"Book Two: Massacre" (Forge World publication)

To my surprise, I enjoyed the first Forge World Horus Heresy book, ‘Betrayal’, very much – arguably, more than I’ve enjoyed a few of the Black Library Horus Heresy novels. At the time, the only other book available in the series was ‘Massacre’, and I bought it as soon as I finished ‘Betrayal’. 

GET A LOAD OF THIS SHIT! Part II

As before, the first half is ‘fluff’ (lore) and the second half is ‘crunch’ (rules). I’ll be focusing on the first half, since I don’t care too much about tabletop gaming anymore (and for all the crazy money I’ve sunk into my HH fandom, I will NOT begin a Horus Heresy-era army – that is where I draw the line). Like with ‘Betrayal’, the ‘fluff’ part of this book is presented as a historical textbook. There are vague parts where it’s admitted that nobody really knows what happened, and also some stuff that directly contradicts Horus Heresy novels… but that’s because it’s a chronicle apparently collated by one unnamed scribe on Terra (well, it’s attributed to an ‘A.K.’, so I guess today was a good day… groan), apparently writing long after the Heresy, based on first-hand or second-hand accounts from the survivors of these events. I really, really appreciate the length that Alan Bligh and co. have gone to in order to make these books immersive and faithful to the tone of the novel series, as well as informative and ‘neutral’.

Funnily enough, this focuses on the Dropsite Massacre of Isstvan V. The first few pages are kind of a ‘previously in the Horus Heresy…’ recap. This was a little worthless in my eyes, because who’s gonna buy just ONE of these series? It’s safe to assume people who bought this have heard all they need to hear about the events on Isstvan III. A page for a recap would be fine, but this goes back to pre-Unity! Ahh well, I didn’t mind reading it again. Having said that though there is a nice bonus here: a timeline which definitively presents events of the tail end of the Great Crusade and the beginning of the Heresy in chronological order. (Did you know that Alpharius only assumed command of the Alpha Legion three years before Kurze destroyed Nostramo? I didn’t!)

Once this part of the background is done, there’s an exhaustive account of the Isstvan V engagement, beginning with the first Loyalist ship of the Retribution Force to enter the system (a Raven Guard vessel, incidentally) and ending with Ferrus Manus’ death and the cease of the ‘formal’ military engagement. If you think ‘Fulgrim’ and ‘The First Heretic’ told you all you need to know about this engagement, you can probably skip this section of the book. But if, like me, you feel those books’ accounts (while great) only scratched the surface of one of the most significant and brutal fights in Imperial history, you’ll enjoy reading this much more dry, ‘factual’ account. Just because it takes a different approach to narrative, doesn’t mean ‘Massacre’ isn’t just as good at building tension and describing the horror of Isstvan V.

TEXT FOR DAYS SON, TEXT AND TEXT AND TEXT

This account takes in the key moments of this action, through the initial forays into the system showing that the Traitor naval presence seems to have unaccountably disappeared, to discussing the pervading confusion and anger at the command level in the Loyalist forces trying to make sense of what was happening (Horus must be mad, or under the thrall of some horrible xenos parasite; Horus the prideful bastard is trying to carve out his own Empire), to the Loyalists’ fateful decision to not wait for the rest of their force and make planetfall immediately, through to the eventual horror of the Iron Hands as they encounter the ‘changed’ Emperor’s Children up close for the first time, taking in the way the Sons Of Horus literally treated the Army units in their command as cattle and drove them against the First Wave with long barbed whips, and more obscure stuff like the suicidal ‘grudgematch’ between the Legio Arturus and Legio Mortis Titans. Whew, what a long-ass sentence. I must have been reading a Forge World book.

Even beyond this there are some gorgeous illustrations, including a two-page system map of Isstvan, as well as extra bits that nicely play with the ‘historical textbook’ format: testimony from a Raven Guard on his experiences in landing in the First Wave and a transcript of the interrogation of a captured Word Bearer. You really get a feeling here of how catastrophically the Death Guard, Emperor’s Children, World Eaters and Sons Of Horus are mauled in the first part of the battle, something I feel hasn’t come across in the HH novels. The first wave may have died in droves but they gave back as good as they got. And then, of course, the horror of the Dropsite Massacre itself. I could read another ten novels set in/around this time; it feels like there are thousands more stories to be told. The final ‘butcher’s bill’ – over 200,000 Space Marines dead, including both Traitor and Loyalist. Pour some out.

SPACE MOTHERFUCKER

Before we get to the ‘meat’ of new Legion backgrounds, there’s a small section on each of the First Four Traitor Legions – an overview of their actions in the Dropsite Massacre, an account of a significant figure in their ranks and some nice background/illustration of some vehicles. I didn’t really find the Emperor’s Children or World Eaters sections too noteworthy, but I really liked the other two; for example, we learn that following the drastic weakening of their armoured divisions in the Isstvan III battle, the Death Guard were forced to deploy reserve armour for Isstvan V’s engagement. These reserve forces also took a severe beating, and as a result, the Legion’s overall ability to deploy armour during the Heresy was dramatically reduced. And what was the role of the former Luna Wolves in the battle? Horus was cautious with his own Legion, probably because of the huge casualties they took on Isstvan III – he knew he needed to preserve his Legion’s strength as much as possible for the upcoming long war. Therefore the 16^th mostly deployed on the defensive until the second wave revealed their allegiance and the outcome of the battle was clear, at which point Horus lead from the front and joined in the massacre.

With that out of the way, we move on to the four Legions covered here. Apologies, but for a lot of people (especially those who read the White Dwarf Index Astartes articles back in the day) you’ll already know a lot of this… but most of it was new to me.

The Iron Hands: I always held the Iron Hands as my least favourite Legion. They seemed to have the arrogance and perfectionism of the Emperor’s Children and the brutality and contempt for human life of the World Eaters, but while those Legions were damned for their weaknesses and suffered severely for them, the Hands always seemed to have their failings treated as virtues by GW and the fandom in general; I found Iron Hands evangelists irritating on a level that Ultramarines fans can only dream of reaching. I think perhaps not liking Ferrus Manus as a character in ‘Fulgrim’ or ‘Feat Of Iron’, or in fact most Iron Hands characters as they’ve been portrayed in HH fiction, may also have been a factor. (Shout out to John French’s ‘Riven’, though, that’s a really good one.)

In their early years of Terran campaigning, the Iron Hands recruited from all over the world, but most significantly from Old Albia, which was also a heavy recruiting ground for the Death Guard, and I am guessing is meant to be located in the region of the modern-day Britain (Albia, Albion… maybe?). They quickly gained a reputation for relentless, well-coordinated ground war with heavy armoured support. The reunification with their Primarch came quickly, but it was not a smooth one: the proud and intractable nature of both Manus and his new Legion meant that clashes were inevitable, but most of the ‘Iron Tenth’ quickly became fanatically loyal. As well as a firmness of ethos, another important aspect Manus brought with him to reshape the Legion was the resource of Medusa’s ancient and sophisticated technology. The Iron Hands culture became tightly interwoven with that of the Mechanicum, and the tech-literate but otherwise quite savage tribal culture of Medusa informed all aspects of what the Legion became – especially their unique makeup of nearly autonomous ‘Clans’ of Astartes, all of which competed for resources and the favour of their Primarch.

These hands be straight iron, yo

Probably my favourite part of this background was the ‘what if?’ questions raised by it. Manus was highly intolerant of any perceived failure and his punishments were harsh and absolute. Sounds bit like Perturabo, doesn’t it? His Legion gained a reputation for tactlessness and, sometimes, hostility towards its Imperial Army allies or even other Legions. To Manus’ closeness to Horus and Fulgrim, his apparent callousness and implied willingness to harshly punish or even kill his own sons, add the fact that there was at one time a growing Lodge presence in the Iron Hands, and consider how differently things could have gone. Maybe if the Lodges had been associated more strongly with Horus than Lorgar (who Manus apparently had little regard for; see ‘First Heretic’) or if Fulgrim’s overture hadn’t been so badly done, or the Isstvan betrayal had been delayed by a few years… maybe Ferrus would have come down on a different side.

This part of the book was basically all I needed to make a complete U-turn on my dislike for the Iron Hands. They are actually one of the most interesting Legions if approached in the right way. In fact there is material here for a good few very rewarding Horus Heresy short stories (or a pretty hefty novel): a pre-Heresy account of the bitter competition of Clan lords trying to excel, or an in-depth retelling of the council that took place on Medusa following Ferrus Manus’ death in an attempt to decide the Legion’s course of action. And after the great ‘Riven’ I’d love John French to write a book about the dark paths that the most unstable X Legion soldiers take following the death of their father. After all, there were apparently a significant amount of Iron Hands who never even mustered for Isstvan, maybe as many as 30,000 – and that doesn’t even take into account the broken survivors who managed to get off-world. In the past I’ve felt the last couple years of Horus Heresy books had featured the Iron Hands too prominently, but now I think they’re still a rich seam to mine for the HH series; I’m glad that this (and ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’) have opened my eyes to that.

(And I’ve got Chris Wraight’s ‘Wrath Of Iron’ waiting on my bookshelf – looking forward to diving into that one.)

The Night Lords: Following AD-B’s ‘Prince Of Crows’, and the flashback sequences in his Night Lords trilogy, I felt like I had more of a grasp on the Heresy-era Night Lords culture than almost any other Legion: their gallows humour, their casual (almost… entitled) attitude to cruelty and their strange pride in their awful shithole of a homeworld. Plus, I wasn’t too keen on re-reading Night Haunter’s origin story AGAIN. But I was being unfair – there is much more to the Night Lords that Aaron didn’t touch on.

The VIII Legion was born in the giant prison-sinks beneath Terra; subterranean cities of criminals which never saw natural light and with a fairly unpleasant way of life. Rather than drawing from the criminals, the Emperor instead took recruits from the children born in these prison cities; inmates who’d committed no crimes, children who’d grown up in a sunless world and a crime-filled environment where life was cheap. Probably the Terran and Nostraman Night Lords had the easiest ‘culture merge’ ever.

As we know, the Night Lords were something of a ‘terror weapon’; when an enemy (or ally) committed a crime that went beyond simple defiance, when the Emperor wanted to send a clear message of “that shit won’t be tolerated!”, he sent the VIII. This section talks about the Night Lords’ “tendency to moral absolutism”, something I think has been captured particularly well by Aaron. The Night Lords’ attitude to ‘guilt’ reminds me of Robot Santa from Futurama. “Thugs beating up a shopkeeper for not paying protection money… naughty! Shopkeeper not paying his protection money… equally naughty!” This early section about Legion ethos might be the best-written part of the book. Here’s my favourite quote: “Perhaps memory is too kind, perhaps we wish to believe that there is a nobility in such monsters, where in fact there is only horror. Perhaps we wish there to be a purpose behind atrocity, otherwise how could such creatures be suffered to live?”

I feel like I’ve read more than enough about Kurze’s rise to power, but I really appreciated the description of Nostraman society as it stood when the Primarch arrived on the world. I also really appreciate the discussion of how deeply Nostraman culture came to influence the Legion’s structure; it was probably a bad idea that control of these thousands of sadistic super-soldiers was given to bored foppish nobles and low-level Mafia ‘enforcers’ who’d watched Scarface too many times. (Well, basically grown up in ‘Scarface’ plus ‘The Sopranos’ times ‘Mad Max’, but, you catch my drift). The short but sweet characterisations of the Kyroptera (like Kurze’s Mournival, or maybe his consiglieres) and the Atrementar of the First Company (the Night Lords’ secret police and enforcers… but with Terminator armour) really added to the Legion flavour.

Unlike with the X Legion, I really liked the Night Lord character/vehicle gallery. Especially the one for Uros Kastax, just check this shit out: “Known to have participated… in the Yoggoth Genocides, the Fall Of The Lords Of Ephrath and… the Succoth Perfidy.” How much HP Lovecraft can you take? Plus, it’s heavily implied that this guy’s squadmates used the Dropsite Massacre as an opportunity to shoot Kastax in the back. That’s the Night Lords way, summed up in one character. (Also nicely embodied by Talon-Master Vibius, a sergeant who took advantage of the chaos of Isstvan V to kill those standing in the way of him assuming control of his entire company.)

Like I said before, I didn’t think there was any juice left to wring out of the Night Lords blood orange, but Forge World managed it. Damn.

Salamanders: For my first few years of fandom, my attitude to Vulkan’s sons was “who the fuck are the Salamanders?” Then during my last years of being a young, enthusiastic 40K fan, the Third War For Armageddon happened, where Games Workshop heavily pushed the Salamanders as an alternative to Blood Angels and Ultramarines. I was a big fan… initially. Since I started reading Horus Heresy stuff, the XVIII seemed a bit… dull. Dull as dishwater, in fact. Maybe it didn’t help that the writer who apparently has their writing privileges locked down is one I don’t really find enjoyable to read. I appreciated their altruistic outlook, and the noble attitude they had towards their role in the Imperium, but that was it. Once again, it fell to Forge World to show me the error of my ways.

The origin of all the Legions were shrouded in secrecy, but apparently that of the Salamanders was even more so; they were closely linked to the Space Wolves and the Alpha Legion in their early recruitment stages and initial deployments. One can assume that the Emperor had very specific skillset or task in mind for these three. Or maybe there was another reason. The XX Legion is involved, so we will probably never know.

But wait, the friendly and noble Salamanders aren’t anything like the savage, almost-mutant Space Wolves or the sneaky, multi-skilled Alpha Legion, right? Actually, before Vulkan was reunited with his Legion, there was a pretty heavy darkness to these guys. Even in 40K, Salamanders are known for their stubbornness and almost suicidal willingness to take on impossible odds to protect the Imperium. Back in the Great Crusade, though, this was less ‘suicidal bravery’ and more just ‘suicidal’. They were willing to spend their lives in thousands to complete their mission, and from this section, it looks like could have ended up with the fighting style of the Iron Warriors or even World Eaters if their Primarch hadn’t been a stabilising influence. Speaking of which, between the Emperor discovering Vulkan and Vulkan taking command of his Legion, there was apparently a gap of several years where Vulkan fought at the Emperor’s side. I’d love to see some more information about that, perhaps in an HH novel flashback. I really like the section on how Vulkan’s introduction of the Promethean Cult, in particular, grounded his Legion and gave them purpose and direction for their dangerous bravery, and also stopped them from falling prey to the Lodges.

Pretty amazing...

I want to mention that the ‘gallery’ section for the Salamanders is particularly nice; it’s in the nature of the Legion to create ornate, beautiful armour and Forge World really outdid themselves portraying that. And their exemplary battle is… fucking hell. If you like the Salamanders, you should read about that battle. If you don’t like the Salamanders, you should also read about that battle. Overall, I’m not as completely reversed in my position on the Salamanders as I am with the Iron Hands… but I do find them way more interesting after reading this. Almost enough to buy those Nick Kyme 40K Salamanders books. Almost.

The Word Bearers: With ‘The First Heretic’, ‘Betrayer’, ‘Aurelian’ and most recently ‘The Purge’ dealing extensively with the culture of the Word Bearers and their long road to Heresy, I went into this section with a fairly cynical attitude. After all, how much more could I learn about this Legion? Not to sound like a broken record, but more than I expected, as it turned out.

Argel Tal: "Screw you chumps and chumpettes, I'm catching the next pimpmobile out of here."

In the first days of the XVII Legion, they recruited solely from the sons of the Emperor’s defeated enemies, and were taught about the value of the Emperor’s mercy, the importance of redemption, and that one should go to any lengths to bring the Imperial Truth to the unenlightened. If the ‘Catholic Space Nazis’ meme about the Imperium holds true, the Word Bearers were the Catholic-est. But even the Church changes its doctrine when needs must. When Lorgar returned to his Legion, he began to convert the more iconoclastic Word Bearers to his belief that the Emperor was a God. Once these influential Legionaries fell, the path of the Legion was assured… until Monarchia, that is. While we know the background of this Legion well, Bligh writes elegantly about this period and gives us a fresh perspective rather than just rehashing Aaron.

I liked the way the role of the Chaplains in the Legion was fleshed out, and I enjoyed the dark hints that the Word Bearer Apothecaries were harvesting the gene-seed of any and all Legions at the Dropsite Massacre.

Those Word Bearer marine portraits are pretty beautiful (good luck painting the intricate extracts from the Book Of Lorgar onto your squads of Terminators, nerd). Hell, I don’t really have much to say because through my reviews, I feel like I’ve talked about the Word Bearers so much already… but this section of the book lives up to the standard set by the coverage of the previous three Legion.

HELL YEAH WE GOT TANKS

Then there’s a little bit of info on the Titan Legion, the Legio Atarus AKA the Firebrands, who held a resentment for the authority of Mars’ Fabricator-Genereal and a grudge against Horus for his poor use of them in one of his campaigns, and by these circumstances escaped becoming traitors. (That sells them a bit short, I guess, but I don’t really care for Titan Legions anyway.) Then we’re on to the rules, which I won’t spend much time on. First there’s a framework for a Dropsite Massacre campaign, which looks horrendously complicated. Like I said I didn’t care much about the rules as I knew I would probably never use them, but they’re worth a read anyway as there’s still some nice background information there like, especially in the unit descriptions. For example, it’s in the Rules section we learn that only the Sons Of Horus were able to field the Alpha Legion-designed ‘Banestrike’ ammunition (designed to pierce power armour) in any significant numbers. The rest went to Alpharius’ lot. We also get updates for the ‘Betrayal’ Legions, giving them new special rules, special characters, rites of war and units. The Red Butchers, a brilliantly dark World Eater unit of utterly insane warriors in Terminator armour that can be immobilised remotely by their comrades once battle is done – it’s the only way to get them to stop killing. The most significant in ‘fluff’ terms are the Kakophoni, the proto-Noise Marines of Marius Vairosean who the III Legion first fielded on Isstvan V... but by the time I got to the army lists for the four ‘Massacre’ Legions, I just couldn’t get very excited about any of it. I know some dudes buy these specifically to geek down over the Primarch stat-lines and resolve their long-running arguments over whether Ferrus Manus could have beaten Horus in single combat, but I find those people as baffling as, well, as baffling as most people find my own reasons for buying this.

You can also find rules for the VIII Legion Terror Squad, a unit headed up by a Big Punisher who's known to pack a Mac in the back of the Ac.

So how does ‘Massacre’ stack up to its predecessor? I honestly think it’s better in every way, and keep in mind that ‘Betrayal’ featured three of my favourite Legions – the Sons Of Horus, Emperor’s Children and Death Guard (not that I’m not fond of the World Eaters as well). My only real complaint from ‘Betrayal’ has been dealt with – no longer are there pages two-thirds dominated by images of Forge World vehicles and units with a faded sepia filter. There are still some of them in effect, but they’re much smaller and more judiciously deployed. (Well, the ‘giant space filler’ stuff does still happen a bit, but mainly in the rule section, where you’re going to get a fair amount of ‘dead space’ anyway due to the nature of stat/rule sheets.) Furthermore, the ‘staged’ images with Forge World models are overall of a much higher quality and tend to be in vivid colour rather than all bleached out. Just look at some of those Dropsite shots. On top of that, the introduction of black and white ‘sketches’ of Astartes units (generally special characters) in the Rule section is a brilliant idea; it’s suited perfectly to the rather dour monastic tone of the book. Jesus, look what an evil bastard Sevatar looks; with that sneer, I half-expect the picture to tell me to go get my fucking shinebox. The quality of these sketches got even higher in ‘Extinction’ – here there are a few questionable choices, but overall they’re pretty great. The illustrations of Legionaries have also been changed in format slightly. Unlike in Book 1 where you would get four pictures of Astartes per page and a few sentences about each, they’ve decided instead to have one, much larger, picture of a Legionary and his gear, and several paragraphs of background. The increased depth (and larger image size) are a great idea and while it doesn’t feel like you quite get the ridiculous scope that ‘Betrayal’ gave you (with, say, three Legionaries per Legion rather than sixteen), it’s overall a much better approach. While they look amazing some of these didn’t really live up to their potential for me. I feel like Bligh and co. have a gift for writing ‘big picture’ lore that doesn’t necessarily translate to inventing compelling characters (I really didn’t get anything from the Iron Hands heroes/vehicles section, for example).

Calas Typhon. He looks like a former Premier League footballer... Which one? ANY ONE.

And of course, we have the age-old Forge World/Black Library/Games Workshop question: does this seem to have been proof-read? In this case, yes. There are a few instances of typos, (“death-throws” rather than “death-throes”, “the remaining populous” rather than “remaining populace”) but less than I seem to recall in book 1.

‘Massacre’ is about as close to perfect as any book in this format is going to get. The only thing stopping it from being a perfect 10 is that, well, about half the book is much less interesting to me than the other half. I know it’s a little unfair to penalise it for that but I can’t help but wish there were 100 or so more pages of lore. I still feel it’s prohibitively expensive – publish it in paperback for £30, £70 is obscene – but I won’t factor that in to my score this time. And so I give this 9/10.

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.