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Worst Fluff-

For me, In order top 5 worst fluff moments:

1: Draigo- enough said.

2: Blood Angels and Necrons

3: Multi lasers on everyting, or rather anything by C.S. Goto

4: Hints that Machine Cult is necron cult...

5: Squigs being renegade tyranids made from ork biomass that the tyranids -freely- let go back to the Orks because they could not be incorporated into the hive mind.

Oh I forgot. How all the space marines want to be like the ultramarines. Even the alpha legion. They said all space marines want to be ultramarines. So that applies to chaos legions.

 Asherian Command wrote:
Oh I forgot. How all the space marines want to be like the ultramarines. Even the alpha legion. They said all space marines want to be ultramarines. So that applies to chaos legions.

Totally, dude. Some Chaos Marines want to be Ultramarines so bad they wear Ultramarine faces and heads all over their armor.

 LoneLictor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

ImAGeek wrote:
I didn't realise so many people hated the Horus Heresy novels, I think they're pretty good, some of them (Legion, First Heretic, Know No Fear) are excellent.

It's the same as any prequals to a series with long standing love. yes you get some valid complaints but most of them are "THIS ISN'T EXACTLY HOW I IMAGINED IT TO HAPPEN HOW DARE THEY!"

as it is we don't even know how this'll all play out. for all we know the Pius of history is some 16 year old kid who stole Oly's ID and signed up and was sent onto the ship because the emperor thought he was a perpetual.... actually that'd be kind of amusing

Not really that its more of. Why did you have to explain certain things. We get it it was epic. But stop writing about them!

except there's demand for it. the HH novels are the best selling books in the 40k novel line.

the thing to remember is that EVERYTHING we thought we knew about the Horus Heresy are legends and myth. we can't get too angry when the facts as we thought we knew them turn out to be differnt. it's like being up set to find out the reality of the man behind the Myth of King Arthur was differnt

Yes, it could've been much different.

But would you honestly be happy with a series of books about King Arthur where it turns out that he's a 43 black woman fighting to open a laundromat in downtown LA? Sure, the myths aren't 100% accurate, but do the authors really need to actively hate the myths? Should people who have contempt for the original be trusted with writing an adaptation?

Ollanius Pius is a timelord. Horus turned traitor because someone showed him a picture of the future where his statue was missing. The God Emperor was an atheist who hated Gods! Fulgrim was possessed and then possessed by a Daemon just to fill up space without actually having a fething story. Alpharius turned traitor to save the Imperium - an idea which doesn't make sense, was unnecessary, and essentially is a big F U to Alpha Legion fans. Battle for the Abyss is an entire novel about nothing.

Oh, and there are going to be about 600 more novels before we actually hit the Battle for Terra. Galaxy In Flames was the last Horus Heresy novel to actually advance the plot.

except your king arthur comparison is invalid. this isn't a case of them "hating" the original source material. this is a case of "well in this version of King Arthur, exclibur was a gift from Lady D'Lac, not the lady of the lake."

all the examples you cite mostly are things that make sense. Horus turned traitor because he was convinced that he wasn't going to be rememebred and rewarded for the victory, even before he fell he was a bit concerned, the Empire seemed to be being turned over to a council of humans. he was afraid that when the war was won, he and his sons would be swept aside and forgotten. by a father who, for all his words, did not really love him.
As for the God emperor, that's a delicious bit of irony all things considered isn't it?
Fulgrim's fate was never really discussed prior to the HH books. we can say if we like it or not but one can't say it ruined old fluff.

the alpha legion, well it does explain why their war cry is still "for the emperor"


anyway the plot has advanced since the last novels. it's been slow because we already know whats happened. so they wanna fill in all the details they can. One can't fault a book series for taking the scenic root when the entire purpose of a prequal is "it's not the destination it's the Journey"

 LoneLictor wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

ImAGeek wrote:
I didn't realise so many people hated the Horus Heresy novels, I think they're pretty good, some of them (Legion, First Heretic, Know No Fear) are excellent.

It's the same as any prequals to a series with long standing love. yes you get some valid complaints but most of them are "THIS ISN'T EXACTLY HOW I IMAGINED IT TO HAPPEN HOW DARE THEY!"

as it is we don't even know how this'll all play out. for all we know the Pius of history is some 16 year old kid who stole Oly's ID and signed up and was sent onto the ship because the emperor thought he was a perpetual.... actually that'd be kind of amusing

Not really that its more of. Why did you have to explain certain things. We get it it was epic. But stop writing about them!

except there's demand for it. the HH novels are the best selling books in the 40k novel line.

the thing to remember is that EVERYTHING we thought we knew about the Horus Heresy are legends and myth. we can't get too angry when the facts as we thought we knew them turn out to be differnt. it's like being up set to find out the reality of the man behind the Myth of King Arthur was differnt

Yes, it could've been much different.

But would you honestly be happy with a series of books about King Arthur where it turns out that he's a 43 black woman fighting to open a laundromat in downtown LA? Sure, the myths aren't 100% accurate, but do the authors really need to actively hate the myths? Should people who have contempt for the original be trusted with writing an adaptation?

Ollanius Pius is a timelord. Horus turned traitor because someone showed him a picture of the future where his statue was missing. The God Emperor was an atheist who hated Gods! Fulgrim was possessed and then possessed by a Daemon just to fill up space without actually having a fething story. Alpharius turned traitor to save the Imperium - an idea which doesn't make sense, was unnecessary, and essentially is a big F U to Alpha Legion fans. Battle for the Abyss is an entire novel about nothing.

Oh, and there are going to be about 600 more novels before we actually hit the Battle for Terra. Galaxy In Flames was the last Horus Heresy novel to actually advance the plot.

The first 2 I'll give you. But the Emperor is only a god emperor because people decided they wanted to worship him, he isn't a god, just a weird superhuman thing. He hates gods, and didn't want to be worshipped. I don't get how the Alpha Legion is a big FU to AL fans as we still don't know what's going on with them, it looks like the 2 primarchs have different ideas about what they want... I haven't read battle for the abyss because I've heard it's crap but you can't judge a whole series on one crap book. And Gakaxy in Flames being the last novel to advance the plot is just ridiculous hyperbole.

Yes there's a few wtf moments but that was bound to happen with so many writers working on one series, and on the whole the books are pretty good. And as said before clearly other people agree as they're the best selling BL books...

To be fair, the lore of the Emperor hating gods is actually rather recent.

It does kinda make sense though, if people are gonna worship gods, then they'd be happy to worship the chaos gods, so I can see why he wants to quash all god-worship.

I'll admit that I don't fully understand the hatred for the HH novels. (Probably my fault.) I've loved most of them so far. There's only two that I haven't read and I'm about to finish Forgotten Empire.
As someone who's always wondered about the Horus Heresy since RT days, I'm really enjoying this journey.

I never liked the BA fluff concerning the Sin of Damnation and bringing the chapter down to 53 (?) Battle Brothers at one point. Just seems excessive and hokey (even by GW standards) to have such a venerated legion that close to extinction, but flash forward to M41 and hey we're back to thousand!

Might as well have Dante sitting around a campfire telling the scouts how he walked a 1,000 miles in the snow uphill both ways to get to the battlefield.... There's a difference between epic storytelling and hyperbole.

BrianDavion wrote:
the thing to remember is that EVERYTHING we thought we knew about the Horus Heresy are legends and myth. we can't get too angry when the facts as we thought we knew them turn out to be differnt. it's like being up set to find out the reality of the man behind the Myth of King Arthur was differnt

That's the thing. The problem is not that the 'facts' are different from how we imagined them, it's that they took the ephemeral, mysterious, mutable lore of those deep past events, a place where there is little in the way of 'facts', and nailed it all down. It could have been good, it could have been bad, quality isn't the issue, it's that they solidified it all.

Why is that an issue?

I for one quite enjoy the Heresy series, and think it's generally rather well written- superior to Codex fluff in most instances.

Why should I be denied that fluff because you think the events it surrounds should be dull and "mysterious"? Why don't you just not read it and ignore it?

blaktoof wrote:

5: Squigs being renegade tyranids made from ork biomass that the tyranids -freely- let go back to the Orks because they could not be incorporated into the hive mind.

That hasn't been mentioned for what, 15 years? Sounds like second edition Ork fluff to me, before either race was fleshed out to the extent that they are today.

More recent Ork fluff has clearly identified Squigs as one of the early stages of a natural Orkology.

 LoneLictor wrote:

Ollanius Pius is a timelord.

Stupid but not noteworthy. Not yet anyway.

Horus turned traitor because someone showed him a picture of the future where his statue was missing.

Yeah Horus' fall was lame.

The God Emperor was an atheist who hated Gods!

One of the best twists of the Heresy, 10/10.

Fulgrim was possessed and then possessed by a Daemon just to fill up space without actually having a fething story.

What a nonsensical statement. There was a story. It was a story about Fulgrim being ensnared and ultimately possessed by a Daemon. Like what happens to many men and women in the 40k universe, showing that the power of Chaos can dominate even the mightiest of men. And it showed that for all their power, the Primarchs are still but men.

Fulgrim was a great book.

Alpharius turned traitor to save the Imperium - an idea which doesn't make sense, was unnecessary, and essentially is a big F U to Alpha Legion fans. Battle for the Abyss is an entire novel about nothing.

Yeah the Alpha Legion suck and Battle of the Abyss was filler.

Oh, and there are going to be about 600 more novels before we actually hit the Battle for Terra. Galaxy In Flames was the last Horus Heresy novel to actually advance the plot.

What an outright false claim to make.

A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns were not only good, but necessary. Same with Flight of the Eisenstein, or Fulgrim. Or Fear to Tread. Or especially The First Heretic.

Get over your bias man.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Why is that an issue?

I for one quite enjoy the Heresy series, and think it's generally rather well written- superior to Codex fluff in most instances.

Why should I be denied that fluff because you think the events it surrounds should be dull and "mysterious"? Why don't you just not read it and ignore it?

"Oh, but if it was left mysterious it could be left to the player to deci-"

I don't care about what you or any other player think might have happened. If someone wants to write fanfiction, that's fine, but don't expect GW or BL to bend over backwards to accommodate it. Just ignore the parts you don't like and move on.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
Why is that an issue?

I for one quite enjoy the Heresy series, and think it's generally rather well written- superior to Codex fluff in most instances.

Why should I be denied that fluff because you think the events it surrounds should be dull and "mysterious"? Why don't you just not read it and ignore it?

To be honest; I do ignore the stuff hammered out in the Heresy books. But that makes me 'the crazy one'.

Before all theories were equally crazy, and equally valid, everybody was right and everybody was wrong. Now: One theory is valid, all the rest are crazy. Putting the people who want to think the emperor could not possibly have been that stupid in the same camp as the female SM, and 'Xenos are just propaganda' people.

 fallinq wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
Oh I forgot. How all the space marines want to be like the ultramarines. Even the alpha legion. They said all space marines want to be ultramarines. So that applies to chaos legions.

Totally, dude. Some Chaos Marines want to be Ultramarines so bad they wear Ultramarine faces and heads all over their armor.

The Ultramarines are the reason I turned traitor

Mechanicum was an important plot moment too, although it does show that the time line of the book releases and the time line of the book events are totally unrelated - Mars fell towards the very end of the Heresy.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Fulgrim was possessed and then possessed by a Daemon just to fill up space without actually having a fething story.

What a nonsensical statement. There was a story. It was a story about Fulgrim being ensnared and ultimately possessed by a Daemon. Like what happens to many men and women in the 40k universe, showing that the power of Chaos can dominate even the mightiest of men. And it showed that for all their power, the Primarchs are still but men.

I think V__D that the problem is that Fulgrim casts the Daemon out and the whole 'Primarchs are just men' thing was cheapened by it, as clearly, they aren't. Ok, a Primarch is a being who is powerful and if anyone can cast out a Daemon on their own accord, it is going to be a Primarch. But then why even have the possession in there at all if Fulgrim is just going to become a Daemon anyway. Might as well have stuck to the pre FFG fluff where it's Fulgrims actions that gain him ascension, not some ritual. Personally, I really didn't like Fulgrim, but I enjoyed it more after The Reflection Crack'd came out as it seemed to correct the story somewhat.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

What an outright false claim to make.

A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns were not only good, but necessary. Same with Flight of the Eisenstein, or Fulgrim. Or Fear to Tread. Or especially The First Heretic.

Get over your bias man.

I don't know if its bias as you both have a point. We don't know how many HH stories there are going to be. Apart from the main books, look at all the short stories, novellas and audio books. How relevant are they to the plot? I have no idea as I can't keep up with what is going on. How necessary are Battle for the Abyss (which has pieces that get forgotten in later books), Nemesis, Legion or Betrayer to the actual story? Each might have some tie to the main story of course, but they could quite easily be their own stories.

Largely, I am enjoying the HH series like you, and in most cases am glad that they are given us books like the ones I have mentioned that might not be required, because we are getting that additional insight into what happened throughout its entire course. But then there is part of me that thinks they are given us too much filler when they could be giving us what we need to know, rather than cow milking, and that having it stooped in mystery was more enjoyable.

I would love to have a Horus Heresy Encyclopedia which just gives us facts and narration, much like the way Forge World have given us. Collected Visions style, but complete.

Atheist = someone that does not believe in god/gods. The Emperor absolutely believes in them...and wants to destroy them. Buying killing off belief in gods, they lose all their power. I guess it's his way of breaking hus deal with chaos; received help making the primarchs, then kills off chaos so he doesn't have to make good on his side of the bargain. Chaos sees what he is doing so they corrupt his greatest creation. Good stuff.

I absolutely hate with all my heart the Tau empire. They don't have an epic background (or a good enough lack off one) like the other races, plus they look and feel totally out of place in the WH40K universe. I'd love to see them completely wiped out of the setting.

 Musashi363 wrote:
Atheist = someone that does not believe in god/gods. The Emperor absolutely believes in them...and wants to destroy them. Buying killing off belief in gods, they lose all their power. I guess it's his way of breaking hus deal with chaos; received help making the primarchs, then kills off chaos so he doesn't have to make good on his side of the bargain. Chaos sees what he is doing so they corrupt his greatest creation. Good stuff.

The Emperor simply acknowledged there were some creatures on an higher plane of existence that wanted to eat the feth out of human race vital energy (or whatever you want to describe CG purpose). He didn't considered them "gods" in the literal sense of the word.

 Musashi363 wrote:
Atheist = someone that does not believe in god/gods. The Emperor absolutely believes in them...and wants to destroy them. Buying killing off belief in gods, they lose all their power. I guess it's his way of breaking hus deal with chaos; received help making the primarchs, then kills off chaos so he doesn't have to make good on his side of the bargain. Chaos sees what he is doing so they corrupt his greatest creation. Good stuff.

Considering the rumors that the four chaos gods are just daemons of a stronger caliber that could get followers, it would make sense if the Emperor just believed them to be stronger daemons he needs to stomp out hard.

 fallinq wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
Oh I forgot. How all the space marines want to be like the ultramarines. Even the alpha legion. They said all space marines want to be ultramarines. So that applies to chaos legions.

Totally, dude. Some Chaos Marines want to be Ultramarines so bad they wear Ultramarine faces and heads all over their armor.

But that is only because Ultramarines are so awesome, everyone wants to be them.

See:

How necessary are Battle for the Abyss (which has pieces that get forgotten in later books), Nemesis, Legion or Betrayer to the actual story?

I've actually not even read Nemisis so... not very? Battle for the Abyss was largely pointless too (although it was intreasting simply because it had loyalist members of traitor legions, it gave us a glimpse into how confused the early days of the Heresy likely where) I'd argue Betrayer was extremely important. it gave us a look at the World eaters and important events within that Legion, it may not have brought the legions to the gates of Terra but it taught us a fair bit about the world eaters. try finding a world eaters fan and telling them Betrayer was a useless book and I think they'd disagree. The same arguement can be brought fourth for Legion. explaining why the alpha legion went traitor, and giving us a look inside them, is hardly useless. Thats one thing worth noting about the filler novels. What one person considers filler, another person could consider an "important novel about my favorite legion"

 Happyjew wrote:
But that is only because Ultramarines are so awesome, everyone wants to be them.

See:

I'll take dis git over Calgar any day.

BrianDavion wrote:

How necessary are Battle for the Abyss (which has pieces that get forgotten in later books), Nemesis, Legion or Betrayer to the actual story?

I've actually not even read Nemisis so... not very? Battle for the Abyss was largely pointless too (although it was intreasting simply because it had loyalist members of traitor legions, it gave us a glimpse into how confused the early days of the Heresy likely where) I'd argue Betrayer was extremely important. it gave us a look at the World eaters and important events within that Legion, it may not have brought the legions to the gates of Terra but it taught us a fair bit about the world eaters. try finding a world eaters fan and telling them Betrayer was a useless book and I think they'd disagree. The same arguement can be brought fourth for Legion. explaining why the alpha legion went traitor, and giving us a look inside them, is hardly useless. Thats one thing worth noting about the filler novels. What one person considers filler, another person could consider an "important novel about my favorite legion"

Nemesis is more of a side story than part of the main plotline (where in Battle for the Abyss, absolutely nothing happened). Basically, Nemesis is a "behind the scenes" look at two secret plots to assassinate the Emperor and Horus (of course, we all know how that will turn out before it happens) and the part of the Horus Heresy that took place within the Officio Assassinorium. It's not strictly "necessary," and probably won't be referenced in other books because it was all secret, but if you're a fan of the Officio Assassinorium, it's pretty good. And the argument that you already know what's going to happen destroys tension could be made for the entire Horus Heresy.

Any fluff concerning stubborn SM chapters having their companies or entire compliment of warriors wiped out because they don't know when to quit. I get that they're human at least in part, but this gak is idiotic. Makes for great fluffy last stands, which I love, but when you look at the big picture it's too stupid for words.

Marines having an infinite supply of grenades. Seriously, read the Space Wolf stories (I still love them to pieces), but Ragnar and his homies have like a thousand grenades and melta bombs.

I actually thought Legion was one of the best books in the series, even if it all does kind of make no sense.

 Lord Spartacus wrote:
I'll take dis git over Calgar any day.

"Shoot da choppy ones! Chop da shooty ones! Waaagh!"

- Codex Astartes, the revised edition

tgjensen wrote:

 Lord Spartacus wrote:
I'll take dis git over Calgar any day.

"Shoot da choppy ones! Chop da shooty ones! Waaagh!"

- Codex Astartes, the revised edition

"DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!!!!"
- Codex Astartes Volume 2, the revised edition

 Frankenberry wrote:
Any fluff concerning stubborn SM chapters having their companies or entire compliment of warriors wiped out because they don't know when to quit. I get that they're human at least in part, but this gak is idiotic. Makes for great fluffy last stands, which I love, but when you look at the big picture it's too stupid for words.

Marines having an infinite supply of grenades. Seriously, read the Space Wolf stories (I still love them to pieces), but Ragnar and his homies have like a thousand grenades and melta bombs.

Except that this sort of thing happens all the time in history. Japan and Russia in World War 2 would order their soldiers to hold no matter the cost, resulting in tons of suicidal defenses, resulting in the decimation of entire army groups.

Germany did this too. Quite a bit, actually. There were some units that couldn't fall back unless given permission from Uncle Addie himself.