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Yeah the enternal war is not Chaos vs ...Well you can't call anyone good in 40k can you ( no not even the Tau before anyway chips in!)
No, it is fact Red vs Blue.... And thus shall it remain until we are all but dust (and the red dust will still wanna fight the blue).

Erm where was i... Oh yeah... How does all fit into Terra being under seige. How can GMan and Sanny Bro down during this time?

Personally, I'm expecting El'Jonson could be involved in any throw-down as he's gunning for a fight and doesn't seem to be a fan of Guillimans plans. And if Curze is around...

 Just Dave wrote:
Personally, I'm expecting El'Jonson could be involved in any throw-down as he's gunning for a fight and doesn't seem to be a fan of Guillimans plans. And if Curze is around...

What and why? The Lion was more occupied with worrying reports from home. He didn't give a rat's ass about the tenets of Robute, but he had more important issues to solve.

 Beaviz81 wrote:

 Just Dave wrote:
Personally, I'm expecting El'Jonson could be involved in any throw-down as he's gunning for a fight and doesn't seem to be a fan of Guillimans plans. And if Curze is around...

What and why? The Lion was more occupied with worrying reports from home. He didn't give a rat's ass about the tenets of Robute, but he had more important issues to solve.

The Primarchs/Shadows of Treachery:

Batman v. Superman? Abnett did say it would be "superhero style"!

 Just Dave wrote:

 Beaviz81 wrote:

 Just Dave wrote:
Personally, I'm expecting El'Jonson could be involved in any throw-down as he's gunning for a fight and doesn't seem to be a fan of Guillimans plans. And if Curze is around...

What and why? The Lion was more occupied with worrying reports from home. He didn't give a rat's ass about the tenets of Robute, but he had more important issues to solve.

The Primarchs/Shadows of Treachery:

Spoiler:

The Primarchs shows Jonson's displeasure/distrust towards Guilliman's "Unremembered Empire" and Shadows suggests that Curze is currently aboard his ship. Ship that seemingly is heading to Ultramar after clearing out the Thramas sector...

When was that? Before the HH? After it, it was no time, it was picking up the pieces.

We have no evidence of how good a general Horus actually was.

He never once got into any kind of engagement where he didn't have overwhelming material and logistical advantages over the enemy until the siege of Terra.

What we do have evidence of, therefore, is that he wasn't the best in the Imperium on that front, since he got totally scuppered there.

 Manchu wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
in defence of the Imperial Palace (which is a massive advantage)

I think this is the decisive issue. The only counterargument, which we don't fully understand because the fluff has not been completely developed yet, is that the palace was breached from within vis a vis the Warp as a result of Magnus's attempt to warn the Emperor of Horus's betrayal. I guess this is what kept the Emperor from personally participating in the defense right up until he teleported to the Spirit of Vengeance.

Lowering his shields was a brilliant move on Horus's part. The main goal of the siege of Terra, I think, was to kill the Emperor. The main obstacle was the fortified palace. Horus negated that obstacle by luring the Emperor to fight on his own terms. At the same time, this was a major gamble. It was time to walk the walk, so to speak. Horus thought he could replace the Emperor but how would he fair mano a mano? And, all things considered, he did pretty damn well.

The real question is not "why did Horus fail?" but rather "how did he get so far?" The answer is, of course, that he was an absolute genius.

I actually think this is about right. A long war of attrition was not in Horus' favor, even after his Istvaan victories. It's stated in several novels that only a hammer blow at terra, replacing the emperor as head of humanity, could any victory be secured.

Zanderchief wrote:

I know the traitors were broken at Terra due to Horus's death (though I dunno why - they apparently massively outnumbered the defenders).

Anyone shed some light on it?

Because the nine traitor legions where like the chaos star all different (the points of the star going in different directions) and Horus at the centre holding it all together, without him they fell apart, moving in there different directions.

For obvious reasons I hope that Horus didn't really plan on dropping his shield but instead, the Alpha Legion 'makes it happen', and the rest is... history?

You do what? It was a desperate gamble in my mind. And you hope for insanity? And wasn't the Alphas half a Galaxy away distracting someone else?

 DarknessEternal wrote:
We have no evidence of how good a general Horus actually was.

He never once got into any kind of engagement where he didn't have overwhelming material and logistical advantages over the enemy until the siege of Terra.

What we do have evidence of, therefore, is that he wasn't the best in the Imperium on that front, since he got totally scuppered there.

Well, we have the evidence of lots of other characters describing him as a tactical genius beyond the measure of any human and most primarchs.

Obviously, there can't be full exposition (or 'evidence) on that front because

1. Dan Abnett et al would all have to be tactical geniuses beyond the measure of any human and most primarchs, which is difficult when they're just human fiction writers...
2. You would have to be a posthuman primarch genius to understand it.

Sometimes you just have to suspend your disbelief. Many characters state that Horus is a tactical genius, so he is. Maybe not THE best, but one of the best.

Zanderchief wrote:
Boy Gullieman is busy in the new fluff then...

Defeating the 2nd biggest legion
Creating a 2nd empire (just in case)
Whilst also on the way to Terra (probably with a fully written codex astartes and plans for rebuilding already Xerox'd to hand out)

This is not an attack on Gman more of a "how much stuff does BL want this guy to be doing???"

Mind you GW suck at numbers (Chapter sizes for instance), timings (Horus suddenly getting a Chaos boner after one incident) and keep a track of what it writes down.

The Ultramarines have always defeated the Word Bearers at Calth, part of the Ultramar Empire, nothing about that is new fluff.
And Horus hears about the WB losing, the UM, DA and SW heading for Terra and lowers the shields, the UM were always heading for Terra, again, nothing is new fluff.
It's not BL making new fluff, this is stuff I knew when I first started reading into the fluff many, many years ago.

 Alpharius wrote:
For obvious reasons I hope that Horus didn't really plan on dropping his shield but instead, the Alpha Legion 'makes it happen', and the rest is... history?

That happens with everything anyways.

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:
[
The Ultramarines have always defeated the Word Bearers at Calth, part of the Ultramar Empire, nothing about that is new fluff.
And Horus hears about the WB losing, the UM, DA and SW heading for Terra and lowers the shields, the UM were always heading for Terra, again, nothing is new fluff.
It's not BL making new fluff, this is stuff I knew when I first started reading into the fluff many, many years ago.

Wrong. 2nd Edition UM Codex:

"Whilst the Horus Heresy plunged the Imperium into savagery and civil war, the Ultramarines were engaged on the southern edge of the galaxy. Their very succes had carried them far from Earth (...) News of Horus's treachery did not even reach the Ultramarines untiln the attack on Earth was already underway. Thanks to the speed of Horus's attack there was little that Guilliman could do. (...) Consequently, the Ultramarines were poorly placed to contribute much to the early stages of the Horus Heresy. Their main succes was the destruction of a large force of Chaos Space Marines which was heading to reinforce Horus's position. Afterwards the Ultramarines took part in several important battles to recover human worlds from the dominion of Chaos." It then goes on to descrive the Scouring and events after that.
(Presumably the latter is a reference to Calth.)

Nowhere does it mention them ever heading to Terra to relieve the siege, whereas the 2nd edition Angels of Death Codex explicitly states Johnson and Russ (together) hurrying back as quickly as they could, arriving at Terra to a ruined world, the Emperor dying/dead and the defeated Chaos forces fleeing.

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:

The Ultramarines have always defeated the Word Bearers at Calth, part of the Ultramar Empire, nothing about that is new fluff.
And Horus hears about the WB losing, the UM, DA and SW heading for Terra and lowers the shields, the UM were always heading for Terra, again, nothing is new fluff.
It's not BL making new fluff, this is stuff I knew when I first started reading into the fluff many, many years ago.

Until that novel was written, the battle for Calth took place after the siege of Terra.

I have not read too many of the books yet, but have heard bad things about mr rowboat girlyman.

Is it true he was training his legion how to fight against the loyalist chapters?

Did he really set-up his own little empire as practice for his plans to eventually take over as the new Emperor?

Did the UM really skip most of the major battles, retaining most of their numbers, so they could step in at the last minute and take charge?

From the stuff I have read, it sure seems this way. I have also been told from others who have read many more of both the old books and the new HH books, that this is pretty much how it went down.

Any insights?

No, Robute was loyal, just absent from most of the fighting, and distracted by the Word Bearers on Calth within his own system.

I don't think he wanted to fight his loyalist brethren.

His own empire was set up before he met Empy.

Yes and no. They did fight, but I guess the Word Bearers did an abysmal effort against them. And sure they might have bullied the other legions into being codex-adherent Space Marine chapters, but that might just have been because they needed a more flexible command-structure than having huge Space Marine legions all over the place.

 nolzur wrote:
I have not read too many of the books yet, but have heard bad things about mr rowboat girlyman.

Is it true he was training his legion how to fight against the loyalist chapters?

Did he really set-up his own little empire as practice for his plans to eventually take over as the new Emperor?

Did the UM really skip most of the major battles, retaining most of their numbers, so they could step in at the last minute and take charge?

From the stuff I have read, it sure seems this way. I have also been told from others who have read many more of both the old books and the new HH books, that this is pretty much how it went down.

Any insights?

a) one of the short stories had him training his sons to fight those who would stay loyal, so yes he did.

b) i'd suggest "imperium secundus" which is most likely a story arc as there seems a "unremembered Empire" to be an upcoming novel. Robot G. was always an empire builder. He grows up like a heir to an empire at Macragge so maybe it was inbreed.. but he doesn't seem to aim for emporer ( but we don't know yet what happens when RG and LJ meet ). Again , until the whole WB vs ultramarines and "unremembered empire" is revealed to us we don't have all the pieces...

c) the Ultras got Lorgar to troll them now, plus like said above the possible story arc seems to be the HH-show of the boys in blue. Thus them "skipping battles" may change.

 nolzur wrote:

Is it true he was training his legion how to fight against the loyalist chapters?

Sort of. He had his guys training against the tactics of every legion because he didn't know who they'd end up having to fight. No one was sure who was loyal and who was a traitor yet.

 nolzur wrote:

Did he really set-up his own little empire as practice for his plans to eventually take over as the new Emperor?

Ultramar was a sanctioned part of the Imperium blessed by the Emperor's approval. Gulliman is asked by the High Lords of Terra after the Heresy to become the Emperor; he refused and put the Imperium in the hands of humanity. You don't get much more evidence than that.

 nolzur wrote:

Did the UM really skip most of the major battles, retaining most of their numbers, so they could step in at the last minute and take charge?

Depends on the canonicity you're using. Prior to the HH series, the Ultramarines weren't even aware a Heresy was going on until the Word Bearers attacked Calth, which was after the siege of Terra.

During the HH series, they're cut off from Terra by warp storms, basically like everyone else.

See previous question about Guilliman's intention to take charge (100% not his motivation).

 nolzur wrote:

From the stuff I have read, it sure seems this way. I have also been told from others who have read many more of both the old books and the new HH books, that this is pretty much how it went down.

Any insights?

They are lying to you or misinformed.

I vaguely remember some old-style fluff about Guilliman building an empire during the Heresy as well.
It would make sense (old fluff, anyway); he's too far away to directly influence the outcome on Terra, so he fortifies his position to start over in case Horus succeeds in overthrowing the Emperor so humanity will at least have a fighting chance.

 Alpharius wrote:
For obvious reasons I hope that Horus didn't really plan on dropping his shield but instead, the Alpha Legion 'makes it happen', and the rest is... history?

Or Little Horus does it...

 1hadhq wrote:


a) one of the short stories had him training his sons to fight those who would stay loyal, so yes he did.

That short story has them training to fight the Death Guard.

And the Salamanders, and the Sons of Horus (who they lose to).

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:

Zanderchief wrote:
Boy Gullieman is busy in the new fluff then...

Defeating the 2nd biggest legion
Creating a 2nd empire (just in case)
Whilst also on the way to Terra (probably with a fully written codex astartes and plans for rebuilding already Xerox'd to hand out)

This is not an attack on Gman more of a "how much stuff does BL want this guy to be doing???"

Mind you GW suck at numbers (Chapter sizes for instance), timings (Horus suddenly getting a Chaos boner after one incident) and keep a track of what it writes down.

The Ultramarines have always defeated the Word Bearers at Calth, part of the Ultramar Empire, nothing about that is new fluff.
And Horus hears about the WB losing, the UM, DA and SW heading for Terra and lowers the shields, the UM were always heading for Terra, again, nothing is new fluff.
It's not BL making new fluff, this is stuff I knew when I first started reading into the fluff many, many years ago.

No UM were not the reason Horus lowered shields - combined forces of DA and SW are, on that I'm certain - they stayed completely cut off.. But I'll bet BL will include them (at least one company).....

P.S.
UM were mauled at Calth...It's like you say USA won at Pearl Harbor...bloody fanbosim...

 kronk wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
For obvious reasons I hope that Horus didn't really plan on dropping his shield but instead, the Alpha Legion 'makes it happen', and the rest is... history?

Or Little Horus does it...

Either of those would be excellent, in my opinion. Either way, we either get a definitive answer to whether Alpharius is trying to fulfill the Cabal's prophecy or we get the redemption of a very dynamic character. Honestly, I'm not sure which one I prefer!

Bran Dawri wrote:
Wrong. 2nd Edition UM Codex:

"Whilst the Horus Heresy plunged the Imperium into savagery and civil war, the Ultramarines were engaged on the southern edge of the galaxy. Their very succes had carried them far from Earth (...) News of Horus's treachery did not even reach the Ultramarines untiln the attack on Earth was already underway. Thanks to the speed of Horus's attack there was little that Guilliman could do. (...) Consequently, the Ultramarines were poorly placed to contribute much to the early stages of the Horus Heresy. Their main succes was the destruction of a large force of Chaos Space Marines which was heading to reinforce Horus's position. Afterwards the Ultramarines took part in several important battles to recover human worlds from the dominion of Chaos." It then goes on to descrive the Scouring and events after that.
(Presumably the latter is a reference to Calth.)

Nowhere does it mention them ever heading to Terra to relieve the siege, whereas the 2nd edition Angels of Death Codex explicitly states Johnson and Russ (together) hurrying back as quickly as they could, arriving at Terra to a ruined world, the Emperor dying/dead and the defeated Chaos forces fleeing.

So, how exactly did they destroy a large group of Chaos Reinforcements unless they headed to Terra? Did you think it just happened in some kind of a vacuum? The Ultramarines just magically found a large group of Chaos reinforcements who were even more to the galactic East than them and were heading back?

Bran Dawri wrote:
I vaguely remember some old-style fluff about Guilliman building an empire during the Heresy as well.

It would make sense (old fluff, anyway); he's too far away to directly influence the outcome on Terra, so he fortifies his position to start over in case Horus succeeds in overthrowing the Emperor so humanity will at least have a fighting chance.

The Battle of Calth didn't exist as a mauling until the writing of Know No Fear. That novel exists in a version of the Horus Heresy where the timeline has not yet reached the battle of Terra so we don't know why Horus lowers his shields, It could be because it was interfering with his television reception for all we know given how many significant details of the Heresy have changed thus far.

The fluff where the approach of the Ultramarines, Dark Angels and Space Wolves causes Horus to gamble and lower his shields exists in a version of the Horus Heresy where Calth was not a significant battle in the Horus Heresy, and the Word Bearers only succeeded in poisoning Calth's sun as a petty act of revenge before being scattered by a large force of Ultramarines reinforcements from Macragge.

There's also a third version of the fluff where "nobody knows why" Horus lowered his shields, and it dates back further than even the 2nd Edition codex books. And that version has been reprinted several times too.

Edited by Manchu.

1) How in blazes should I know? I didn't write that particular piece of background; it's quoted directly from the 2nd edition UM codex.
Possibly the traitors were coming from the southeast, southwest or otherwise headed for earth at an angle from where the UM could stop them? Whereas the UM, being too far away to directly influence the outcome, and with Guilliman's logistical/strategic genius, had already decided to head that way to cut off Horus' reinforcements and thus do what they could to ease the pressure on the defenders?

2) I have made no mention of Calth or what happened there save that one of the "several important battles" in the aftermath presumably references Calth. Or, more likely, that Calth was a later addition to background to flesh out that little blurb a bit more.

3) Disregarding the HH series from BL, from 2nd edition onwards (I don't have a copy of RT - yet), the UM were *never* on their way to Terra. If they were, they were not travelling together with Russ and Johnson and most definitely were too far away to cause Horus any discomfort during the siege.
My quote above is fairly conclusive in that respect. It pretty much literally says "The UM were too far away."

Bran Dawri wrote:
3) Disregarding the HH series from BL, from 2nd edition onwards (I don't have a copy of RT - yet), the UM were *never* on their way to Terra.

This is actually 746,004% wrong.

How does it happen to be so wrong that it bends reality to exceed 100%? No idea. Not a scientist. It's crazy. Science. I tell ya. It does weird things. Multiple Index Astartes articles published from 2002-2004 (original White Dwarf articles were published between 2000 and 2001) definitively list the Ultramarines as headed to Terra. Those aren't the only sources, but they are definitely "from 2nd Edition onward" and not written by the Black Library. You're banging your head against a wall here.

Rogue Trader has no references to the Battle for Terra, as the idea of the Horus Heresy didn't surface until the release of Space Marine (Epic). There are mentions of it later in the Rogue Trader era, but they contain very little definitive material you're looking for.

This is a story that has been told, and retold many times over. You're trying to make a definitive statement that is not only unsupportable, but easily refuted. But worst of all, you're making a definitive statement about a story that doesn't have a definitive version. Like I mentioned, in Codex: Chaos 2nd Edition, it says "Nobody knows" why Horus lowered his shields. And it was reprinted twice in subsequent Chaos Codex books. See the problem here? The fluff isn't consistent. You can't say "X book is right". That's silly. Nearly all of the sources that suggest Horus did it because he was worried about reinforcements, don't even mention who those reinforcements are.

Time to abandon this idea. The Black Library did not, I repeat, did not invent the idea of the Ultramarines heading to Terra. They may not have been part of the Space Wolves/Dark Angels caravan, but that's probably because they were coming from another direction. But they were on the way there. And going back almost as far as that bit of fluff goes, they've been on the way, and just missed it. Just like the Space Wolves and Dark Angels. Why is this so hard to accept? What is it about the Ultramarines that forces people to be so obstinate and angry? If Codex: Angels of Death doesn't mention the Ultramarines, it's because it's a book about the Dark Angels (well, and Blood Angels). If Guilliman and Lionel didn't fist-bump on the way to Terra, then there's no reason to mention them. Codex: Ultramarines doesn't mention the Space Wolves and Dark Angels going to Terra. Does that mean they didn't? Of course not.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 nolzur wrote:

Is it true he was training his legion how to fight against the loyalist chapters?

Sort of. He had his guys training against the tactics of every legion because he didn't know who they'd end up having to fight. No one was sure who was loyal and who was a traitor yet.
.

No he was training his men to fight Salemanders. When one of his men questioned him about it he told him that he had to be prepared that some of the loyalist brothers might not like his plans for the new Imperium and he may have to convince them by force.

And thats exactly what happened. THe Imperial Fist resisted his ideas and the forces under the UM attacked the Imperial Fist. The Imperial Fist probably would have actually fought a war had it not been for the fact they had suffered too much during the siege of Terra and the Iron Cage while the UMs were damn near fresh (compared to everyone else)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kaldor wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that because the HH series is so incredibly terribad and rewrites stuff for no apparent reason as well as completely changing everything I like about my two favorite chapters (SW and TS), I'm going to just ignore it and say it doesn't exist.

I've been much happier since I did that.

I honostly dont see how anyone can not like the HH series.

I dont like a few books (as in the topics are so unappealing I dont even read them ) in the series but thats different from disliking the entire thing and I have enjoyed every book ive read so far. (Prospero Burns, Legion, Outcast Dead are the exceptions)