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So the existing lore is, Sanguinius finds Horus, the two fight, horus kills sanguinius, then the emperor comes along fights horus, is mortally wounded and kills horus. Later Rogal Dorn comes in picks up Big E, but Big E is unresponsive having had his arm torn off and been at least partially disemboweled. So who exactly told them how the fight went down? No one other than the emperor saw the fight and lived, and I doubt he was talkative about it given that he was only able to gasp out words after malcador gave him the last of his life force.

Because history is written by the winners, what we as players 'know' is most likely differs to IoM propaganda which generally runs as the big E smiting the traitor Horus at the cost of his mortal body

 Grimgold wrote:
No one other than the emperor saw the fight and lived.

Are you sure about this ? IIRC there are tons of marines on the picture of the fight (on each side), what happened to them all ?

Yeah, various versions have more Marines or even Imperial Army (Ollanius Pius) present as well. Plus, power armour has cameras that can record what happens...

Gun feeds. Armor feeds. Security footage. CCTV. The word of a dying god. Whatever proof you might need.

beast_gts wrote:
Yeah, various versions have more Marines or even Imperial Army (Ollanius Pius) present as well. Plus, power armour has cameras that can record what happens...

If Pius was there to get his big brass nuts obliterated followed up by some imp fist terminators and a custodians jumping in to not wanted to get shown up by a mere mortal then there must of been a bunch more people running around.

Whether anything got changed in post we will never know.

 Grimgold wrote:
So the existing lore is, Sanguinius finds Horus, the two fight, horus kills sanguinius, then the emperor comes along fights horus, is mortally wounded and kills horus. Later Rogal Dorn comes in picks up Big E, but Big E is unresponsive having had his arm torn off and been at least partially disemboweled. So who exactly told them how the fight went down? No one other than the emperor saw the fight and lived, and I doubt he was talkative about it given that he was only able to gasp out words after malcador gave him the last of his life force.

I think there were a bunch of witnesses watching. It was a duel, after all.
Iirc, at some point Horus got the upper hand and was about to finish the Emperor off until someone jumped in the way and took the attack instead.
At first, it was a guardsman. Then GW decided to make him a marine then finally a custodes. Because we can't ever have normal humans doing anything of note. That would give dramatic impact.

My question is, Sanguinius was isolated when he faced Horus, right? No one is alive who witnessed that fun conversation and almost as epic duel.

 Aetare wrote:
My question is, Sanguinius was isolated when he faced Horus, right? No one is alive who witnessed that fun conversation and almost as epic duel.

Well im pretty sure since space marine armor does have recording devices of some sort maybe bird person did too. they did recover his body right?

The Emperor has often been said to be responsive when Dorn found him. Indeed, he's supposed to have told Dorn how to adjust the Golden Throne to keep him alive, though that communication didn't last very long.

So it's entirely plausible the Emperor told Dorn.

I suspect we'll get our answer when the HH series eventually gets there

 Desubot wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
My question is, Sanguinius was isolated when he faced Horus, right? No one is alive who witnessed that fun conversation and almost as epic duel.

Well im pretty sure since space marine armor does have recording devices of some sort maybe bird person did too. they did recover his body right?

His body is entombed on one of the moons of Baal I thought... I wasn’t aware that the armor had recording devices implanted.

 Aetare wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
My question is, Sanguinius was isolated when he faced Horus, right? No one is alive who witnessed that fun conversation and almost as epic duel.

Well im pretty sure since space marine armor does have recording devices of some sort maybe bird person did too. they did recover his body right?

His body is entombed on one of the moons of Baal I thought... I wasn’t aware that the armor had recording devices implanted.

i dunno im making that gak up but it sounds possible.

recording devices on armor makes a lot of sense so it's a good guess.

I'm with turnip Jedi. It used to be that those who recovered the emperor saw the bodies and pieced it together, then it became myth and legend. I'm not keen on getting too many answers from the heresy. I like that the story changes depending on whose telling it.

Or it could be this guy!

Definitely the guy hiding under the stairs

Well, what exactly do they know about what went down? If you find a mostly dead emperor near a dead Horus and a dead Sanguinius, it's not hard to imagine what happened.

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Well, what exactly do they know about what went down? If you find a mostly dead emperor near a dead Horus and a dead Sanguinius, it's not hard to imagine what happened.

Therein lies the trick, GW has outright said things didn't go down on the vengeful spirit like we think they did. So the question is how constrained are they, is there a bunch of eye witnesses, was it the single custodes, who died when horus shredded him with his power and gave the emperor his chance to strike horus down?

Because I've been thinking about ways it could go down differently, and imagine if the emperor came upon horus and Sanguinius talking, Horus tells Sanguinius the emperor's plan was to get rid of them all after they had served their purpose, just like the thunder warriors. The emperor knowing the cat is out of the bag and not having a single feth to give tells sanginius that what horus said is true. Sanguinius flies into the black rage at the betrayal by the person he has spent his life serving, and then the emperor ends him. Taking advantage of the emperors distraction horus attacks, mortally wounding the emperor, and then the emperor ends him as well. Dorn comes in and finds the exact same scene, sanguinius and horus dead, the emperor mortally wounded and no one the wiser for what really occurred.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
Well, what exactly do they know about what went down? If you find a mostly dead emperor near a dead Horus and a dead Sanguinius, it's not hard to imagine what happened.

Therein lies the trick, GW has outright said things didn't go down on the vengeful spirit like we think they did. So the question is how constrained are they, is there a bunch of eye witnesses, was it the single custodes, who died when horus shredded him with his power and gave the emperor his chance to strike horus down?

Because I've been thinking about ways it could go down differently, and imagine if the emperor came upon horus and Sanguinius talking, Horus tells Sanguinius the emperor's plan was to get rid of them all after they had served their purpose, just like the thunder warriors. The emperor knowing the cat is out of the bag and not having a single feth to give tells sanginius that what horus said is true. Sanguinius flies into the black rage at the betrayal by the person he has spent his life serving, and then the emperor ends him. Taking advantage of the emperors distraction horus attacks, mortally wounding the emperor, and then the emperor ends him as well. Dorn comes in and finds the exact same scene, sanguinius and horus dead, the emperor mortally wounded and no one the wiser for what really occurred.

this is an interesting viewpoint. I'm not sure if I like it but definitely poses a fair amount of questions.

They hier in some harlequens to re-tell the story.

I'm sure they have some kind of twist like that in mind, Grimgold.

The other way it could go down is saguinus kills horus, and then the emperor kills sanguinius getting mortally wounded in the process. Though that seems like a real let down, the culmination of the horus heresy is Horus getting punked off screen and a duel between the emperor and a vengeful angel.

One way or another it’s gonna be a bombshell when they reveal it.

Yeah because if anything tales of the emperors power were understated in the old lore The HH books let you know he was on another level altogether, Stuff like making an entire legion kneel, using his powers to fix an imperial knight, massive feats of TK, Big E is a beast. It seems pretty clear none of the primarchs were a match for him, at least not without the four chaos gods propping them up. Big E doesn't seem sentimental at all, he still refers to the primarchs by their batch number, so taking pity on Horus doesn't seem in character for him.

There’s something rather genius about letting us all clamor and struggle to imagine how epic that confrontation must have been, while still leaving so much ambiguity.

Feathers and daddE had recorders in their armor, people we're able to download the footage from their AV recordings afterwards.

 Grimgold wrote:
Yeah because if anything tales of the emperors power were understated in the old lore The HH books let you know he was on another level altogether, Stuff like making an entire legion kneel, using his powers to fix an imperial knight, massive feats of TK, Big E is a beast. It seems pretty clear none of the primarchs were a match for him, at least not without the four chaos gods propping them up. Big E doesn't seem sentimental at all, he still refers to the primarchs by their batch number, so taking pity on Horus doesn't seem in character for him.

It's hard to see, the Emperor gives me the impression his greatest true talent is being all things to all people. while I agree this makes it unlikely he's sentimental perhaps he truly is towards Horus. it's possiable that instead he was over confident, and went in beliving he could bring Horus back around again by explaining to him his full plan. only to be caught off guard by a chaos juiced horus tearing into him with a "I DON'T CARE"

There's still debate over whether olanius pious existed at all and if so what he actually did. Personally I hope he did, he represented the ordinary man, the human being, who changes the fate of all with his will instead of being a helpless bystander .

Likewise did daddE blow out horus' candle to keep him from returning as a daemon or to spare him the agony the chaos gods would have inflicted on him?

I think that deep down he cared for his ‘sons’ and whatever passed between he and Horus on that bridge must have reflected that, even if only a little.