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 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I guess you could probably suggest that people who favour the heresy might be more interested in the story, the elements of the Greek tragedy and the philosophy, that of the state of man, and its various dichotomies, and less interested in aliens and scifi warfare, and vice versa for those who prefer the sci fi aliens and mass warfare of 40k. Perhaps? I don't know.

It stopped being Greek tragedy when a magic sword made Horus evil. By book 37 it was definitely more Days of Our Lives than philosophy on the state of man.


Started out promising, though.



At least in M41 (and presumably M42), there's room for writers to keep things fresh. Even for Greek tragedy.

Racerguy180 wrote:
to be fair, 40k has always been Science Fantasy with a thin veil of scifi.

Which is where you get grots & Emperor-class titans being on the same field of battle alongside literal deamons & wizards.

Yes that is true - although I would say it has become more pronounced as the universe has developed over the years. Also, Chaos and daemons started out as being more in the vein of a Michael Moorcock-esque pantheon of gods which exist as characters in their own right, with their own machinations subject to their own desires (rather than just being 'evil' and there to subvert). Chaos represented ultimate freedom of mind and action at the cost of sanity, a kind of Pandora's Box that once opened for the individual could never be closed, as opposed to the straight-line and order of the Imperium. That has been replaced by murder (lots of different ways, mind!) and them existing for the sole purpose of misery and death. It's very two dimensional in my mind and has made some background almost unreadable (The Warcry background section is pretty hilarious, it's literally just people skinning other, beheading, and 'rivers of gore' being used every second sentence).

The latest era is preferable simply because it can then have freedom of plot to an extent that any Heresy era stuff does not. We all know what the Heresy era stuff has to ultimately build towards so there is no suspense for anything that even remotely touches on the Primarchs or their Legions.

41st Millenium pre-rift. An event like Daemon Primarch Angron leading a demonic horde to conquer Armaggedon should be a once-a-millenium sort of cataclysmic event.

Having legendary named characters micro-manage everything in person these days makes the universe feel smaller. The massive focus on Abaddon and his Great Rift shenanigans also makes the Xeno races feel a bit like the afterthought they were during the Horus Heresy, despite 3rd-4th Edi and the arrival of the Hive fleets/re-awakening of the Necrons/rise of Ghaz implying that humanity was losing ground against the alien threat.
Things may re-focus on the Xeno vs mankind conflict in 9th edition though.

Also GW still doesn't seem like they can decide wether Chaos is something whose existence the Inquisition is suppressing on pain of Exterminatus or more or less common knowledge. They've always had this discrepancy though.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I guess you could probably suggest that people who favour the heresy might be more interested in the story, the elements of the Greek tragedy and the philosophy, that of the state of man, and its various dichotomies, and less interested in aliens and scifi warfare, and vice versa for those who prefer the sci fi aliens and mass warfare of 40k. Perhaps? I don't know.

It stopped being Greek tragedy when a magic sword made Horus evil. By book 37 it was definitely more Days of Our Lives than philosophy on the state of man.


Started out promising, though.



At least in M41 (and presumably M42), there's room for writers to keep things fresh. Even for Greek tragedy.

Why? There was plenty of magic or godly elements in Greek tragedy

Because in Greek Tragedy the hero’s downfall was caused by an inherent flaw within himself (or herself, I guess). Magic Sword is not a character flaw. It is not a man fighting against his destiny only to cause its fulfillment. Yes, yes, they tried to fit in a melange of emotions and motivations into Horus’ fever dream, but they did not feel organic to the character by that point.

Fulgrim also turned evil because Magic Sword, but at least there was groundwork for it, a personal flaw that came to consume him.

It doesn't have to be Horus who's flawed though. After the emperor/religion thread last week I feel it is the emperors flaws which cause he downfall. Horus' saw those flaws, and turned in order to restore a better ideal for humanity. Erebus is the master manipulator who corrupts him for his own ends. I'm not saying it has to fit perfectly onto a tragic frame, but the elements are there. It does have to set up the ultimate nihilism of the 40k universe after all.

It certainly had the promise and potential to be what you’re describing. Unfortunately it comes across less grand and tragic and more pretentious and stupid.

Besides, Good Man Horus saving the universe from the flawed Emperor doesn’t really lead to armies of daemons chomping human souls without at least one character being really stupid.

This is true. However I'd say that the malevolent chaos released onto the galaxy was primed by the actions of the emperor. Horus' manipulation by lorgar/erebus was just the final push that it needed.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Yes, yes, they tried to fit in a melange of emotions and motivations into Horus’ fever dream, but they did not feel organic to the character by that point.

While it did not bother me too much, I agree that it felt rushed and not very fleshed out for such an impactful turning point

I enjoy all the eras. there are some fantastic storties in each era, and also some real stinkers in each era.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I guess you could probably suggest that people who favour the heresy might be more interested in the story, the elements of the Greek tragedy and the philosophy, that of the state of man, and its various dichotomies, and less interested in aliens and scifi warfare, and vice versa for those who prefer the sci fi aliens and mass warfare of 40k. Perhaps? I don't know.

Or, that maybe they'd be better off watching a shonen anime like naruto or bleach where having every single story event in the setting being decided by a couple dozen of wildly distinct looking characters with signature superpowers is the norm, rather than invading and mutilating an existing setting designed for various hobbyists to craft their own narratives around their own models.

And maybe the people who like warhammer 40,000 prefer that, rather than standing on the sidelines of the plot watching the two dozen anime heroes do absolutely everything that now drives the setting.

30k. 41st millenium *fiction* is so much less inspiring and bolter-porn-y.

My main issue with 41st millenium stuff? All of the "everything happened in 999.M41" stuff. The initial jump in? Pretty awesome. But the actual stories in that time? No thanks.

In terms of which ones I like for self-creation and what I get a lot of my own personal inspirations from? 42nd Millenium and 30k. So many story threads out there, in times of great change and room for legends to carve out their names.
41st millenium felt way too centralised around things like Cadia, Armageddon, Octarius, Damocles, etc etc. I preferred when things weren't two seconds to midnight, and vastly prefer when there's room to grow.

In 30k and 41k, the universe feels open and changing and malleable. In 999.M41, that doesn't happen.

I'd love more fiction in more awkward and niche times like M37 - not full fleshing out, but how that's different to M41, notable figures, battles at the time, new sources of political strife in the various factions - that'd be cool.

the_scotsman wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I guess you could probably suggest that people who favour the heresy might be more interested in the story, the elements of the Greek tragedy and the philosophy, that of the state of man, and its various dichotomies, and less interested in aliens and scifi warfare, and vice versa for those who prefer the sci fi aliens and mass warfare of 40k. Perhaps? I don't know.

Or, that maybe they'd be better off watching a shonen anime like naruto or bleach where having every single story event in the setting being decided by a couple dozen of wildly distinct looking characters with signature superpowers is the norm, rather than invading and mutilating an existing setting designed for various hobbyists to craft their own narratives around their own models.

And maybe the people who like warhammer 40,000 prefer that, rather than standing on the sidelines of the plot watching the two dozen anime heroes do absolutely everything that now drives the setting.

Well, I'd hardly call it mutilating...

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I guess you could probably suggest that people who favour the heresy might be more interested in the story, the elements of the Greek tragedy and the philosophy, that of the state of man, and its various dichotomies, and less interested in aliens and scifi warfare, and vice versa for those who prefer the sci fi aliens and mass warfare of 40k. Perhaps? I don't know.

Or, that maybe they'd be better off watching a shonen anime like naruto or bleach where having every single story event in the setting being decided by a couple dozen of wildly distinct looking characters with signature superpowers is the norm, rather than invading and mutilating an existing setting designed for various hobbyists to craft their own narratives around their own models.

And maybe the people who like warhammer 40,000 prefer that, rather than standing on the sidelines of the plot watching the two dozen anime heroes do absolutely everything that now drives the setting.

Well, I'd hardly call it mutilating...

I know you wouldn't, people never do when something comes in and changes the fundamental framework of what a setting is when it's couched in things that always appeal to fandoms. You can blatantly change as much as you like about a setting, and as long as it:

1) allows people to write wiki-style articles explicitly detailing elements of the backstory/worldbuilding with concrete canon and explain the origin of every single detail of everything

2) make some element about it darker or grittier so that people don't feel silly being grown men liking a thing originally aimed at people younger than them/which they enjoyed when they themselves were younger.

Do one of those two things, and you need to screw things up George Lucas Prequels level badly for people to ever be mad about it.

And how did George Lucas save some face by the end of his trilogy? Why, I remembered to put in Fanservice Element #1 but I critically forgot Fanservice Element #2! All I need to do is throw in a dash of child murder and everyone will love what I've changed!

It still makes me chuckle that there are people present in the 40k universe who honestly believe stuff like a meticulously faithful recreation of the SoB line is the herald of some hideous insidious infiltration and subversion of their beloved setting, when they've been applauding the complete and utter destruction of everything the 40k setting was just to make sure people don't have to feel like Their Guys Are The Baddies when they play loyalist space marines.

Anyone with any intellect knows that the loyalist sm are the 'baddies'. Heresy or no. If anything, the heresy provides even more proof for it.

30k is ruined because i know how it all works out. Its a cool story but most of us know how everything works out.

40k has way more to it than 30k. If you can't see past the Imperium and Space marines then 30k is alright but if you actually like other races and even just other factions of the imperium then 40k is just so much better.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
30k is ruined because i know how it all works out. Its a cool story but most of us know how everything works out.

sure except with the HH stuff it's not the destination that's important it's the Journey.

BrianDavion wrote:

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
30k is ruined because i know how it all works out. Its a cool story but most of us know how everything works out.

sure except with the HH stuff it's not the destination that's important it's the Journey.

This.

BrianDavion wrote:

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
30k is ruined because i know how it all works out. Its a cool story but most of us know how everything works out.

sure except with the HH stuff it's not the destination that's important it's the Journey.

Yeah this. A bit like Prequel trilogy. Despite knowing what'll happen as Mace Windu was trying to kill Palpatine by swinging his light saber at him, I was still excited and on the edge of my seat in the cinema when I went to see it.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:30k is ruined because i know how it all works out. Its a cool story but most of us know how everything works out.

Even this isn't true.

We know broad strokes. We know the vague things that are meant to happen, people who are fated to die and blows to be struck - but we have no idea how *everything* plays out.

We had no idea about what happened with the Unremembered Empire. We had no idea prior to the Terra books . We have no idea who *actually* stands between Horus and the Emperor, if that even happens how we think it does. We have no idea what happens to characters like Loken.

The idea that "it's boring because we know how it ends" is proven time and time again to be untrue. The Star Wars prequels would be boring by that metric (and to many people, they are - but not because of how we know what happens). Hell, at this point, it would make the original Star Wars films boring, because we know how they play out! Things like the Hobbit (if you watched in film release order) would be boring, or literally any film that utilises the old "see, this is how it happened!" narrator trope.

TL;DR, as other people have said, it's not the destination, it's the journey, and the HH/SoT series has provided plenty of twists and turns that we knew nothing of prior to the series.

Even this isn't true.

We know broad strokes. We know the vague things that are meant to happen, people who are fated to die and blows to be struck - but we have no idea how *everything* plays out.

No, for you it isn't true. The fact its basically about the Primarchs and i know which ones are bullet proof takes a large amount of suspense out of the books. They were decent enough but there aren't many real surprises..depending on how much you actually know about the Horus Hersey. A good example - Ferrus Manus dying at Istvaan would have been a really impactful even if I didn't know it was coming. Its like the Red Wedding in game of thrones if you got spoilers....it would be so less shocking. Imagine how much more impactful the traitors stories would be if you didn't know who was going to fall to chaos. Horus himself was made to be very likeable in the first book but you know that quickly changes to you can't full buy into it because you know hes a traitor. Its like watching a sports game when you know the results....its just not the same even if you enjoy it.


40k simply doesn't have this problem and 40k isn't nearly exclusively Space marines which 30k is. Its not a case of one is good and one is bad, its a preference and if you hate other races and factions like the IG then 30k is perfect for you.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:

Even this isn't true.

We know broad strokes. We know the vague things that are meant to happen, people who are fated to die and blows to be struck - but we have no idea how *everything* plays out.

No, for you it isn't true.

It's outright not true at all. Unless you know what happens to Loken and can say EXACTLY how the throne room encounter goes down, no-one knows.

We know the AFTERMATH, sure, but we have no idea what happens.

The fact its basically about the Primarchs and i know which ones are bullet proof takes a large amount of suspense out of the books.

Except it's not just about the Primarchs, or we wouldn't have fan favourite characters like Loken, Garro, Sevatar or Pius (well, that last one is debatable).

30k is more than just the Primarchs.

They were decent enough but there aren't many real surprises..depending on how much you actually know about the Horus Hersey.

Sorry, no real surprises?

A good example - Ferrus Manus dying at Istvaan would have been a really impactful even if I didn't know it was coming. Its like the Red Wedding in game of thrones if you got spoilers....it would be so less shocking. Imagine how much more impactful the traitors stories would be if you didn't know who was going to fall to chaos. Horus himself was made to be very likeable in the first book but you know that quickly changes to you can't full buy into it because you know hes a traitor. Its like watching a sports game when you know the results....its just not the same even if you enjoy it.

That doesn't mean that you can't have other twists and stuff and new context, new characterisation, new information.

Take the Battle for Calth. We all knew that the Word Bearers betray the Ultramarines over Calth. But reading HOW it's done, the description and detailing of the event - that's where the joy lies. Horus being a likeable character is essential to the tragedy. You're *supposed* to know he's going to fall, you're *supposed* to expect him to turn traitor. The first line in the first book is literally "I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor".
The point isn't to do some kind of "there's no way he could turn traitor, oh no, massive plot tweest!", it's to be "you know this guy's going to turn out bad, but we're going to show you how much of a cool guy he was, and how that idealistic, well-meaning, heroic figure became the arch-traitor" (or at least, that's how it should have been done, over the course of more books).

There is nothing wrong with telling stories that we already know the answer to. Otherwise, what's the point of telling any kind of historical story? Achilles? Dies. Caesar? Stabbed. Hamilton? Shot.
But there's no way those stories could be popular, because we already know what happens, right? That's why Hamilton, the musical, won.... eleven Tonies, including the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Because no-one cares about stories we know the answer to?

Good storytelling isn't about the ending. It's about the characters and the roads they take to get to the ending, how they change, how they interact with the world.

40k simply doesn't have this problem and 40k isn't nearly exclusively Space marines which 30k is. Its not a case of one is good and one is bad, its a preference and if you hate other races and factions like the IG then 30k is perfect for you.

Implying you can't love other factions and also love 30k? That's a weird statement.

I started 40k in 2nd edition when the basic framework of the setting was "codified". Recently I've started getting into RT era stuff and have to say that most of that stuff is vastly superior to the superhero space marine age that were introduced in 2nd.

When it comes to choosing between the 41st millennium and the 31st based on "modern" lore so to speak, I think they both share the same weaknesses and strengths.

Both universes centres around "larger than galaxy" characters and fail to give a good sense of the scale of a galaxy. Not as bad as SW-saga, but yeah.

I usually listen to a lot of audiobooks while painting, working or sleeping and most of them take place in the heresy (m31?). And sadly they exacerbate the issues I have with "modern" space marines. They're all freaking superheroes with an adolescent philosophical inner train of thoughts that make them unlikely as a military elite that is basically brainwashed (indoctrination and psycho-conditioning if we're being fancy) fanatics. And everyone is freakin' huge.

It's outright not true at all. Unless you know what happens to Loken and can say EXACTLY how the throne room encounter goes down, no-one knows.

We knew how the Emperor died in second edition if that is what your talking about. If its the "Emperor" who died in the first book....who cares? Literally the only thing that makes that even worth talking about is Sejanus died.

We know the AFTERMATH, sure, but we have no idea what happens.

The fact its basically about the Primarchs and i know which ones are bullet proof takes a large amount of suspense out of the books.

Except it's not just about the Primarchs, or we wouldn't have fan favourite characters like Loken, Garro, Sevatar or Pius (well, that last one is debatable).

IMO you can't compare knowing how things will work out in 30k compared to say the Eisenhorn novels where you have no idea what is going to happen. You can watch and enjoy a football game when you know the final score...but its hell of a lot more enjoyable when you don't.

Ok lets break this down.
So we know how everything works outs...therefore you can conclude anything that doesn't fit that is eliminated completely. Such as the Mega-Arachnids...oh no scary race...no they all die and they don't even bother to tell you how because they matter that little in the future. Interex - complete waste of time because even though they have super tech and knowledge of chaos...the imeperium kerb stomps them and every trace of them is lost...who would have seen that coming....well everyone who knows 40k. If you don't know how things work out then it makes these temporary factions actually interesting. The only real interest is how long till they kerb stomp this meaningless faction. The only faction that kind of makes a difference is the Interex and that is only so the space marines can steal a chaos dagger and then its back to wipe them out. Actually most of them only exist to have something taken from them...a certain Primarch who loots a sword. YOU might find interesting reading about a battle that is a full gone conclusion but for me that is just kinda boring, "They are so strong and great such a big threat" - Cool story but most if not all these factions don't even outlast a single book.

There is nothing wrong with telling stories that we already know the answer to. Otherwise, what's the point of telling any kind of historical story? Achilles? Dies. Caesar? Stabbed. Hamilton? Shot.
But there's no way those stories could be popular, because we already know what happens, right? That's why Hamilton, the musical, won.... eleven Tonies, including the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Because no-one cares about stories we know the answer to?

And this is why with an infinite number of possible plots and stories we get a Robin hood or King Arthur movie every 2 years. Caesar...yeah he was the only Roman leader who did anything apparently...why would you choose to do ANOTHER story about ceasar...EVERYONE knows what happens - Try something else Nero, Caligula, Vespasian or Tiberius. With literally infinite stories you could tell why would you keep going over the same ones?. However Horus Heresy is a far cry from Caesar and Troy in terms of number of times its been done.

Implying you can't love other factions and also love 30k? That's a weird statement.

Not really they don't exist or are barely mentioned in 30k, 30k is Space marines and Space marines. Lets say you don't like Space marine but love Eldar, Imperial guard, Sisters, Inquisition, Tau and Tyranids what has 30k got to offer you? Nothing.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:

It's outright not true at all. Unless you know what happens to Loken and can say EXACTLY how the throne room encounter goes down, no-one knows.

We knew how the Emperor died in second edition if that is what your talking about.

No, we know the myth of what happened, or the version of what happened at that time. The Horus Heresy books, however, are either telling the story in more detail, or changing what the original was - for example, in the original story, we were told something like that the Dark Angels never managed to arrive at Terra - yet in the latest HH book

Clearly, we don't know exactly how it ends. And, we might not. The final battle might be told in the aftermath, it might be covered from an unreliable narrator - but we don't know what happens.

There's plenty of speculation over what happened in the original, because it's not told from a primary source. So, whatever version you think you know, there's a good chance that it might not turn out that way in HH/SoT novels.

If its the "Emperor" who died in the first book....who cares? Literally the only thing that makes that even worth talking about is Sejanus died.

Good lord you really don't have literary awareness, do you?

The whole "I was there the day the Emperor died" extract is to FORESHADOW the Siege of Terra. Emperor of Mankind, heavily fortified palace on "Terra", Immortal companions (the same name as the Emperor's 300 Custodians, I believe), and Horus teleporting in to kill them, with Loken seeing a vision of the Emperor sat as a skeleton on their throne? It's all foreshadowing, all establishing "yes, we know that Horus will fight the Emperor, we know he's going to turn bad, but look, here's him doing the same thing, but doing it as a 'good' guy".
Not to mention the entire sequence plays up the "was the Great Crusade really a righteous endeavour" feelings - obviously, we as 21st century humans should be against the GC anyway, but it plants the seeds of doubt in the Astartes (our real protagonists for the first three books) that maybe they're not on the right side of history, with things like "he just asked to be left alone, why did he have to get involved and bring them to compliance?".

Again - more than just 'rooty tooty, point-and-shooty' going on.

We know the AFTERMATH, sure, but we have no idea what happens.

The fact its basically about the Primarchs and i know which ones are bullet proof takes a large amount of suspense out of the books.

Except it's not just about the Primarchs, or we wouldn't have fan favourite characters like Loken, Garro, Sevatar or Pius (well, that last one is debatable).

IMO you can't compare knowing how things will work out in 30k compared to say the Eisenhorn novels where you have no idea what is going to happen. You can watch and enjoy a football game when you know the final score...but its hell of a lot more enjoyable when you don't.

Got to disagree on that. We don't even know how thing fully work out in 30k, because the original stories we have aren't exactly first hand accounts.

So, let's take the original story. The Emperor is on the verge of losing. Horus lowers his shields. The Emperor teleports aboard. Sanguinius is killed on the flagship before the Emperor can reach him by Horus. Horus and the Emperor fight. The Emperor is losing, battered and weakened, and then a Guardsman called Ollanius Pius stands in the way of Horus. Horus kills them. The Emperor then kills Horus, but is mortally wounded in the process, and interred on the Golden Throne.
Sound about right?

But how much of that do we actually KNOW happens? Why does Horus lower his shields? Maybe he doesn't. Maybe someone aboard his ship lowers them without his instruction. Maybe his shields are broken by the loyalist fleet arriving. Maybe he lowers them out of a final sense of honour. Maybe he lowers them because he's running out of time and wants to bait the Emperor.

And Sanguinius being killed before the Emperor can reach him. Maybe that's not what happens. Maybe Sanguinius is impetuous, and deliberately seeks out Horus despite the Emperor telling him not to. Maybe Sanguinius kills Horus, and is corrupted himself, and the Emperor has to kill Sanguinius instead.
Maybe there is no guardsman that saves the Emperor. Maybe it's a Terminator, or a Custodian - because there's been stories where that's been the case. Maybe the mortal hero does more than just stand in the way and get killed. Maybe the Emperor doesn't really care about the mortal, and just gets lucky with a distracted Horus. Maybe it's not Horus who mortally wounds the Emperor, but something else.

Point is, we only know that the Emperor is interred on the Golden Throne, and Horus and Sanguinius die aboard the Vengeful Spirit. That's *it*. The actual details of the battle, and the leadup to it, are all unknown to us.

I once again bring up something like Romeo and Juliet. The opening narration pretty much spells out that Romeo and Juliet die. Does that make it a bad story?
In Hamilton, we're told in the first song that, spoilers, Hamilton is shot dead by Burr, sung BY Burr.
In any story about the American Revolutionary War, we know that the colonies will win the war and their freedom. Does that make those stories worthless?

Ok lets break this down.
So we know how everything works outs...therefore you can conclude anything that doesn't fit that is eliminated completely.

We had no idea about Garro. Yet there's plenty of reason that they survive the Heresy. Characters like Dantioch, while we now know don't survive, act as catalysts for further thought (are the Silver Skulls REALLY Ultramarine successors? Because their iconography is pretty similar to Iron Warriors, and we know through Dantioch that many Iron Warrior loyalists joined up with the Ultramarines Legion).
And with characters only introduced in the novels - we don't know what happens to them, but because of the vast time gap between 30k and 40k, there's plenty of reason for those characters to have survived, but not survive to 40k. Take Loken, for example. He ostensibly dies in the third book - but returns in others, because his fate isn't sealed. We know a handful of characters who canonically must die, and more who must live, but we don't know that for every character. Hell, we learn through the HH novels that Lorgar basically gets disowned by his own Legion!

Not everything comes down to who lives and dies, because that's such a shallow narrative.

Such as the Mega-Arachnids...oh no scary race...no they all die and they don't even bother to tell you how because they matter that little in the future.

The Megarachnids aren't narratively important because they're a big scary big race. They're important because they give us an indepth look into the Emperor's Children Legion, into characters like Eidolon, Lucius and Tarvitz, and further expand on the point I mentioned above - that the Great Crusade wasn't just or righteous, they just went around finding anything non-human, and found excuses to exterminate it. As the Interex say, the Megarachnids were harmless on a galactic scale, as they had no way of getting off world, and were essentially trapped there - and the humans still went out and picked a fight with them.

There's so much more to a story than "ooh, did they win".

Interex - complete waste of time because even though they have super tech and knowledge of chaos...the imeperium kerb stomps them and every trace of them is lost...who would have seen that coming....well everyone who knows 40k.

Except just because they're not mentioned in 40k doesn't mean than someone couldn't have escaped or simply gone into hiding, surely? And, more than anything else, you're more waiting to see HOW it goes wrong, WHY it fails. You're presented with a race of genuinely interesting and helpful humans, who seem to understand Chaos, and are so close to pulling back the veil of mystery over Chaos... and then it goes wrong. You're left with the mystery of "how did this happen!" and "what went wrong, why are the Interex so defensive!", and then you get the reveal later. But the important part isn't "do the Interex survive", it's "look what could have happened! Look how close things were to being good!"

Knives Out, Rian Johnson - a murder mystery, but we find out who murdered the suspect in the first half of the story! Is the rest of the story not good? No, because the important part wasn't about the murder, it was the aftermath.

It's not about who lives and dies. It's about the story.

If you don't know how things work out then it makes these temporary factions actually interesting.

Disagree. The interesting part is how they align into the plot and their impact on the characters in the story.

The only real interest is how long till they kerb stomp this meaningless faction.

Then I despair for your sense of interest.

The only faction that kind of makes a difference is the Interex and that is only so the space marines can steal a chaos dagger and then its back to wipe them out.

You know, and not at all about showing how narrow-minded and childish the Great Crusade was, how dangerous the lack of knowledge about Chaos was, demonstrating how humans could survive peacefully with xenos cultures, and demonstrating just how much of an utter ass Erebus is?

Yep, nothing else at all. /s

Actually most of them only exist to have something taken from them...a certain Primarch who loots a sword.

It's not about "wow, cool loot bruh". It's about establishing that humanity was extremely out of touch with the rest of the galaxy, and how that ignorance doomed them from the start.
Horus? Blind to Chaos, had no idea what he was walking into. Get tricked and deceived by it, and nearly killed because he has no idea how corrupting it can be (even if his ACTUAL conversion is super underwhelming).
Fulgrim? Unaware of the temptations of Chaos, is corrupted by the Laer Blade, finds his impulses harder to control, until he accidentally kills Ferrus (and yes, it's very much an accident what happens).

YOU might find interesting reading about a battle that is a full gone conclusion but for me that is just kinda boring, "They are so strong and great such a big threat" - Cool story but most if not all these factions don't even outlast a single book.

If all you're getting from the descriptions of the Laer and Interex are "wow, look at these cool super strong aliens", you're missing the point. They're not there to be the next big thing to beat up. They're there to embellish the characters, to show off aspects of the Space Marines and Legions and the Great Crusade's philosophy as a whole. They're there to act as narrative foils for the characters, not just a big boss with a health bar, because that's boring.

There is nothing wrong with telling stories that we already know the answer to. Otherwise, what's the point of telling any kind of historical story? Achilles? Dies. Caesar? Stabbed. Hamilton? Shot.
But there's no way those stories could be popular, because we already know what happens, right? That's why Hamilton, the musical, won.... eleven Tonies, including the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Because no-one cares about stories we know the answer to?

And this is why with an infinite number of possible plots and stories we get a Robin hood or King Arthur movie every 2 years.

And you know why most of them are bad? Because they do very little to actually retell those stories in an interesting and transformative way. Gritty remake with a psuedo-modern twist? Yawn.

Use the existing cultural contexts to tell a story, but make the story MEAN something. Talk about things, address things, do SOMETHING interesting. A Robin Hood story that leans into "wealth hording is bad, and here's Robin Hood to help the poor" is far better than "wow, look how cool with a bow he is!".

Caesar...yeah he was the only Roman leader who did anything apparently...why would you choose to do ANOTHER story about ceasar...EVERYONE knows what happens - Try something else Nero, Caligula, Vespasian or Tiberius. With literally infinite stories you could tell why would you keep going over the same ones?

But we already know what happens to Nero and Caligula and Vespasian and Tiberius. Just go read a history book, and then you know what happened, right!

That's what I'm getting from you here - why bother telling any kind of historical story when we can read a book and find out what happens? Nero commits suicide after being declared an enemy of the state, big whoop. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra? Psssh, we know what happens, why would I see it again? Boriiiiiing. Zero Dark Thirty? Bagged and tagged. Ladies and gents, we got him.

Except, that's incredibly reductive.

Implying you can't love other factions and also love 30k? That's a weird statement.

Not really they don't exist or are barely mentioned in 30k, 30k is Space marines and Space marines.

Except for the Mechanicum, and the Titan Legions, and the Knight Houses, and the Custodes, and the Silent Sisterhood, and the Imperial Army...

Is it Imperial-centric? Absolutely! Would I have loved an Eldar focused story about them trying to persuade a pre-Heresy commander to hear them out as they explain what's going to happen, get betrayed, take matters into their own hands, try and kill the human, and then end up making things worse by the end? Absolutely!

The important thing is knowing WHAT you're writing a story about, and what that story means, how it develops the narrative or setting. Orks in HH? In what way are they much different to 40k Orks? I don't imagine by much, so they're not critical to the metanarrative. Dark Eldar? Isolationist at the best of times. Eldar? Yeah, I can see that being a fertile ground for stories - ESPECIALLY in the immediate aftermath of the Fall.

But, by and large, the narrative of the Horus Heresy is about, primarily, the HORUS HERESY, and the Imperium as a whole.

In Gaunt's Ghosts, do I complain when I don't get the Chaos perspective in that series, or when I don't hear much about the White Scars aiding the Imperial efforts? No, because they're not the important part of the story, the Tanith Ghosts are.

Lets say you don't like Space marine but love Eldar, Imperial guard, Sisters, Inquisition, Tau and Tyranids what has 30k got to offer you? Nothing.

If you can only enjoy a story because it has to be about your faction, that's up to you, but I'd say that's an incredibly limiting bar you've set yourself. I generally find that the standard of storytelling in 30k is superior to 40k, because 40k is very much "bolter-porn" and is far more "oooh, do they beat the Big Bad Alien in this story!!", and usually eschews all kind of character development and introspection.

Is that all 40k stories? Absolutely not, the Severina Raine stories and Gaunt's Ghosts are excellent in those regards (fun fact - Gaunt's Ghosts features several time-skips and flashbacks in the second book - does that make the second book boring because we already know what happens?) But you're really telling me that 40k has a better writing standard? I disagree.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Rebel4ever85 wrote:

It's outright not true at all. Unless you know what happens to Loken and can say EXACTLY how the throne room encounter goes down, no-one knows.

We knew how the Emperor died in second edition if that is what your talking about.

No, we know the myth of what happened, or the version of what happened at that time. The Horus Heresy books, however, are either telling the story in more detail, or changing what the original was - for example, in the original story, we were told something like that the Dark Angels never managed to arrive at Terra - yet in the latest HH book

Spoiler:

Corswain shows up with a great deal of the DA fleet.

Clearly, we don't know exactly how it ends. And, we might not. The final battle might be told in the aftermath, it might be covered from an unreliable narrator - but we don't know what happens.

There's plenty of speculation over what happened in the original, because it's not told from a primary source. So, whatever version you think you know, there's a good chance that it might not turn out that way in HH/SoT novels.

If its the "Emperor" who died in the first book....who cares? Literally the only thing that makes that even worth talking about is Sejanus died.

Good lord you really don't have literary awareness, do you?

The whole "I was there the day the Emperor died" extract is to FORESHADOW the Siege of Terra. Emperor of Mankind, heavily fortified palace on "Terra", Immortal companions (the same name as the Emperor's 300 Custodians, I believe), and Horus teleporting in to kill them, with Loken seeing a vision of the Emperor sat as a skeleton on their throne? It's all foreshadowing, all establishing "yes, we know that Horus will fight the Emperor, we know he's going to turn bad, but look, here's him doing the same thing, but doing it as a 'good' guy".
Not to mention the entire sequence plays up the "was the Great Crusade really a righteous endeavour" feelings - obviously, we as 21st century humans should be against the GC anyway, but it plants the seeds of doubt in the Astartes (our real protagonists for the first three books) that maybe they're not on the right side of history, with things like "he just asked to be left alone, why did he have to get involved and bring them to compliance?".

Again - more than just 'rooty tooty, point-and-shooty' going on.

We know the AFTERMATH, sure, but we have no idea what happens.

The fact its basically about the Primarchs and i know which ones are bullet proof takes a large amount of suspense out of the books.

Except it's not just about the Primarchs, or we wouldn't have fan favourite characters like Loken, Garro, Sevatar or Pius (well, that last one is debatable).

IMO you can't compare knowing how things will work out in 30k compared to say the Eisenhorn novels where you have no idea what is going to happen. You can watch and enjoy a football game when you know the final score...but its hell of a lot more enjoyable when you don't.

Got to disagree on that. We don't even know how thing fully work out in 30k, because the original stories we have aren't exactly first hand accounts.

So, let's take the original story. The Emperor is on the verge of losing. Horus lowers his shields. The Emperor teleports aboard. Sanguinius is killed on the flagship before the Emperor can reach him by Horus. Horus and the Emperor fight. The Emperor is losing, battered and weakened, and then a Guardsman called Ollanius Pius stands in the way of Horus. Horus kills them. The Emperor then kills Horus, but is mortally wounded in the process, and interred on the Golden Throne.
Sound about right?

But how much of that do we actually KNOW happens? Why does Horus lower his shields? Maybe he doesn't. Maybe someone aboard his ship lowers them without his instruction. Maybe his shields are broken by the loyalist fleet arriving. Maybe he lowers them out of a final sense of honour. Maybe he lowers them because he's running out of time and wants to bait the Emperor.

And Sanguinius being killed before the Emperor can reach him. Maybe that's not what happens. Maybe Sanguinius is impetuous, and deliberately seeks out Horus despite the Emperor telling him not to. Maybe Sanguinius kills Horus, and is corrupted himself, and the Emperor has to kill Sanguinius instead.
Maybe there is no guardsman that saves the Emperor. Maybe it's a Terminator, or a Custodian - because there's been stories where that's been the case. Maybe the mortal hero does more than just stand in the way and get killed. Maybe the Emperor doesn't really care about the mortal, and just gets lucky with a distracted Horus. Maybe it's not Horus who mortally wounds the Emperor, but something else.

Point is, we only know that the Emperor is interred on the Golden Throne, and Horus and Sanguinius die aboard the Vengeful Spirit. That's *it*. The actual details of the battle, and the leadup to it, are all unknown to us.

I once again bring up something like Romeo and Juliet. The opening narration pretty much spells out that Romeo and Juliet die. Does that make it a bad story?
In Hamilton, we're told in the first song that, spoilers, Hamilton is shot dead by Burr, sung BY Burr.
In any story about the American Revolutionary War, we know that the colonies will win the war and their freedom. Does that make those stories worthless?

Ok lets break this down.
So we know how everything works outs...therefore you can conclude anything that doesn't fit that is eliminated completely.

We had no idea about Garro. Yet there's plenty of reason that they survive the Heresy. Characters like Dantioch, while we now know don't survive, act as catalysts for further thought (are the Silver Skulls REALLY Ultramarine successors? Because their iconography is pretty similar to Iron Warriors, and we know through Dantioch that many Iron Warrior loyalists joined up with the Ultramarines Legion).
And with characters only introduced in the novels - we don't know what happens to them, but because of the vast time gap between 30k and 40k, there's plenty of reason for those characters to have survived, but not survive to 40k. Take Loken, for example. He ostensibly dies in the third book - but returns in others, because his fate isn't sealed. We know a handful of characters who canonically must die, and more who must live, but we don't know that for every character. Hell, we learn through the HH novels that Lorgar basically gets disowned by his own Legion!

Not everything comes down to who lives and dies, because that's such a shallow narrative.

Such as the Mega-Arachnids...oh no scary race...no they all die and they don't even bother to tell you how because they matter that little in the future.

The Megarachnids aren't narratively important because they're a big scary big race. They're important because they give us an indepth look into the Emperor's Children Legion, into characters like Eidolon, Lucius and Tarvitz, and further expand on the point I mentioned above - that the Great Crusade wasn't just or righteous, they just went around finding anything non-human, and found excuses to exterminate it. As the Interex say, the Megarachnids were harmless on a galactic scale, as they had no way of getting off world, and were essentially trapped there - and the humans still went out and picked a fight with them.

There's so much more to a story than "ooh, did they win".

Interex - complete waste of time because even though they have super tech and knowledge of chaos...the imeperium kerb stomps them and every trace of them is lost...who would have seen that coming....well everyone who knows 40k.

Except just because they're not mentioned in 40k doesn't mean than someone couldn't have escaped or simply gone into hiding, surely? And, more than anything else, you're more waiting to see HOW it goes wrong, WHY it fails. You're presented with a race of genuinely interesting and helpful humans, who seem to understand Chaos, and are so close to pulling back the veil of mystery over Chaos... and then it goes wrong. You're left with the mystery of "how did this happen!" and "what went wrong, why are the Interex so defensive!", and then you get the reveal later. But the important part isn't "do the Interex survive", it's "look what could have happened! Look how close things were to being good!"

Knives Out, Rian Johnson - a murder mystery, but we find out who murdered the suspect in the first half of the story! Is the rest of the story not good? No, because the important part wasn't about the murder, it was the aftermath.

It's not about who lives and dies. It's about the story.

If you don't know how things work out then it makes these temporary factions actually interesting.

Disagree. The interesting part is how they align into the plot and their impact on the characters in the story.

The only real interest is how long till they kerb stomp this meaningless faction.

Then I despair for your sense of interest.

The only faction that kind of makes a difference is the Interex and that is only so the space marines can steal a chaos dagger and then its back to wipe them out.

You know, and not at all about showing how narrow-minded and childish the Great Crusade was, how dangerous the lack of knowledge about Chaos was, demonstrating how humans could survive peacefully with xenos cultures, and demonstrating just how much of an utter ass Erebus is?

Yep, nothing else at all. /s

Actually most of them only exist to have something taken from them...a certain Primarch who loots a sword.

It's not about "wow, cool loot bruh". It's about establishing that humanity was extremely out of touch with the rest of the galaxy, and how that ignorance doomed them from the start.
Horus? Blind to Chaos, had no idea what he was walking into. Get tricked and deceived by it, and nearly killed because he has no idea how corrupting it can be (even if his ACTUAL conversion is super underwhelming).
Fulgrim? Unaware of the temptations of Chaos, is corrupted by the Laer Blade, finds his impulses harder to control, until he accidentally kills Ferrus (and yes, it's very much an accident what happens).

YOU might find interesting reading about a battle that is a full gone conclusion but for me that is just kinda boring, "They are so strong and great such a big threat" - Cool story but most if not all these factions don't even outlast a single book.

If all you're getting from the descriptions of the Laer and Interex are "wow, look at these cool super strong aliens", you're missing the point. They're not there to be the next big thing to beat up. They're there to embellish the characters, to show off aspects of the Space Marines and Legions and the Great Crusade's philosophy as a whole. They're there to act as narrative foils for the characters, not just a big boss with a health bar, because that's boring.

There is nothing wrong with telling stories that we already know the answer to. Otherwise, what's the point of telling any kind of historical story? Achilles? Dies. Caesar? Stabbed. Hamilton? Shot.
But there's no way those stories could be popular, because we already know what happens, right? That's why Hamilton, the musical, won.... eleven Tonies, including the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama. Because no-one cares about stories we know the answer to?

And this is why with an infinite number of possible plots and stories we get a Robin hood or King Arthur movie every 2 years.

And you know why most of them are bad? Because they do very little to actually retell those stories in an interesting and transformative way. Gritty remake with a psuedo-modern twist? Yawn.

Use the existing cultural contexts to tell a story, but make the story MEAN something. Talk about things, address things, do SOMETHING interesting. A Robin Hood story that leans into "wealth hording is bad, and here's Robin Hood to help the poor" is far better than "wow, look how cool with a bow he is!".

Caesar...yeah he was the only Roman leader who did anything apparently...why would you choose to do ANOTHER story about ceasar...EVERYONE knows what happens - Try something else Nero, Caligula, Vespasian or Tiberius. With literally infinite stories you could tell why would you keep going over the same ones?

But we already know what happens to Nero and Caligula and Vespasian and Tiberius. Just go read a history book, and then you know what happened, right!

That's what I'm getting from you here - why bother telling any kind of historical story when we can read a book and find out what happens? Nero commits suicide after being declared an enemy of the state, big whoop. Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra? Psssh, we know what happens, why would I see it again? Boriiiiiing. Zero Dark Thirty? Bagged and tagged. Ladies and gents, we got him.

Except, that's incredibly reductive.

Implying you can't love other factions and also love 30k? That's a weird statement.

Not really they don't exist or are barely mentioned in 30k, 30k is Space marines and Space marines.

Except for the Mechanicum, and the Titan Legions, and the Knight Houses, and the Custodes, and the Silent Sisterhood, and the Imperial Army...

Is it Imperial-centric? Absolutely! Would I have loved an Eldar focused story about them trying to persuade a pre-Heresy commander to hear them out as they explain what's going to happen, get betrayed, take matters into their own hands, try and kill the human, and then end up making things worse by the end? Absolutely!

The important thing is knowing WHAT you're writing a story about, and what that story means, how it develops the narrative or setting. Orks in HH? In what way are they much different to 40k Orks? I don't imagine by much, so they're not critical to the metanarrative. Dark Eldar? Isolationist at the best of times. Eldar? Yeah, I can see that being a fertile ground for stories - ESPECIALLY in the immediate aftermath of the Fall.

But, by and large, the narrative of the Horus Heresy is about, primarily, the HORUS HERESY, and the Imperium as a whole.

In Gaunt's Ghosts, do I complain when I don't get the Chaos perspective in that series, or when I don't hear much about the White Scars aiding the Imperial efforts? No, because they're not the important part of the story, the Tanith Ghosts are.

Lets say you don't like Space marine but love Eldar, Imperial guard, Sisters, Inquisition, Tau and Tyranids what has 30k got to offer you? Nothing.

If you can only enjoy a story because it has to be about your faction, that's up to you, but I'd say that's an incredibly limiting bar you've set yourself. I generally find that the standard of storytelling in 30k is superior to 40k, because 40k is very much "bolter-porn" and is far more "oooh, do they beat the Big Bad Alien in this story!!", and usually eschews all kind of character development and introspection.

Is that all 40k stories? Absolutely not, the Severina Raine stories and Gaunt's Ghosts are excellent in those regards (fun fact - Gaunt's Ghosts features several time-skips and flashbacks in the second book - does that make the second book boring because we already know what happens?) But you're really telling me that 40k has a better writing standard? I disagree.

I could respond to this novel...but no...just no.

The problem I have with the HH is that it's even more Imperium biased than 40k.

It's hard enough to enjoy 40k through the scraps offered to non imperial players when the game is ostensibly sold as an equal platform for all armies.

It's impossible when they're not in the narrative at all, other than as mooks for your protagonists to kill.


Imperial players would be up in arms if GW just focused all its efforts on setting around Orks and produced nothing but Ork fiction for a decade.

Yet that's the norm for everyone else and has been for a while and it's getting worse.

I love my space Wolves and I enjoyed the ragnar novels, but I didn't need 200 more books about the imperium to keep enjoying them. And I would have loved just as much for my Orks or my Eldar.


The question posed in the OP is, intentionally or not, a prime example of the privilege imperial players have that they get to even have a choice of eras.

I might as well have said 'do you prefer 41st millennium or 1st millennium?' because hey the majority of the galaxy's protagonists would still exist and the Eldar would be ascendant and crazy powerful and the Orks would be fighting endless waves of Eldar drone armies for eternity and enjoying themselves immensely.

So what if the Imperium is confined to one planet of iron Age Level humans, they can still interact with Eldar hunting parties stalking them for fun.

This is why, regardless of quality I will always choose the 41st millennium.

The HH is a massive indulgence that excludes every other faction.

I mean, one could argue that the imperium is more popular because people unconsciously prefer reading about human characters and their development? I mean,I'd much rather read about the intricacies of kharn and argel tal' friendship for example. Granted, they could develop interesting characters for say, the eldar, dark eldar or maybe even the tau, but then that requires running them through the frame of human emotions and development.

Orks, well, theyre basically all the same. its hard to ascribe personalities to 'fungus.' this is also the reason that the setting hasn't been focused on them. there isnt really room for character development, as they all follow the same process. win more battles, get bigger. I actually dislike the fungus canon. its that silly trap of having to explain non human races using 'science'. they should have just let them be their own fantasy race, or possibly give it a LOTR type explanation that they are devolved/corrupted eldar.. this would at least allow them some character development.

as for knowing whats happening in the HH, that's not a problem at all. a good story is enjoyable even if you know the ending (and a good story teller can make it good ESPECIALLY if you know the ending) the idea that a story has to be "suprising" is, in literature, honestly a new thing. and frankly most of the time it's used by lazy over rated writers who subsisute shock for substance (looking at you GRR Martin)

Many of shakespear's plays (and almost all of his best ones) where about historical events and people knew what would happen. that didn't mean they wheren't any good.