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I'm interested in the evolution of the Horus Heresy fluff over the years.

What are some HH retcons that you dislike? Which old HH fluff do you think should have been preserved?

I'm one of those rare few that actually thinks fleshing out the Heresy has been for the better, and most of the retcons have been good and more character-focused.

The only real disappointment was how easily Horus turned in the first place, albeit in the original fluff it was just "he was corrupted and fell to Chaos". The books give him a lot more choice in it.

not sure if they ret-coned it, but back in the 90's a white dwarf (I have to dig up the one) said that the reason Typhon killed the Astropaths, and by extension turned the death guard into plague marines, was that Mortarion was going to pop out of the warp, and fire on the traitor fleet after seeing that his decision to go traitor was a bad one. You know, and also being a Nurgle worshiper.

I never heard that one. I really dislike how the Death Guard turned in the new stuff and prefer the older noble way it happened. The entire legion was lost in the warp and marines started catching this horrible wasting disease. Mortarion was offered a choice to side with Grandfather Nurgle and he would save his fellow marines or everyone dies. In the condition they were in Mortarion couldn't let all of his "sons" die so he sided with Nurgle.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
I'm interested in the evolution of the Horus Heresy fluff over the years.

What are some HH retcons that you dislike? Which old HH fluff do you think should have been preserved?

I liked the original idea of Horus becoming possessed by a warp creature during an a warrior lodge ritual on Davin instead of being wounded and converted as a payment for healing.
And then pretending to be Horus with just closest people seeing changes in behaviour.

One thing that irked me was when the author of the Death Guard IA decided to retcon Garro into the hero of the hour, originally it was Varren of the World Eaters who seized the Eisenstein - Garro and others were tasked with seizing other ships and causing a distraction to allow the Eisenstein to escape. That change was just blatant fanboyism.

 Harriticus wrote:
I'm one of those rare few that actually thinks fleshing out the Heresy has been for the better, and most of the retcons have been good and more character-focused.

The only real disappointment was how easily Horus turned in the first place, albeit in the original fluff it was just "he was corrupted and fell to Chaos". The books give him a lot more choice in it.

I, too, thought Hours turned too easily. Wasn't as much of an internal struggle as I thought it would be.

 Flanker wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
I'm one of those rare few that actually thinks fleshing out the Heresy has been for the better, and most of the retcons have been good and more character-focused.

The only real disappointment was how easily Horus turned in the first place, albeit in the original fluff it was just "he was corrupted and fell to Chaos". The books give him a lot more choice in it.

I, too, thought Hours turned too easily. Wasn't as much of an internal struggle as I thought it would be.

Well, he was basically put into a situation where he had to choose to turn to Chaos or die under time pressure.

I dislike the Great Militant Atheist Crusade thing, I've never understood its purpose asides to have Space Marines act silly around supernatural phenomena.
I hate the whole Shadow Crusade thing. To me the Ultramarines were always just too far away to notice the Heresy until the very end.
I hate that the Blood Angels essentially suffer from the Black Rage before the death of Sanguinius.
I hate that apparently every Thousand Son was a psyker.
I REALLY hate anything involving the Cabal or the Perpetuals and weep for the Alpha Legion that was.

There's probably more.

Changing Ollanius Pious from a regular guardsman (or Marine) to a special snowflake immortal yada yada yada.

Ultramarines running the good guys side of the Heresy from the beginning. Originally, the Ultramarines were too far away to do much of anything until the whole thing was basically over. Which makes perfect sense. They didn't take part in the fighting, so they were the only ones who had the numbers to do the Scouring and keep the Imperium together, at which point their numbers had swelled so much that after the breakup of the Legions by far the majority had UM geneseed and still does in the 40K.

Also, it was the impending arrival of only the combined Dark Angel and Space Wolf forces that forced Horus into his final gambit.

The complete ignoring of Leman's and Lion's rivalry.

Marine Legion numbers being increased tenfold. Granted , 10K-ish Marines per Legion is too few to really conquer a planet with, but 100,000 aren't going to be anywhere near enough either, so why bother changing it?

Changing the Wolves from the happy-go-lucky, buttkicking, nametaking bloodthirsty Vikings in Space that they were to brooding, Grimdark (tm) Executioners.


Spoiler alert:
The Alpha Legion's "Look at us being all sneaky-like 8-foot killing machines in huge clunking power armour who love playing shadow games and distrusting everyone but now we're shown a vision once by a bunch of Xenos and their human turncoats and we'll totally just take that at face value and betray the Imperium because, ummmmm."

Bran Dawri wrote:

Marine Legion numbers being increased tenfold. Granted , 10K-ish Marines per Legion is too few to really conquer a planet with, but 100,000 aren't going to be anywhere near enough either, so why bother changing it?

The original look at the Heresy (Space Marine 1st edition) portrayed it as a titanic bloodbath spanning a million worlds, the numbers mentioned were ten[s] of thousands per legion, and the actual battles were so many as to be uncounted. Bumping the numbers back up allows for the original (awesome) scope to come back, with 7,000 Salamanders in total there's no way for example that the old Treab's World sidebar (Space Marine rulebook page 39) could still stand, with 100,000 it can.

My point was that it doesn't matter. 10,000 or a 100,000 are both impossible numbers for conquering planets, so why bother changing the number at all?

Bran Dawri wrote:
My point was that it doesn't matter. 10,000 or a 100,000 are both impossible numbers for conquering planets, so why bother changing the number at all?

It's necessary to up the numbers to allow the original level of brutality with the number of chapters formed during the 2nd Founding:

No quarter was asked, no quarter was given. Hatred drove us. Hatred and fear.

Aye, fear. For we were the finest warriors in the universe, elite among elite, the chosen of humanity.
Once we had acknowledged no foe as our equal. Now we must – for were not these men the same a ourselves? Spawned from geneseed, trained by masters, armed and equipped with the best from humanity's realm. Finally we faced a for worthy of fear, a mirror image of ourselves and all we believed in. In this nightmare, brother against false brother to the death. Is it any wonder we knew fear?

We fought like tigers but were met with equal ferocity. We shot accurately. Our eyes were like those of hawks. Yet equal numbers fell from our ranks. We met at close quarters. Weapons flashed and gouged but who was to say which was faster? For every Traitor who fell, so fell a loyal brother. The battle surged back and forth till finally in the end true faith prevailed and we had the mastery. Yet we were slaughtered. But one in ten survived. The city was dust. (Battle of Tallarn, from Codex Titanicus - both versions)

And as I already covered, it allows for numerous minor side actions of decent size, even for legions annihilated at Isstvan.

Bran Dawri wrote:
My point was that it doesn't matter. 10,000 or a 100,000 are both impossible numbers for conquering planets, so why bother changing the number at all?

Because while yes, just a couple hundred thousand marines could not take a planet, a couple hundred thousand marines plus a couple million imperial guard backed by several titans legions and having massive amounts of air superiority might, or at least enough to make you stop and think about it.

But back to the question at hand, I know that I for one love the changes. The original fluff, from what I found anyways, was a little too bland for me. I like the dramatization of it, and enjoy the character development, even if a lot of it is just massive amounts of daddy issues.

As some examples of how things have evolved:
Originally when the Emperor shows up to fight Horus, it is not Sanguinius dead at Horus' feet, but some unnamed guardsmen..

Originally the Custodes either didn't exist or were just standard imperial guard for Terra, can't remember which.

Legions have changed size and shape a few times as things have evolved, as has already been stated.

The one I think is the most debated over that i know of is this: The final battle between Horus and The Emperor - How much of a fight was it?
If I recall, originally The Emperor didn't fight back at all, and just let Horus wail on him while he contemplated the sins of his son before finally dispatching him with a single blow.
Then at the extreme end of it, was the brutal clash between The Emperor and the Super Chaos God infused Horus that lead to the Emperor having no choice but to expend all of his energy into a final blow that not only expelled the Chaos Gods influence from Horus but obliterated Horus' soul so the Gods could not just resurrect him.

@Bran Dawri: there is actually a really cool scene, in Unremembered Empire, where the Lion stands and lets one of Russ' representatives take his best shot in acknowledgement of the grudge that the Wolves hold against him for slighting Russ' honor...
it was a nice touch by Abnett...

@Gashrog: i always love thumbing through my old Epic Space Marine and Adeptus Titanicus rulebooks...
the little bits of fiction, and the great Kev Walker art, made way more of an impact on me as a kid than the Rogue Trader book...
there was just something so amazing about the scale of battle, and the fact that Marines were clashing with their equals, that has left a lasting impression for decades...

cheers
jah

 Amanax wrote:
As some examples of how things have evolved:
Originally when the Emperor shows up to fight Horus, it is not Sanguinius dead at Horus' feet, but some unnamed guardsmen..

When was that?

 Amanax wrote:

Originally the Custodes either didn't exist or were just standard imperial guard for Terra, can't remember which.

Custodes were always the badass moffos they are today (T4 W2 in the RT rulebook, back when marines were only T3), the only change was that GW realised that they weren't badass enough to get away with not wearing armour.

 Amanax wrote:

Originally when the Emperor shows up to fight Horus, it is not Sanguinius dead at Horus' feet, but some unnamed guardsmen..

Incorrect.

The original draft (Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness) was simply:
"The Emperor and an elite company of Custodes Adeptus soldiery and Imperial Fist Marines were teleported into Horus' command bunker. In the fierce fighting that followed Horus was killed (although his body was never found), and the Emperor was seriously wounded."

White Dwarf 109 stated:
"The central figure is an image of Ollanius Pius, the Guardsman who is supposed to have given his life by interposing his body between Horus and the Emperor during the assault on the Imperial Palace. He is now regarded as something of a saint by the Guard."
Salient word: Supposed.

In the actual story it was a Terminator.

Just being dead on the floor is a singular honour that has only ever belonged to Sanguinius.

Well Horus clearly didn't give a damn about loyalist or traitor.
In Fear to Tread, Horus LITERALLY CARVES EREBUS' FACE OFF AND HE JUST STANDS THERE AND TAKES IT.

Horus was converted by Erebus who persuaded him to turn becayse Emps was ignoring him.

@Gashrog - Ah, thank you for the correction. It has been awhile since I had looked through that and it is sometimes hard to keep track of the ever retconned fluff and what friends have talked about in circles. It wasn't until I went to go get a source that I realized that it was probably the latter ^^;

Still, I stand by "Some unnamed guardsmen" compared to one of the Primarchs. Even if he did have a name. But fair enough.

I was curious when they started on the Heresy books to see what they did with the missing Legions, as the older fluff stated that they were probably still around at that point, and probably fought on Horus' side.

The novels got around that by retconning them to having been long gone by the time the Heresy started... which wasn't really that big a surprise. I very much doubt that the story behind the missing Legions will ever be anything more than hinted at in fragments.

Animus wrote:
I dislike the Great Militant Atheist Crusade thing, I've never understood its purpose asides to have Space Marines act silly around supernatural phenomena.

The Atheist Crusade was to weaken the Chaos Gods. The rationale was that religions fed the warp beings.