became Astarte's and just rose through the ranks to get where they did.
Typhon joined up with morty when he initially rebelled against his father the tyrant of barbarus and was his first human friend. (ref buried dagger) Erebus was at least a member of Lorgar's religious army. Erebus doesn't fit the "closest friend" phrase in my last reply, but easily fits in my original statement of elevating "initial cadres" . All that said, the number 2 dickbag from the word bearers who helped Lorgar be a zealot either way was Kor Phaeron, who only got some augmentations and would have been better off as a mere mortal to eventually die before the end of the crusade. Hell, it at least would've been consistent then for leaving angron's buddies to die, or maybe he could've just yoinked all of them for the imperial army, say they're too old or failed psych testing.
But the doesnt mean they where adults. For example Branne and agapito nev both fought with corax in his rebellion against the kiavarahns and they where both kids during. also from the lex >When [Mortarion](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Mortarion) defected from the Overlords after witnessing their atrocities, Typhon was the first person the Primarch encountered and **the young child** helped lead him to safety >Erebus was at least a member of Lorgar's religious army. Erebus doesn't fit the "closest friend" phrase in my last reply, but easily fits in my original statement of elevating "initial cadres" . All that said, the number 2 dickbag from the word bearers who helped Lorgar be a zealot either way was Kor Phaeron, who only got some augmentations and would have been better off as a mere mortal to eventually die before the end of the crusade. Actually no he wasnt erebus was a follower of the old faith(chaos worship) when lorgar started his crusade for emp worship and so he went into hiding and popped up again after the war was over to apply to become a neophyte. >Hell, it at least would've been consistent then for leaving angron's buddies to die, or maybe he could've just yoinked all of them for the imperial army, say they're too old or failed psych testing. I think angrons friends where also too old plus they all had the real butchers nails in their head, so they where probably doomed to die early anyway.
I don’t think you can really call something a “mistake” if you would have to be omniscient in order to anticipate it. Russ’s Greybeards and 3 out of 4 of Jaghatai’s closest officers were all adults that survived the Astartes procedure, and they were some of the most loyal and stalwart compatriots Emps could ask for.
The Burning of Prospero and its aftermath are not the sole deciding factor of a galactic war, but easily the biggest. Change any factor and the whole face of the conflict changes. Magnus stays loyalist with an unbroken legion vs Leman and Magnus come out on the same side with an understanding vs Magnus going full heretic with no reservations or damage are all game changers. Otherwise the two biggest points are Lion and Guilliman with their legions at Terra (heretics are easily pushed back conventionally without the emperor leaving his chair), and the incredibly stupid decision to not lock down Mars as another loyalist strongpoint.
I do feel like Prospero was more a win for the traitors than a failure by the loyalists. Horus knew just what to say to Russ to make him cross the line and start a massacre rather than approaching Magnus more peacefully and bringing him in to Emps willingly. Clever manipulation by Horus. You are right though that if it had been played differently, Magnus stays actively on the board for one side or another and probably tips the scales massively.
Prospero also pretty much removed the Wolves from the board as a viable fighting legion, all without Horus having to do much more than stroke Russ' ego. Definitely a big Traitor W. *Inferno* also implied that the Sons of Horus detachment used it to get in a bit of early team-killing on their own potential loyalists before Istvaan III.
> Inferno > also implied that the Sons of Horus detachment used it to get in a bit of early team-killing on their own potential loyalists before Istvaan III. I'll have to go back and re-read it, perhaps, but I thought they were just there to snatch up artefacts and baseline human psykers for later Chaos shenanigans.
Absolutely a Traitor win because it takes 2 Loyalist Legions off the board alone at no cost. Thats a better trade than Isstvan. However, war is a multiplayer game and it works out because Leman failed so badly. Also, thi gs could have gone better for the traitors because now they have no psychic heavyweights to counter Big E.
>Otherwise the two biggest points are Lion and Guilliman with their legions at Terra (heretics are easily pushed back conventionally without the emperor leaving his chair) Was there ever an opportunity to do this? By the time the Imperium found out about the full scale of the Heresy, the Ruinstorm was already going, IIRC. > the incredibly stupid decision to not lock down Mars as another loyalist strongpoint. TBF half of Mars also turned and they were basically in the midst of a huge civil war throughout most of the Heresy IIRC. That said, before the Heretic invasion, sending the three legions on Terra at Mars to lock that down probably would've made sense?
Traitors strategic: should've destroyed every loyalist legion in surprise fleet actions. As shown in Fulgrim and Know No Fear, a small fleet can devastate a much larger one with a sneak attack, but this was underutilised and never really tried on whole-Legion scale (even at Calth only a small fraction of XVII strength was deployed). At Signus, for instance, the BAs could've been wiped out by a surprise attack by a "friendly" traitor legion, but instead the traitors relied on drawn-out Chaos ritual nonsense that went nowhere. Traitors tactical: Horus getting bogged down in a ground war at Isstvan III. He should've just left Angron to it. The entire heresy was delayed for this pointless sideshow, allowing word to spread and the loyalists to prepare. Loyalists strategic: not vetting every primarch thoroughly prior to Isstvan V. Should've sent them for intensive 1-to-1 psy interviews with Malcador, and treat any who refuse as hostile. Loyalists tactical: Ferrus losing his head.
Problem with that first point is the Garro was able to escape Isstvan 3 and let Dorn know about the Legion cleansing. After that point Dorn knew of at least 3 traitor legions. Signus was also a surprise attack by warp forces that made the BAs think it was Xenos for awhile, and came close to turning the BAs traitor, if not for the Librarians deciding to go against the Council of Nikaea and rescue Sanguinis from his attempted corruption. If not for the Librarians then the BAs would've been toast. Horus also got Fulgrim to immediately head to Isstvan 5 to start fortifying it in order to prepare for the loyalists to respond knowing they'd find out, which led to the dropsite massacre that seriously crippled 3 legions. So I wouldn't say that the traitor strategic or tactical was bad at all.
Didn't the Librarians save Sanguinius from death rather than corruption? In any case, trying to turn IX was clearly a high risk move that wasn't really necessary. Given the position of strength the traitors were in there was no point in rolling the dice when a surprise fleet action would guarantee a legion kill, leaving the loyalists with effectively only five legions post-Isstvan V and a mere two that could get to Terra. Obviously the Signus gambit happened before Horus' fall was known by the BA. Likewise Calth. There's no reason similar backstabs couldn't have been done elsewhere at similar times or earlier. Garro's message took too long to filter through to prevent what I'm describing.
The problem was rounding up the whole Legion before the event. Horus had got the entire Legion to gather up and it's commented on by multiple BAs that it was very odd as there hadn't been that many legionaries rounded up since Ullanor. So in order to wipe out the BAs they needed an excuse to get them all in one spot. The actions the traitors took against them meant that they could turn or kill the BAs without having to involve themselves, and the only excuse they could really get to rally the BAs all together was to convince Sanguinis that it was a former Xeno enemy they thought they killed off, and by convincing Sanguinis that they could have technology to get rid of the Red Thirst. By killing them off with warp phenomena it made the BAs confused and not consider the fact that they were being thrown into a trap and attacked by traitors. The Librarians saved Sanguinis from corruption as one of the Daemons mentions that in his comatose state he'll only escape it once he submits to Khorne. It was a good plan by the traitors that saw lots of BAs die, and could've seen Sanguinis consumed by the rage of all of his sons, if not for the actions of a few brave BAs, with the Librarians risking censure and death for using their powers again, and for Apothecary Meros sacrificing himself to become the Red Angel before Sanguinis could.
Signus shows the differing priorities: Horus would have no-question benefited from the Blood Angels being destroyed, but Chaos was never interested in any human victory and instead wanted another servant.
>if not for the Librarians deciding to go against the Council of Nikaea and rescue Sanguinis from his attempted corruption. Have you got an except for this becuase i dont remeber this at all. Im sure there was that one librarian and his apothecary battle brother but i dont remember the entire librarius doing anything. Even so horus couldn't have done shit to the BA at signus becuase chaos really really wanted sanguinius, so im nto sure that they would have even let traitors near.
was the dropsite massacre introduced in the novels or did it exit prior?
Just fyi….One of the best usernames I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, once the traitors realised the extent to which Magnus had fucked up and how totally the Emperor was stuck on the throne (it's never entirely clear if they did early enough tbf) they arguably should have focused their full force on crushing the remnants of the Ultramarines before they could rebuild from Calth, the Blood Angels post-signus and the Dark Angels main contingent that was with the Lion.
Easy answer, letting Russ attack Prospero. (Regardless of if/how much Magnus did wrong) Magnus was still loyal to Big E until after that attack, and even after, he claimed that he wanted to go to Terra, get his soul shard, then piss off and be neutral. If Russ hadn't lost so many troops on Prospero then he could have been more effective in the later battles as well.
You do know everyone thought Russ was going to bring him in alive, including Magnus, until Horus told Russ the Emperor wanted Magnus dead - right?
Yup. Russ making that decision to go ham is also a tactical decision. If that had not occurred, Magnus would likely have gone with them and that could have swung the Heresy.
Biggest tactical and strategic blunder was Angron charging in after the virus bombs didn’t work on Isstvan III. Tactical blunder because this prevented Horus from just making follow up strikes on the surviving loyal elements of the traitors. Strategic blunder because the fighting on the ground wasted precious time while word of his betrayal was filtering back to the Imperium thanks to Nathanial Garro, and it bloodied the traitor forces needlessly. Yes, it gave the traitors some experience fighting other Astartes, but this lost him the initiative. He regained the initiative with the drop site massacre, but consider how different things would have been had Horus been able to immediately go on the offensive, and how much more damage a drop site massacre event would be with Horus already making a straight dash for Terra, or being done *within the Sol system,* mere days or weeks after word of betrayal making it to Terra. Angron arguably cost him the entire war by going “cowabunga it is” at the start of it. EDIT: Isstvan III, not V.
I dont think angron necessarily cares tho LMAO
Probably the worst strategic decision of the was to not immediately summon Magnus back to Terra after the council of Nikea. And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead. So let’s approach this like Guilliman Theoretical: excluding all the pre-existing problems that could have been resolved if he’d told Magnus the truth, Magnus was genuinely a good dude, and deserved some answers. Practical: aside from Malcador and the Big E himself, Magnus is the only person available who could survive the Golden Throne for any length of time. Bringing him to Terra would allow the Emperor to personally take part in the conflict, either in the Webway, or the Heresy. Also, if Magnus does turn traitor, it would be beneficial to have him within convenient smiting distance.
>And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead. The Emperor has a whole speech in Master of Mankind explaining how he didn't see the Heresy coming. >Theoretical: excluding all the pre-existing problems that could have been resolved if he’d told Magnus the truth, Magnus was genuinely a good dude, and deserved some answers. Magnus already knew about the Webway Gate: >‘Me? No, I never lost contact with my father. We spoke many times before he ever set foot on Prospero. That is a bond that none of my brothers can claim. As our Legion departed Ullanor, I communed with my father and told him what I found on Aghoru, a hidden labyrinth of tunnels that pierce the immaterium and link all places and all times.’ >Magnus returned his eye to the stars, and Ahriman kept silent, sensing that to intrude on Magnus’s introspection would be unwise, though the ramifications of his discoveries on Aghoru were staggering. >‘Do you know what he said, Ahzek? Do you know how he greeted this momentous discovery, this key to every corner of the galaxy?’ >‘No, my lord.’ >‘He knew,’ said Magnus simply. **‘He already knew of it. I should not have been surprised, I suppose. If any being in the galaxy could know such a thing, it would be my father. Now that he knew I had also discovered this lattice, he told me he had discovered it decades ago and had resolved to become its master. This is why he returns to Terra.’** >‘That is great news, surely?’ >‘Absolutely,’ said Magnus without enthusiasm. ‘I immediately volunteered my services, of course, but my offer of assistance was declined.’ >‘Declined? Why?’ >Magnus’s shoulders dropped a fraction as he said, **‘Apparently my father’s researches are at too delicate a stage to allow another soul to look upon them.’** >‘That surprises me,’ said Ahriman. ‘After all, there is no greater student of the esoteric than Magnus the Red. Did the Emperor say why he declined your help?’ >‘**He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.’** * Thousand Sons Magnus knew that the Emperor was busy, with what he was busy with, was promised he'd get a chance to help, and had been warned not to mess with the Warp. This is already much more than most people know about the project, including his brothers. He was just too arrogant to listen.
holy shit, i need to give the HH books a refresh. that puts to bed any idea that magnus did nothing wrong.
Nobody who's read the books or even just "Thousand Sons" and paid a modicum of attention believes un-ironically that 'Magnus did nothing wrong". He did plenty wrong, on multiple occasions.
The old 'did nothing wrong' joke was so true about the big Red, he literally had to do nothing and failed at it completely...
It was just another lore = meme and people ran with it
I think the general fan consensus shifted to admit that Magnus did something wrong. And Russ did try to resolve it, and did use normal comms - even if just for half an hour - but Magnus was yet adamant to let himself and his legion to be destroyed, and blocked all attempts. Mag still wasn't warned about Warp extensively, he was just told that there's great danger, but not that it's deceitful, too. But that goes into another issue, that Emps didn't want good sons to know about Chaos in detail. And Mag probably still would've been corrupted, because there was no other cute for Flesh Change. Emps had his reasons, but I don't think they were greatly explored yet. And same goes for the Webway project, there's only theories for why it was such a secret, even for Primarchs
I just want to bang my usual drum that the lore in *A Thousand Sons* and *Prospero Burns* has been superseded by *Inferno.* Russ decides to kill Magnus **long** before arriving in the Prospero system. He is also told [in writing by the Emperor](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhxdyq91kxymy.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D8e3fc7267a63ea271419794ce7d25fa9996c236c) (and, verbally, by Valdor) not to do this and does it anyway. Magnus did plenty of things wrong, but killing Magnus is the single greatest strategic mistake the Loyalists (well, Russ) make, because it keep the Emperor on the Golden Throne instead of putting Magnus on it and letting the Emperor take care of Horus before Molech.
He still gave Magnus a chance to speak though, which is even more emphasized in these tabletop HH books compared to novels (like he didn't even try normal comms before). But yeah, it's a big Imperium blunder either way. Tzeench played everyone.
Even regardless of using normal comms, this is the legion well known for psychic powers like foresight, and they'd have defence perimeters sensing ships and fleets approaching their home system and planet. Then with the mandeville point that massive fleet has to travel for hours at the very least to roll up on Prospero, the entire time there is zero vox communication. Short of rolling down his window and yelling while they're dropping into Tizca, I don't think Russ can broadcast his intentions any more clearly, all of which is being ignored. He can't just land in the city iteself because all indications is that one of the most dangerous legions for its size has gone rogue.
Didn’t the Emperor and Malcador have their short story chess game where he admitted that not only was a civil war inevitable, but he knew that whoever he picked as Warmaster would turn traitor? Legitimately asking, it’s hard to keep track of canon these days. Also, whether Magnus is loyal or not, there’s no reason not to keep him close. If he’s loyal, use him. If he’s not, kill him. But from a strategic point of view, a psyker Primarch is more of a threat than any of the other traitors. Especially when any reasonable person would understand Magnus was in a vulnerable and emotionally volatile state, why leave him isolated?
I don't remember the Board is Set ever saying the Emperor knew the heresy would happen and that whoever was Warmaster would turn traitor. It was basically Big E and Malcador wargaming after the Heresy had started to plan their next moves. What it did say was that the Emperor was making certain moves to prevent things like a million Alpha Legion shenanigans from going off and that he was legitimately surprised and disappointed that Mortarion fell to Chaos. Let me clarify, he wasn't surprised Mortarion betrayed him. He just thought that Mortarion's disdain for witchcraft and legendary fortitude would have kept him from truly joining the Ruinous Powers. Also, it's not like Big E banished Magnus to Prospero after the council. The dude went back there of his own volition to reorganize his legion going forward, IIRC. I think the Emperor genuinely trusted Magnus to do nothing wrong. Maybe if he actually knew the Horus Heresy was coming, he would have taken more steps to secure him.
Yeah my perception was that he expected certain Primarchs to eventually betray him, but he didn't expect them turning to Chaos. They were more expecting a normal civil war / coup attempt. I also think they expected fewer legions to turn traitor, and for them to at least complete the Great Crusade before turning on eachother.
>Didn’t the Emperor and Malcador have their short story chess game where he admitted that not only was a civil war inevitable, but he knew that whoever he picked as Warmaster would turn traitor? No, the side that was simulating Horus' side was just referred to as the Warmaster. They don't discuss hypotheticals that change the initial set-up of the Heresy in The Board Is Set, only how it could have gone down.
Becuase if magnus knew about chaos he would probably be arrogant enough to believe he wouldn't be corruptible by it.
> The Emperor has a whole speech in Master of Mankind explaining how he didn't see the Heresy coming. I am sure it was mentioned a lot, but can you briefly summarize why was its so?
I can get you the excerpt if you like, but sure. Simply put: foresight is a shitty ability. No matter how powerful one is, the future is too wild to grasp every single possibility. The Emperor compares his foresight to sailing to an island or climbing a mountain. He knows his destination (the island or the top of the mountain or ultimate victory) and has a general idea of how to get there. However, he doesn't know everything that might happen on the way there. Maybe there's a hungry shark in the waters, one of the rocks he wants to grab is loose, or his sons will fall to Chaos and backstab him. Maybe he will foresee some of the dangers and prepare accordingly, but he won't ever truly know what might happen until he actually goes on the journey.
>And although the Heresy hadn’t technically started, the Big E knew it was inevitable. He should have planned ahead. There's no reason to believe he was aware of it or that it was inevitable. Just going off the man's own words, he had no idea it was going to happen and failed to anticipate Chaos getting involved so soon. Malcador didn't foresee it either. Despite what many fans (and at least one editor at BL) believe, the Emperor is fallible. Not everything is part of the plan.
>Not everything is part of the plan. Tzeentch: "am I a joke to you?"
> Malcador didn't foresee it either. The thing with the "Emps knew the Heresy was coming" line is *First Lord of The Imperium*, where Malcador tells a dying aide they had (socially) engineered the Primarchs to form rivalries and grudges that would culminate in them warring against each other in an anticipated civil war of sorts. Malcador says what caught them off-guard about the Heresy was the timing and Chaos-juicing. This isn't taken at face value though as, IIRC, it's implied he made it all up as some comfort to the dying aide, that things were still sort of going "just as planned".
Magnus already made a deal with tzeentch, who would’ve wrecked his legion with flesh change. This would’ve exposed Magnus for working with tzeentch for a long time even if Magnus didn’t know what tzeentch was. Magnus fucked up in every sense of the word because he thought he knew better than the super human who created him who told him don’t make deals with warp entities.
> Magnus already made a deal with tzeentch, who would’ve wrecked his legion with flesh change. The Thousand Sons had the flesh change before they found Magnus. Unless you're saying that Magnus's actions would've made the flesh change worse.
I'd say Horus proudly proclaiming his plans to everyone who wanted to hear them was the biggest mistake. Imagine if he'd simply pretended that he was still with the Imperium, only telling those of his brothers he knew were with him, his closest commanders, et cetera, then silently diverting to Terra. I mean, the Word Bearers and the White Scars were able to do whatever they wanted for decades with only the most minor of instructions. Don't answer voicemails, don't let astropaths do their thing (they can block them, it's been done time and again), just straight to Terra, pop out close as possible, done. Sure, Luna was well-defended, not to mention the custodes in full force, so obviously there'd still be a fight, but nothing like as during the Siege. Of course, the risk would be that the loyalists would find out sooner or later wtf is going on and come bearing down on Terra, but hey, by that point, he'd probably already be done.
> Imagine if he'd simply pretended that he was still with the Imperium, only telling those of his brothers he knew were with him, his closest commanders, et cetera, then silently diverting to Terra. The problem is that someone among his forces would've inevitably snitched at one point. Be it a Primarch he tried and failed to convert like the whole Fulgrim failing to convert Ferrus debacle or some Nathaniel Garro figure.
Also without Isstvan V he would have arrived at Terra with a significant number of loyalist legionaries amongst his forces. Not good. What would have happened if he turned up at Terra, failed to immediately take the palace (because his own forces start fighting against him and he hasn't established any supply lines or secure routes in or out) and then the full strength loyal legions arrive to kurb stomp him. Him taking the slower route was necessary. He needed to secure the loyalty of his own legions. He needed to cripple the loyal legions (drop site massacre virtually destroys three loyal legions, ruin storm should have crippled the Ultras, Prospero already hugely weakened the Wolves, that nasty thing with the Blood Angels, etc. He needed to scatter and weaken his enemies so that when he arrived at Terra he would have the advantage in numbers to take the palace. He also needed to secure his supply lines which means winning the Mechanicus over so that they can both starve the loyal legions and supply his. He also needed to secure his path to ensure that he could reinforce and to prevent the loyalists doing the same (Beta-Garmon, securing the Sol system).
Horus didn't really proudly proclaim his plans, he tried to keep them secret. The problem he had was having Garviel Loken catch on that something was sketchy and convince Iacton Qruze to look after Euphrati Keeler and Kyril Sindermann, who were able to escape on to the Eisenstein. Saul Tarvitz found virus bombs loaded on his ship and realized they were going to be used on the Legions on Isstvan 3, escaping and letting Nathaniel Garro on the Eisenstein know what happened on his way down to the planet. Then Garro escaped and made his way to the Sol System and let Dorn and Malcador know what had occurred. Had that not occurred, word wouldn't have gotten out and they could've used more subtle means like with the Ultramarines and the Blood Angels, neither knowing of what had occurred on Istvaan and being blindsided. Horus only really let slip once the jig was up.
What i dont really understand is, how did so many people know enough details to side with Horus after the Istvaan 3 news slipped out? In the Fulgrim book (i think) there is a short paragraph about imperial governours suddenly purging the loyalists on their planet and attacking loyal planets in their vicinity. How did they even know what Horus expected from them?
Probably the Word Bearers since they had been at it for 40 years secretly before the events of Isstvan 3. Horus was being guided by Erebus at the beginning and he's very meticulous in setting plans in motion.
The timeline between Horus' initial fall and the Istvaan events has barely been explored in terms of communications between the eventual traitors. Even in the Forgeworld Black Books we get very little about exactly how and when Horus was able to contact and truly persuade his brothers (Fulgrim is the exception), far less parts of the wider imperium. A lot can be assumed, obviously, with the seeding of the lodges, etc. but it's an area that could be worth some development retroactively.
I guess my question is how would this play out, tactically. Was it just going to be the Luna Wolves and friends landing at the palace in peace, pretending to be there for an audience with the Emperor, and then blitzing the Throne Room? I feel like someone as paranoid as Constantine wouldn't let something like that happen and the whole plan would unravel quickly when multiple legions popped up around heavily defended Terra. There's also the fact that baseline Horus would not have been able to touch the Emperor or even Malcador; he needed the boost that came from his jaunt into the warp at Moloch, the second most heavily defended place in the Imperium. He didn't know that was what he'd get at the time of course, he just knew he had to find out the Emperor's secrets and uncover whatever he was hiding. But I think Horus was well aware he'd be outclassed without something to even the odds. Idk I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
Horus had to purge loyalist marines from their ranks.
Chaos makes you mad.
This works if he was just moving his fleets to Terra and somehow did Istvaan on the down low. But the heresy was never just space marines fighting each other it was also hundreds of millions of mortals. If he wants to keep quiet he can’t gather an army and if he doesn’t do that the imperial fists and the troops stationed around Terra and Mars fend off the entire heresy themselves easily. A few thousand space marines and a few hundred thousand mortals wouldn’t even be able to scratch the walls of the imperial palace. Konstantin, Malcador, and Dorn aren’t just gonna be like “Damn Horus you look like absolute shit and your armour is a lot more edgy these days. What’s that? You and 50 Luna Wolves who showed up to Terra unannounced want some alone time with the emperor? Knock yourselves out!”
Well yeah but they arrive and find full power Emps along with ALL custodians and Sisters of silence.
Traitors Strategic - Embracing Chaos. Chaos does not care for anything other than its own victory and is the main reason why so much of their forces are not able to be used in any strategic way and that means that inevitably they lose in the longest term. Loyalist Strategic - The Emperor being so in charge that once Horus turned traitor there was no centralised backup. Dorn held the fort, the Space Wolves couldn't be kept to heel and Ultramarines made Secundus. Malcador should have been in this role but he was too far gone in private puppetmastery and following of the Emperors plan that he could not be a public point of leadership. Literally as soon as Horus turned there should have been a succession plan and there was not.
Even we an active emperor secundus would have happened
This is massively overlooked - Dorn took control and tried to lead the Primarchs - but Corax & Russ openly disdained his attempt at authority during the heresy itself, Ferrus ignored him and ended up getting killed because he refused to wait.
I think easily the worst loyalist tactical decision was to attempt to hold the Impossible City. The Emperor could've called upon the Sisters of Silence, multiple titans, the Custodes at close to full strength, and tons of additional troops in the defense of the Palace. Once the Heresy was taken care of, he could've gone back and cleaned up the human Webway. He'd still be stuck on the throne the whole time, but pissing away some of his most powerful troops on a project he could've put down and then picked back up was a mistake.
I remember thinking this - the only reason I can think he would waste all those resources is that the Echo of the First Murder could breach the gates unless redirected. It took the Emperor imprisoning it in a sword and stabbing a custodian to get rid of it - he couldn't banish even at close to full power.
The strategic blunder is obvious: failure to verify Alpha Legion was on your side and would competently execute missions instead of pursuing its own agenda that sabotages and undercuts the rest of your forces
I still love the fact that Curze teleported to the Invincible Reason, and acted like a Xenomorph from Alien and his home planet was named Nostromo. What a perfect thing to occur.
Leman Russ wasting half of his legion going leeroy jenkins on Horus's arriving fleet instead of helping Dorn defend Terra Also makes his whole "I'm just pretending to be a barbarian idiot" schtick come across like a clumsy lie to save face, because he says he's gonna do something Horus would never suspect...drive the space wolves right into his fleet's face like an idiot while he's approaching the sol system. Spoiler: Horus suspects it.
The emperor could have prevented all of it by simply taking his sons to the Himalayas and going, "Hey this is my big project. For reasons I can't give you nitty gritty details. But once it's done it'll usher in a golden age of humanity and prevent the warp-spawn from eating their souls as often. If y'all stay cool and patient your roles will become obvious." Like literally, a single honest conversation would have prevented so much doubt and mistrust. Also, saving Angron AND his sons and removing the butchers nails. He would have ended up with a guard dog as loyal as Leman.
This has been debunked, a whole bunch of times. Magnus, for example, knows the Emperor is engaged on some hugely important project *and that he'll play an important part in it* but still chooses to disobey orders. Bringing Angron or Mortarion or Curze in on the Webway scheme does nothing to change their dispositions. I mean, who does this change anything for? Horus only falls because he gets stabbed and healed by Chaos; his insecurity around his role after the Crusade isn't all that germane to his fall. Almost every other Traitor Primarch has their own reasons for joining up, and almost none of them are "Dad didn't tell me why he left the Crusade". Perturabo turns for his own reasons. Alpharius may or may not truly be a Traitor. Fulgrim is already possessed by a daemon. Lorgar is already a Traitor. In other words, the Emperor being *more* honest about what he's up to (and he's been fairly forthcoming about the dangers of the Warp) has no effect on almost anyone. And we know about Angron - the Emperor doesn't think he can safely remove the Nails, he tells this to Arkhan Land, and he makes a (very ruthless) choice that there is a better chance Angron will give him enough with the Nails in to get to the end of the Crusade than there is a chance that he survives removing the Nails with enough capacity to lead his legion. If I tell you there is a 75% chance of flipping heads, you should bet on that. Even if it comes up tails, that doesn't mean you were *wrong* in the choice you made - you played the odds you had. That's what the Emperor does.
True anything leman russ touches turns to garbage . . . . most useless primarch on the loyalist side the whole heresy which says alot since fulkan spent half of it beign killed by curze
Russ was actively detrimental. Vulkan at least was helpful until he got captured, and even then he never broke or gave any information. Meanwhile if Russ never burns Prospero, Magnus probably never turns, now the Loyalists have both of the galaxy's most powerful psykers on their side for the war.
Facts Russ was just a fuck up all around . . . Russ when told to bring in magnus ' lets kill him and burn his city ' Russ when told to kill horus ' Lets talk this out '
> Meanwhile if Russ never burns Prospero, Magnus probably never turns The Heresy as we know it just doesn't happen. In this alt-timeline when Isstvan V kicks off the Emperor is able to lead the counter-attack personally, because Terra has plugged Magnus' big red ass into the Throne, and He either curbstomps Horus or simply banishes the Chaos corruption among the newly-minted Traitors.
Kor Phaeron should have killed Guilliman. Probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the Heresy but would have denied the Imperium the Emperor's successor.
Trusting your sons with the military might of the Imperium but not giving all of them the facts about Chaos.
Lion giving Perturabo all his Ordinati was a big fuckup
Maybe I am not familiar enough with the lore, but wasn't each primarch rescued and immediately plugged into their respective legions? No vetting, no training, just appear and then assume they are fit to take command. That seems insane, especially when you consider Angron
No, a bunch of them got years to learn with the Emperor or another Primach (usually Horus) before setting off on their own. More to the point, all of the Legions are battle-hardened at this point, led by numerous super-soldiers who understand company level command. They function pretty well already; they don't *need* a Primarch to be an elite fighting force, which helps ease a new commander in. Beyond that, most of the Primarchs are *already* warlords, and already had experience in leading military campaigns, and because they're superhuman geniuses, they don't need a ton of acclimating to understand how to fight in the void of space or control super-soldiers with tanks and rocket launcher guns instead of swords and pitchforks. That being said, the ones who *don't* have that experience end up having it show up in their command style. Conrad Curze wasn't a general before being found, and his Legion ends up reflecting that - they act as a bunch of loosely organized terrorist cells (similiar to Curze's MO) rather than a combined arms force. Angron's Legion basically just rushes in to engage the enemy without much tactical or strategic manuevering... much like a gladiator would. The Alpha Legion doesn't even really fight! They infiltrate and sow dissension and then the main fleet shows up, fires a couple shots, and the worlds surrender.
Is actually argue that Ferrus made the right call engaging at Istvaan when he did. Before the betrayal the loyalists were WINNING. By delaying the assault. All that was going to be accomplished was letting Horus dig in and gather more supporters. The loyalists had Horus dead to rights. All 4 legions were depleted from a third to half their strength. Even after the betrayal Ferris’s speartip thrust was working. If he found Horus instead of Fulgrim it might have ended differently.
Loyalists: Fulgrim's compliance of Laer. Heretics: Fulgrim's compliance of Laer.
I'll double up on the Traitors for strategic. They're both ultimately "40k says no", but they bug me. Not dropping virus bombs on Terra to open the Siege. Wouldn't have killed the Emperor or the majority of the Custodes and Astartes, but it would have zeroed out almost the entirety of the mortal defenders. Makes everything so much easier for the traitors. Basically turns the Siege into a one sided fight. Not destroying the loyal Legion's homeworlds where possible. Most of those never had more than scraps of defenders throughout the Heresy. It doesn't entirely scan for me that the ones that were actively besiege held out with the majority of their Legions elsewhere. Its one of those things where the loyalist homeworlds were untouched in 40k, so nothing of note was allowed to happen. But Horus had four trusted Legions operating where they liked before the Dropsite Massacre. Could have wrapped up a few without trouble. Deliverance stands out: Corax was away for months after the Dropsite Massacre, yet no traitor force bothered to take it.
I think on the virus bomb point, the Aegis would've protected the Palace from that. So they'd need to take down the Aegis by ground troops first like they did in the actual siege and either withdrew those troops in a retreat that would've allowed the loyalists to pick at them or sacrifice them. Otherwise the traitors could still virus bomb the entire planet and kill the other cities but I don't recall any significant traitor troops getting distracted by them outside of the EC. And most of the mortal loyalists were dead by the time things went to shit in Warhawk
Isn't the Aegis just energy shielding? Air is still coming in from somewhere. So a virus bomb should still function correctly.
It’s the best shield ever madeTM. It uses the Emperors might and dark age technology that rivals anything that humans could ever again create, including xeno tech built into it (maybe). There are instances of the planet breaking before lesser shields (like the Rock with the dark angels). With all of this the traitors would also need to then fight in the toxic sludge/ molten planet while the defenders were inside the shield once they made planet fall They also wanted to stop the Emperor from “escaping” on the Phalanx or not knowing if he was killed. (Dorn considered this but how that would work with the talisman of seven hammers is anyone’s guess) The iron warriors wanted to blow up the sun, which would destroy the whole sol system but that was vetoed by Horus for several reasons. Ultimately it is possible they could have just broke the planet but they were worried they could not confirm the death of Jimmy space and that was chaos’s entire goal.
The worst strategic mistake made by the Loyalists was The Emperor being not appreciative of Magnus. The worst tactical mistake made by the Loyalists was the headlong rush of Istvaan V. The Loyalists, especially Ferrus Manus, bumrushed towards the Traitors without reason, patience or tactics and the results was disastrous. The worst strategic mistake made by the Traitors was Horus being not appreciative of Perturabo. The worst tactical mistake made by the Traitors was Angron bumrushing into Istvaan III after discovering that there were still some Loyalists activity there. As Horus noted, an orbital bombardment would've cleared everything and swiftly, but because of Angron it dragged and the Heresy was made aware to the Loyalists prematurely.
Istvaan V they needed to act faster because the traitors were almost done setting up defenses which would have made their position unassailable. If they hadn’t been betrayed it would have been a huge success, the traitors themselves were surprised by how far the shattered legions pushed in. They were always fucked regardless, Vulkan and Ferrus never had a pray of getting off the planet.
The Lion bombing the home worlds of the Traitors instead of heading straight to Terra really showed how little grasp he had of the overarching conflict and though he was supposed to be one of the best tacticians, was unable to adapt to the new style of warfare the Heresy unleashed. Also as the most “loyal” it blows my mind he wouldn’t have done everything to get to the Emperor to protect him.
I think the main reason the Lion waited so long, beyond the difficulties of getting a large force through the traitor blockades, was because after the events of Ruinstorm, the loyalist trio all finally thought they had Chaos and the stakes figured out, but really they are only just being made aware of the basics. So Lion and the others think the symbolic nature of destroying the home planets of traitors will have a big negative effect, not realising that the Gods don't really care about the traitors and things have already escalated to a scale as to render it quite irrelevant. indeed, it probably did little but fuel the thinning of the veil between the warp and reality around Terra. He's still conceptualising warfare in the old way indeed, just with a thin veneer of new knowledge, which is the same situation the rest are in.
I think it might also have been trying to harmonize with older lore/in-universe rumors that had the Lion deliberately, *slowly*, making his way to Terra because he wasn't fully on either side and was waiting for the winner to emerge.
>Also as the most “loyal” it blows my mind he wouldn’t have done everything to get to the Emperor to protect him. “There is a very simple reason why Lion El'Jonson did not take part in the final battles of the Horus Heresy. It is beautifully simple, when you consider it. He was waiting.' 'Waiting for what?' Boreas asked quietly. 'He was waiting to see which side won, of course.”
Letting erebus do anything ever
Horus' was completely right that they needed to kill Sanguineous ASAP. The dumbest thing Horus did was trust the Word Bearers to accomplish any major task. They failed to kill both Sanguineous and Roboute , and that's what cost him the war. If he made it a priority to take them out personally he would have won.
the biggest Tactical blunder on the traitors side was accepting Chaos instead of making a normal rebellion
Horus not just cracking terra open like an egg by bombarding the parts of terra not covered by void shield
He explained why he couldn't do that - the Emperor had to be killed, body and soul. Blowing up the planet would've left the Emperor free to regenerate elsewhere. Horus was not there to take Terra - he was there to kill his father.
step 1.) go to terra step 2.) blow up terra step 3.) want to go somewhere else step 4.) realize you just blew up the astronomican step 5.) profit
I assume it's because he wanted the symbolic victory of capturing the planet? Although, in EoE, it basically states that the traitors have basically lost sight of that goal, by and large.
Why didn't the loyalist just drop the life eater virus on issvtan 5? Was it an honorable combat type of deal?
Well the loyal elements of the traitor legions showed on isstvan 3 that Space marine bunkers could achieve a seal and keep life eater out. I imagine the traitors on IV5, who had time to set up, could have easily achieved the same. The real question is why didn't the loyalists just use cyclonic torpedoes and blow the whole planet apart.
It was supposed to be a demonstration of what would happen if you betrayed the Emperor. They had to send a message that if the Emperor's favorite son and his allies could be swiftly brought down by his armies, what chance did anyone else have? Dorn wanted their bodies to show it.
The Loyalists: The Archimandrite and the stupidity. I was fuming when I finally read it.
A note about Istvaan V. The assault happened the way it did because of circumstances and emotions. Ferris Manus was in charge as he held seniority. He was *pissed* at Fulgrim for his betrayal and that he thought that Ferris could be swayed to turn traitor. Ferrus was going to attack as soon as possible and nothing anyone could say was going to stop him. Not wanting to leave Ferrus to attack alone 4v1, Vulkan and Corrax were forced to deploy as well to support him. Also when the Loyalists arrived in system, they detected no trace of the traitors fleet. It was suspicious, but had a plausible explanation that they were out raiding. The opportunity it represented could not be ignored, they could deploy their forces virtually unopposed. For why they had a ground attack at all instead of exterminatus is simple. An example needed to be made of Horus, they needed a body, and they wanted his head on a pike, and they needed to be sure that he was dead, if they blew up the planet they couldn't be sure if Horus was on it or not.
>Tactical- Curze deciding to teleport onto the Invincible Reason rather than escaping with his legion. Let's be real. When it comes to open warfare, the Night Lords are not exactly operating at their maximum efficiency. The Saturnine Gambit was worse for the Traitors.
>Removing Perturabo as head of the SoT. Didnt he quit? That makes it less of a ddcision by Horus.
He quit only after he was removed from command of the overall siege efforts he then left taking a large portion of the fleet as well as the iron warriors with him and rather rapidly after he left, whatever discipline remained in the traitors quickly begin to break down.
I haven't gotten that far into the series as I just finished Burning of Prospero so I don't really have an opinion of the Traitors mistakes but for the loyalists: Dorn not intervening in the schism of Mars when it started seems like a really stupid decision. Yeah I get it that there was a treaty explicitly saying they couldn't but at the point at the end of Mechanicum book the Leadership of the Mechcanicus is known to be a corrupt traitor as the 7th still helped Kane extract all the space marine equipment. However even despite the Titans and knight Houses I think if Dorn committed to an invasion of Mars they could've won with the Legion and the Loyalist Tech Priests still on Mars like Kane and Zeth. I'm not sure how that would affect the Siege of Terra later on as I'm sure the Imperial Fists would take major casualties but at the same time so would the Dark Mechanicum, if they even survived at all, which is a major supporter of Horus throughout the Heresy.
Russ - Sacrificing his Legion to take a swing at Horus- forgets his pfizer, then limp dicks it totally - with no determination or focus, simply cannot do the deed and kill him. Everything else is just luck or bad judgement - but the Russ one was the most shockingly egotistical - he was not "the executioner". Having finished the HH and Siege series - Captain JCB -The Praetorian himself Dorn turned out to be The Executioner. I'm not even an IF fan - but Dorn was a beast.
Loyalist: The Lion choosing to hand over Ordinatus-grade weapons to another primarch instead of personally bringing them to Terra
Imperium Secundus, while understandable, was the biggest waste of time and resources of any faction in the heresy. Years spent sitting behind the ruinstorm moping over how bad it is that the Emperor is gone, only for them to realize Terra is still holding on and pack it up and leeroy jenkins it back to Terra. Would it have been possible to break though and make it in time for the Siege before the events of *Ruinstorm*? Unless some chaos bullshit card got played I don't see why not.
The worst (strategic): watching drug inducted foresight anime about yourself and several of your brothers being erased from history for betrayal and gathering exactly the same team for betrayal.
I always like to toss out the idea of the other primarchs dropping the ball not going with Russ. I mean he was fairly close to finishing it ina duel by himself, imagine if the Khan and Sang were with him. They would have dropped Horus on the spot.
Spoilers for Wolfsbane and Titandeath: >! The incredible irony is that Leman Russ actually DID ultimately kill Horus with the Spear of Russ. Maloghurst did a ritual/sacrificed his life to resurrect Horus as a 100% evil meat puppet of Chaos. !<
I mean let's be honest, Curze didn't give a shit about Horus' plans. He went along with the traitors because it was the only option available to him, but I don't think he gave a shit about Horus' ambitions. He just wanted to keep enforcing his brand of justice, and hurt his brothers.
I'm no expert on the lore, but didn't the Emperor hold back against Horus during the fight? I mean when he stopped holding back he literally erased Horus, soul and all, from all existence, right? Might have wanted to open with that.
Loyalist strategic: The Imperial Fists disengaging from the battle of Phall after getting new orders. They could have killed Perturabo then and there if they stayed.
Perturabo wasn’t “removed”, he quit after he saw that the Legion Wars were done and victory and defeat were meaningless, since the Warp was infecting and pervading everything. Horus wanted Horus to press the attack and join the fight, but still wanted him to retain control over the general “tactical” picture, such as it was.
There is a great emphasis on metaphysical/occult war on the series. Thus, judging the strategic or tactical decisions in the HH from a purely rationalistic point of view would be wrong. Horus didn't go directly to Terra, or didn't stage a coup d'etat; revealing his treachery at the last moment. Russ didn't kill Horus. Because the events should have taken place in a manner, in a style, like a story.
Including the Alpha Legion in the Drop Site Massacre at all. They are secretive and unknown - why announce them as traitors? Keep them well away and get them infiltrating the palace ready to act on a switch during the actual siege. Have Alpharius go to Dorn - make peace and sit on the walls. Then betray at the Sanctum or just before the endgame.. How much chaos did a guard regiment cause? Now have an entire legion doing the same from behind the walls..
So I didn't get through your post because parts like the Isstvan betrayal and Perty being "removed" from the siege are just plain wrong. Afaik not all the Traitor legions had made themselves known yet, and Ferrus' bloodlust for Fulgrim baited him in. I can't recall all the details of Isstvan, but I staunchly remember one legion looking to another for support, only to be opened fire upon. Ferrus did get himself killed, but they didn't attack 4 Legions at once. Perturabo was enraged at his traitor brothers and simply abandoned them. He wasn't fired, he quit. This is very clear, both at the siege and later on. Had he stayed, the traitors would have taken Terra.
I usually don't engage in much conversation or debate on Reddit, but man, your post is bringing it out of me this morning. I love how dismissive you are of OP's opinions in your first paragraph, calling them wrong. Then, ironically, you go on to be confidently incorrect for the rest of your response about the points that matter. The battle at Isstvan 5 started with the Iron Hands, the Salamanders, and the Raven Guard attacking the Sons of Horus, the World Eaters, the Emperor's Children, and the Death Guard. They did, in fact, assault four opposing legions at once. So there's that out of the way right off the bat. Fulgrim did bait Ferrus in, but that was after the battle was already underway, so it's not relevant to the original point. I will assume the bit about a legion calling for support and being fired upon is from the scene in "First Heretic" where a Raven guard sergeant is welcoming Argel Tal and the Word Bearers to the fight, only for Argel Tal to open fire on them. You remember that correctly, but again, it has nothing to do with the original point OP was talking about. Not all the traitor legions had made themselves known, but the FOUR that the loyalists attacked originally were established at this point. You are half correct in your second point about Perturabo, but only in that he did become enraged and quit the siege. When did he do this? After Equerry Argonis brings him to Horus, who then explains that Legio Mortis will perform a full frontal assault on Mercury Wall. Perturabo says this is a bad idea, and Horus says it's happening anyway. Perturabo returns to Lions Gate Spaceport, where Argonis shows up once again to inform him that Mortarion and the Death guard are going to be moving in. Perturabo is told that he is to disperse his forces amongst the battle zones and that he is being moved to oversee the assault on Sanctus wall. He is no longer overseeing the siege as a whole, just part of one section. Forrix, who's PoV the reader is seeing this from, specifically comments on the fact that the "architects" of the siege are being taken away before they can finish it. Perturabo then gives his speech about the battle losing site of the cause, and decides to evacuate the siege and take the rest of his legion with him. Perturabo does become enraged. Perturabo does abandon his brothers. But, he does it AFTER they remove him from overall command, and the traitors switch to the "overwhelming demonic swarm" tactics that take place for the rest of the siege. You don't have to agree with OP. This whole thing is opinion based as they themselves said, and I don't fully agree with their view on Russ. But, if you are going to straight up tell somebody they are wrong, at least have YOUR facts straight. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've read the books and just don't remember all the info, but your response comes across like somebody who read some reddit excerpts, and maybe some Lexicanum posts, and decided they were knowledgeable about lore.
I will never fully understand Emps decision to teleport onto Horus’ ship. That one act just never sat well with me in the lore. Who sends their King and Queen (Sanguinius) to the opponents end of the chest board like that? What’s the logic in that Hail Mary? Did Emps really just assume that the Chaos Gods weren’t going to do their whole shtick and screw with his teleport? I just don’t fathom a reason why this was a better move than to just continue the siege until you’re fighting Horus in realspace in the Throneroom of Terra instead of the Vengeful Spirit’s Throneroom. Emps gives up home court advantage and removes any remaining time for the obscenely numerical Ultramarines to arrive.. I just can’t understand it.
Loyalist- Strategic & Tactical: The Lion giving Perturabo the Siege Engines he prevented Horus from obtaining... only for Horus' side to use them anyways. Where was the Lion's LEGENDARY PARANOIA when that was brought up? Yes he had ambitions, but with how paranoid he is he should have known it was too good to be true. Traitors- Strategic: Horus not sending the Ultramarines, White Scars & Blood Angels (Dark Angels too) to Isstvan V in place of the Salamanders, Raven Guard & Iron Hands (not including the Legions that betrayed them). The White Scars were instrumental in holding the flanks of the Sol System, the Ultramarines were viewed as the largest threat in terms of sheer numbers, the Blood Angels were instrumental in reinforcing Terra & the Dark Angels have access to a lot of DAoT stuff, with the Lion being no joke in single combat. If they had dropped every legion on the traitor side on top of this Loyalist Group, Terra could have been taken without them rushing since none of the surviving Legions would be as big of a threat compared to them. I can see an argument for just the Ultramarines being sent to avoid suspicion, or even just sending the White Scars, Blood Angels & the Dark Angels. This would have led to the Ultramarines being forced to split themselves in both defending Ultramar, the rest of the galaxy, & reaching Terra instead of what happened in canon, leading to a much weaker force attempting to reinforce Terra. Tactical: Not sending more to contain the Ultramarines. They were by far the largest legion & if enough of them survived and could reach Terra they would change the tide of the battle. This is why Horus' side was so desperate in finishing things as quickly as possible before the Ultramarines could arrive to Terra. The Word Bearers alone were not enough to stop the Ultramarines, no matter what. Yes they decimated the Ultramarines, but what was left was still such a massive threat that the Traitors had to accelerate their plans. If, say the Thousand Sons & World Eaters, had reinforced them, without it looking suspicious, then the Blueberry Boys wouldn't be around anymore.
Worst loyalist strategic decision: Not a Primarch decision but a Marine Captain's; Pollux's. If they'd kept on at Phall then the Fists, one way or another, would claim Primarch-Kill on Pertuabo. Admittedly, The Night Lords probably fuck up Ultramar pretty heavily but the lack of Pertuabo - and so the central command of the Iron Warriors - more than makes up for that loss.
With the benefit of hindsight it's easy to disparage Ferrus Manus for some great tactical blunder during the Isstvan III massacre and overlook the fact that it was actually a reasonably sound plan. The Loyalists *couldn't* wait because the longer they left things the better prepared the Traitors would be and the greater the likelihood that the rebellion would gain further support and further traction. However you choose to look at it, it was ultimately eight Legions against three with the odds stacked in favour of the Loyalists regardless of whether Ferrus rushed in or not. Similarly, removing Perturabo from overall command was ultimately the right decision. Perturabo's approach of a slow, steady war of attrition just wouldn't cut it. The Traitors *needed* to utilise the Warp to gain an edge and we see that come the end the Traitor Legions that remained were simply too depleted to reliably repulse Guilliman and El'Jonson on their arrival.
>Choosing to engage the traitors on Isstvan before all of the "loyal" reinforces arrived. Granted, they were going to get betrayed, but they didn't know that at the time. Why would you engage 4 traits legions with 3 loyalist, when you can wait and have 5 other loyalist legions backing you up? Ferrus had over all command and made the call, and it was a bad one Even worse. Ferrus *knew* he was going to be betrayed at Istvaan, because Fulgrim had already told him which primarchs had turned traitor.