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Lets be honest, the Horus Heresy is a very long 50 book series with multiple authors who aren't even halfway done with the story yet.
Suppose you're able to reel in your friends into the Warhammer lore. With such an array of books, each being around 400 pages long, where do you start?
Do you tell them about the Age of Strife?
Do you tell them about the Men of Iron?
Do you go into detail about the warp incursions due to the literally birth fething of Slaanesh by the Eldar?

OR
Do you explain why Lorgar is a little bitch:



In all seriousness, how do you guys go on to describe the series?

I just tell em "book series, prequal to warhammer 40k"

I would tell them about the Horse Heresy. Instead.

I tell them it's the story of a superhuman god-emperor who got betrayed by his most favoured "son" the supehuman-general Horus, better known as Primarch Horus in the setting, after he got seduced by demonic entities from another dimension. He rallied half of his "borthers", other Primarchs, while the other half fought for the go-emperor. In the end, Horus is killed by his "father" who is himself mortally wounded. The god-emperor is put a sort of life sustaining device called the Golden Throne to keep himself alive but in comatose state. The remaining Primarchs flee into a breach between our dimension and that of the demons, the Warp, to hide and launch raids and invasion to finish of what they started. It has been going on for 10 000 years. Those books relate the conflict from right before Horus betray the god-emperor to the moment he gets killed. Its a bit like a mix between Games of Throne, Clash of the Titan, the Death of Arthur, all of this in space.

I tell them that Magnus did nothing wrong and leave it at that.

I tell them it's Milton's Paradise Lost, in space.

With the nihilism ramped up to 11.

If they aren't familiar with PL, they don't dance and if they don't dance then they aren't friends of mine and they go somewhere else.

Short version? "A massive civil war and the founding myth of the Imperium". If you need more detail I find the Webway Project, Nikaea, Isstvan, and the siege of Terra are the major turning points on which to hang the narrative.

A bunch of greek god styled man children burn down their Empire before they finish building it.

A thrown-together bit of backstory to explain why a game had the same tiny Space Marine models on both sides.

Later expanded into a Bolter Porn publishing empire and an excuse to sell one million flavours of more expensive big miniature Space Marines.

I'll answer this one in two ways. First is how I explain the Horus Heresy and the other is how I explain the 40k background.

1: A bunch of years back I had the good fortune of having to explain the HH to a librarian. The library was looking for youth books so me and one other youngster was asked to attend a meeting. The librarian had no knowledge of 40k.
I explained it as a galactic civil war set 30.000years in the future wrought by betrayal and genocide. The main focus lies on 20 commanders of the galactic armies and their relationship. Other factions are included in various books. What really sets it appart from other sci-fi works is that most books have diffrent authors making every story in the setting very unique.

2: I recall having to explain 40k and its history to my girlfriend. What I said was: An galactic empire spanning the milky way in a constant state of war against various oppositions. Every single planet has radically diffrent cultures and are only bound by tax, rule, religion and military. It's a place where endless ammounts of stories can be explored because of the variety of customs the diffrent people live by. Far more then current earths nations you have an seemingly endless ammount of cultural classes between the people, and that's not even taking into account the galactic wide factions, aliens or other dimension.
The history of the setting is that most sci-fi universes, think Terminator, Star Trek, firefly and so on has already happened. Mankind has moved forward 40.000 years and nearly gone extinct on 3 seperate ocassions. The current ruling form is the only one that's proven stable and to keep humanity safe, and it's one foccused only on the defence and survival of the human race as a whole.

What friends???

Galactic civil war fought with chainswords when they ran out of nuclear weapons.

the Heresy was the human civil war that ended a 'Golden' Age and plunged the IoM into its current grimdark state, like the fall of Camelot etc

My friends that even know the phrase 'horus heresy' already know the story. My friends that don't, I wouldn't even bother trying. I've never been a fan of the politely glazed over expression. When people ask about what I'm reading (which is most days, being an English teacher) and it happens to be a heresy story, I just tell them a Sci fi series about a galactic civil war. Rarely gets any follow up questions.

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
Lets be honest, the Horus Heresy is a very long 50 book series with multiple authors who aren't even halfway done with the story yet.
Suppose you're able to reel in your friends into the Warhammer lore. With such an array of books, each being around 400 pages long, where do you start?
Do you tell them about the Age of Strife?
Do you tell them about the Men of Iron?
Do you go into detail about the warp incursions due to the literally birth fething of Slaanesh by the Eldar?

Why would you? The Age of Strife is only vaguely relevant and the rest... isn't at all.

Humanity has a galactic empire now, boss is a demigod, makes more demigods, and half turn on him. War happens. The end.

the horus heresy is one of those things that anyone whose poked at 40k at all knows the vague details of. If they haven't. then, to be blunt they proably don't care.

The galaxys biggest dill weed made 20 major dickheads to lead 20 legions of super dickheads. Everything was good for awhile until the biggest dickheads favorite major dill weed decided he had had enough of the biggest dickheads gak. He got some of the other major dick heads to join him and they all punched on for a bit but broke all their toys and mostly died. 10k years later the toys still barely work.

If they are familiar with 40k, this is what I tell them...

'You know 40k? The Horus Heresy is all the stuff that happens at the 10k mark, back when the Emperor was still up and about. You'll like it."

If they aren't familiar with 40k...

"It's set in the Warhammer 40k IP... sort of like Event Horizon meets Starcraft. The Horus Heresy series specifically details how things got to be the way they are. It's sort of a prequel series to the main timeline. It's worth a read, but I'd def start with some current timeline stuff. If you're interested, I can give you a few books to read. Eisenhorn is really good and it's written by the same guy who wrote Guardians of the Galaxy."

A terrible series of books that should have never been written.

Some things do not need expanding upon in almost pornographic detail. Especially things that happened longer ago in 40k's timeline than current recorded human history.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
A thrown-together bit of backstory to explain why a game had the same tiny Space Marine models on both sides.

Later expanded into a Bolter Porn publishing empire and an excuse to sell one million flavours of more expensive big miniature Space Marines.

pretty much what he said- always makes me laugh, thinking back to the original Epic SM 1

So the big guy makes a bunch of other guys to conquer stuff and then half of the other guys decide to rebel against the big guy and they lose and now the big guy is dead the end!

It is a nuanced story, no doubt about it...

But I'd explain it thus:

"The Emperor had it all figured out.
All of it.
Then The Arch-Douchebag Horus had a hissy fit for no good reason whatsoever.
He sold his soul for bigger muscles, which was a foolish cause.
He tried to ruin all the good things The Imperium does for everyone forever but he didn't succeed.
The Emperor was badly wounded while Horus was completely obliterated, body and soul, by his might.
The Imperium endured all of that and continues to fight the good fight to this very day."

The star wars first (second created) trilogy, but a bit more dark and deathy, with anakin dying at the end and obi wan placed into a vegetive state. Crucially, no Jar Jar.

It's too hard for me to explain the HH in both a serious face and without the whole thing sounding childish. It gets worse with the fall of the Eldar. The saving grace of the fluff is that it can be told in such way that jokes can be provided for both adults and youth to have good laugh at.

I'm sure it is sufficiently summarised in pretty much every edition of the Space Marine codex. No need to touch the bloated Black Library mess.

A collection of twelve foot tall angry toddlers were given guns and soldiers, then told to go conquer the universe for humanity, despite the universe already being full of humanity. They were lead by someone who could see the future, but somehow always managed to be surprised when his angry toddlers acted like angry toddlers.

 Daemonhost Cherubael wrote:
Lets be honest, the Horus Heresy is a very long 50 book series with multiple authors who aren't even halfway done with the story yet.
Suppose you're able to reel in your friends into the Warhammer lore. With such an array of books, each being around 400 pages long, where do you start?
Do you tell them about the Age of Strife?
Do you tell them about the Men of Iron?
Do you go into detail about the warp incursions due to the literally birth fething of Slaanesh by the Eldar?

OR
Do you explain why Lorgar is a little bitch:



In all seriousness, how do you guys go on to describe the series?

I keep it simple and in outline form, avoiding terms that are specific to the lore (like the Pig Latin known as High Gothic"). To make things a bit more understandable, I also briefly describe the Warp, since it's key to everything 40k.

Well. To get started on 40k lore, you gotta start with the Primarchs. Then Space marine Legions. I'd we didn't have the personality of each individual Primarch and legion, the 40k setting wouldnt have held up my own invested interest.

After that, a brief look into xenos.

It's been easier to explain it as a Game of Thrones meets Star Wars.

So the good guys are space Caesar, a space vampire, a werewolf, a half cyborg, Mongolian biker, Charcoal skinned blacksmith, gold armored architect, and sneaky commando.

The bad guys are space lex Luther, evil David bowie, angry barbarian, grim reaper, evil space knights, daemonic zealots, sadistic predator meets batman, and galactic terrorists.

If they're still listening mention the alien cabbage patch kids, space elves, space cenobytes, anime mech suits, robot factory workers, robot mummies and space locusts.

Getting out book from carry-on luggage on cross-Atlantic plane with work colleagues - "Hey TangoTwoBravo, what in the **** is "Flesh Tearers?"

Me - "I think its one of my daughter's vampire books I grabbed by mistake...Its not bad..."