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So while reading up on one of the Fallen Angels, the infamous Merir Astelan, I came across this bit of lore from one of the latest novels concerning everyone's favourite bathrobe-wearing Space Marines:

Astelan was ultimately able to escape his captivity on The Rock, and soon meets up with former comrades Methelas and Anovel. Together they conspired with Typhus to unite the Tuchulcha engine with its brother devices and open up a time portal ten thousand years previous that would allow the original legions of Fallen to enter the 41st Millennia. With captured gene-seed he planned to have the Fallen, Death Guard, and newly created Astartes all merge together into an unstoppable legion known as the Death Angels. However Astelan and Typhus are ultimately foiled thanks to the efforts of Azrael and Cypher, who managed to turn Anovel to their cause along the way. (Lexicanum, Source: The Unforgiven)

... I'm really confused as to how and why this happened. How the feth did Astelan manage to escape the Rock, home of the eternally vigilant (and paranoid) Dark Angels? Why would he team up with Typhus to destroy the Dark Angels after confessing his crimes and proclaiming his loyalty to the Emperor in the last book? How would they have merged all those Astartes into a 'Death Angels' legion?

Is there anyone who can explain to me how these things make sense? Astelan's story sheds an interesting light on the whole Dark Angels/Fallen situation, but his character seems to have made some odd 180 in the last book...

 Ezra Tyrius wrote:
Why would he team up with Typhus to destroy the Dark Angels after confessing his crimes and proclaiming his loyalty to the Emperor in the last book?

Maybe he lied?

Fair enough; I can imagine a Fallen Angel pretty much saying anything to avoid incurring the Dark Angels' wrath any further.

I'm not sure why they didn't just execute him after his 'confession' then, though, as that seems to be the standard procedure after dealing with one of the Fallen. I mean, why risk him becoming a threat again?

How did he escape?
Well, they needed him. That's why they didn't make him "repent" outright.
He had some unique strategic knowledge on the battleplans for one of the major fallen they were hunting (I think it was the Apothecary dude). They even took him to the planets surface to locate him... And he used that chance to escape which lead to Cypher pulling an act of "NUH UH" and getting "captured".

Read the book, it is a rather interesting read with mind boogling implications.

1. How did he escape? They took him to a planet and he escaped for a brief time. They did track him down again.

2. Why would he team up with Typhus? Resources.

3. Why did he proclaim loyalty to the Emperor? He's lying, so says the Word of God on that.

4. Merging Astartes? There was no such plan, the plan was to steal a bunch of geneseed and make his own legion.

Orrrr because the "Fallen" are actually the minority of the Legion who stayed loyal to the Emperor, but the "loyal" DA only declared loyalty to the Imperium after the HH was decided and their civil war was over. The Fallen are loyal to the Emperor but want to destroy the traitor DA who switched sides now, and reassert themselves (under new name, the Death Angels) as a loyal Legion.

Disclaimer, I havent read the book, so the above is just me rambling. But who is loyal or traitor? Its a secret...

 jifel wrote:

Disclaimer, I havent read the book, so the above is just me rambling. But who is loyal or traitor? Its a secret...

Not anymore. One of the HH books made it pretty clear where the 1st Legions loyalty is.

pm713 wrote:

 jifel wrote:

Disclaimer, I havent read the book, so the above is just me rambling. But who is loyal or traitor? Its a secret...

Not anymore. One of the HH books made it pretty clear where the 1st Legions loyalty is.

Could you spoil it for me? I honestly done mind and kinda wanna know

 Backspacehacker wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 jifel wrote:

Disclaimer, I havent read the book, so the above is just me rambling. But who is loyal or traitor? Its a secret...

Not anymore. One of the HH books made it pretty clear where the 1st Legions loyalty is.

Could you spoil it for me? I honestly done mind and kinda wanna know