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Hey guys, I've jus. Finished reading vulkan lives, and I hOnestly have no idea what happened in the entire book. I know right?
Well I know I sound either slowed or idiotic, but I was wondering if any one could give me a relatively detailed explanation of the whole book, especially the end from about the point leodrakk charges the space port.
I'm mainly confused about the ending, because suddenly we're here and he betrays him and then him betrays he and it's all over the place.
Thanks in advance.
P.s: I pinky promise I'm not usually this stupid.

The story goes back and forth like a lot of books out there between past and present.

Thanks for that.
A few questions:
1. What IS the cabal?
2. Grammaticus mentions a body grabbing/scratching his leg, warp craft or just accident?
3. At the end, It mentions 'gate keeper' what is this?
4. All of the space marine on traoris died right?

The Cabal is an organization made up of various alien races who wish to see the complete destruction of chaos and were first introduced in the book Legion. They wish to accomplish this by allowing Horus to win, and thus letting Lorgar complete his plan of merging all of humanity with chaos. This would bind chaos to the materium permanently, allowing them to remain outside of the warp indefiniately. However, the Cabal has foreseen that should this come to pass, Horus would regret his decision and in seeing what he has done, would wipe out all of humanity, taking chaos with it.

If you've read Aurellian, you'd see that Lorgar's ultimate goal during the heresy is a symbiosis of chaos and humans. Chaos, while powerful and all encompassing, can not remain in the materium indefinately. Currently they require continuous prayer and sacrifice to maintain their physical forms. The Gal Vorbak, Lorgar's daemonic marines are an example of the symbiosis done correctly. The human gains tremendous power and the daemon can remain in the physical world permanently. However, if this were done for ALL humans and ALL of chaos, it would change the nature of chaos. They would no longer be tied to the warp, could no longer be banished to the warp and thus could be permanently killed. It's this fact that the Cabal is banking on and it's why they need Horus to win so badly.

Sorry if that was too much, but a lot of people fail to understand what the Cabal are actually about.

Again, thanks. Besides vulkan lives I've only actuely read up to fulgrim. I read vulkan lives on suggestion.

Past Fulgrim, I didn't really enjoy much of the others up until Deliverance Lost, then the series started to pick up in pace again. Notable ones in between are Legion, Mechanicum, and A Thousand Sons. The writing is pretty average of all science fiction novels. But you don't look to the Horus Heresy Series for good writing. You're there to find out what happened 10,000 years before the current setting. To learns its nasty secrets. That in itself, for me anyway is worth reading.

the shrouded lord wrote:Again, thanks. Besides vulkan lives I've only actuely read up to fulgrim. I read vulkan lives on suggestion.

That...that seems quite silly considering how the Horus Heresy books build on one another. A little bit of skipping around is understandable but reading the 5th and the 29th books out of a 30+ book series seems rather strange.

LumenPraebeo wrote:Past Fulgrim, I didn't really enjoy much of the others up until Deliverance Lost, then the series started to pick up in pace again. Notable ones in between are Legion, Mechanicum, and A Thousand Sons. The writing is pretty average of all science fiction novels. But you don't look to the Horus Heresy Series for good writing. You're there to find out what happened 10,000 years before the current setting. To learns its nasty secrets. That in itself, for me anyway is worth reading.

Or you ignore the garbage like Nick Kyme, Ben Counter, and James Swallow and the quality goes up five-fold.

Oddly enough I thought Swallow had done a decent job with Nemesis and Flight Of The Eisenstein. Fear To Tread on the other hand...

Deliverance Lost was garbage. You liked that and didn't like Prospero Burns or A Thousand Sons or Legion?

I have no words.

Your brain hurting is a natural reaction to the lunacy that is the Horus Heresy series.

Graham McNeil... He has an extensive vocabulary and describes things in great detail.

Unfortunately, his characters are usually flat and boring.

Well, I've actuely liked all if them so far. I plan on reading all of them, can't wait for the thou
Sand sons.

I hated this book

 the shrouded lord wrote:
Again, thanks. Besides vulkan lives I've only actuely read up to fulgrim. I read vulkan lives on suggestion.

Never talk to that person again. They are not a friend.

Check out 40k wiki for cabal I learned almost a quarter of my 40k knowledge there

 Metaljunx wrote:
Check out 40k wiki for cabal I learned almost a quarter of my 40k knowledge there

No, never check the Warhammer 40k Wiki- they're terrible. The Lexicanum is filled almost entirely with cited, factual information while the W40K Wiki is stuffed with blatant fanon and doesn't even have a proper bibliography. feth, they can't even get their colors right- on the page for Biel Tan they have the main color being baby blue. I don't even know how it's possible to feth that up.

problem with the lexicon is they don't summerize novels very well.. AT ALL

The book killed Vulkan by making him a Mary Sue(the guy wanted to a fething famer) and makes Curze into a comic book villian. The conversation between them was stolen from the second batman movie almost word for word. Vulkan does not live and neither does Curze, just the incredible hulk and the joker.

I really thought this book sucked too. I think the whole thing with Vulkan being utterly fething invincible and immune to everything was pretty daft.

Although, clearly someone yanks that fething knife out of him that Grammaticus plunged home and then he happily starts cracking on AGAIN, because it says in the Codex that he speaks with Gulliman again during that whole Dorn argument.

Basically In my book it seems ridiculous that you can blast his head off with a melta and it just magically glues itself back on again.

I've read every book in the series. Some of them twice. I also have all the audio dramas.

Vulkan lives is the ONLY book in the series I nearly couldn't finish. Very interesting subject, but the to and fro and gaps left in the story telling was just to much for me to take....

Definately the worste written book in the series so far for me.

 Kain wrote:
Your brain hurting is a natural reaction to the lunacy that is the Horus Heresy series.

This. Very much this.

I hope it is ok to post here.

Just read the book and i went WTF? What was the whole point of the Space marines with Grammaticus, the whole end battle story makes no sense, it was a trap for themselves?

The more I hear about the newer HH books, the happier I am I stopped reading them.

I really wish GW had left the HH as a shrouded mystery, instead of the mish mash of emotionally fragile demigods, absent minded gods, and incomprehensible gibberish plot twists.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The more I hear about the newer HH books, the happier I am I stopped reading them.

I really wish GW had left the HH as a shrouded mystery, instead of the mish mash of emotionally fragile demigods, absent minded gods, and incomprehensible gibberish plot twists.

I stopped after Angel Exterminatus when