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’.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
16th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| 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.
