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or was he forcibly corrupted by Erebus...


Erebus tainted him with Chaos, forcing him to change...Horus never turned by himself

when you think about it, all the mess of humanity today begins with Kor Phaeron and Erebus, not Horus.


Horus was a innocent victim in all of this

Horus chose his path. He might not have known how bad being in bed with Chaos would get but he made the conscious decision to turn against the Emperor and try to overthrow him with the help of the Ruinous Powers.

Without Kor Phaeron and Erebus it might have never happened but that doesn't remove Horus' agency.

In the books Horus was shown a vision that resembled 40k version of the Imperium, which disturbed him greatly, just like it disturbs Guilliman now. Ruinous Powers tricked him into thinking that Emperor did that, while in reality his rebellion was the cause for such decline. He made a conscious decision to rebel based on false information, but it still was his decision. He probably lost most of his free will later on when Chaos Gods started pouring power into him.

Huh, I hadn't heard about that bit. That's a pretty neat way of handling it, makes him at least initially a lot more sympathetic.

 spiralingcadaver wrote:
Huh, I hadn't heard about that bit. That's a pretty neat way of handling it, makes him at least initially a lot more sympathetic.

Horus deliberately chose to make a deal with the devil(s). There's nothing sympathetic about that, even if they lied to him. And of course they lied to him, they're the devil(s) and he's an idiot.

agreed. Horus is the one whom choose to BELIVE the visions he was granted, he had no proof these where somehow real truths, I suspect what really happened is the chaos gods preyed on fears and concerns that already existed. I mean I'm sure he'd heard of the spreading cult of the lecto diviniticus. and he knew the emperor didn't tell him everything.

The fluff for my Black Legion warband is that the Chaos Lord still blames the Emperor and the IoM for the decline caused by the Horus Hersey (the lord sees it as Horus failing to prevent the 41st millennium). He is deluded in thinking that Abbadon and his Black Crusades will finish what Horus started and return humanity back to a new golden age and beyond.

I would like to think a couple of the old Sons of Horus that joined the Black Legion share in this insane delusion. It makes them out to be slightly less cartoonish villains in that they wrongly believe what they are doing it righteous and just. I think most good villains actually see themselves as the hero.

yes he did, and no he didn't

TBH it's the Cabal which engineers the Heresy , just that then various characters act beyond what they imagined possible, and their perpetual agents prove more human than they believe them to be. Erebus is obviously a key player but ultimately still an instrument.

As for Horus, the ritual on Davin is what I see as the turning point. Loken finds out and tries to stop it, Magnus tries to intervene but cannot - which to indicates the importance and power of the ritual. Afterwards resentment and unrest becomes rebellion. Free will? In his near death state it's impossible to tell how the laer blade effected him. Look at Fulgrim. No one knows if what came back at Davin is Horus.

What I find interesting is that, currently , the imperium of the 41st millennium is probably unaware of how it begins, though we are seeing more bits of the heresy appearing in the fiction e.g the Keeler Image, the comet, the anathames.....

A few parts on your question.

LightKing wrote:
Erebus tainted him with Chaos, forcing him to change...Horus never turned by himself.
Horus was a innocent victim in all of this

Actually, many Horus Heresy novels talk about this topic. Chaos is not supposed to infuse you thoughts that are not there. Chaos is the echo of the humanity and other races, and it "just" uses that knowledge, the fears, passion, objectives and feels that are common to almost all the species, even the facts (as death) to brighten that surfaces in the ones it chooses. So, in case of Horus, it only exploited the arrogance he already had, as the pride, to "turn" him to their side. They gave him the opportunity to choose "do you really want that as you're trying to convince you dont?" and Horus chose his own path, ignoring what was wrong or right. So, from a moral perspective, of course, he was suggested to be a traitor. But if someone suggest you, for example, to take a gun and kill your family and you do it, on the last instance, it's your doing and your fault. Horus was aware of what he was going to do, and the amount of people what would suffer for that. He just didnt care at that point. He was frustrated and angry for the revelations of the creation of the Primarchs (indeed, something that Erebus showed him in the perfect moment) but he could have chosen. And he decided not to trust the Emperor anymore and do his own will.
I'm a traitor legion fan, but that's my honest opinion. Horus earned a lot of recognition and his pride grew wild, so chaos took advantage of that. As it did with Lorgar's curiosity to find the "true gods". That's how chaos works after all. And on the other corner of Horus and Lorgar (and Erebus, etc) you have people that refused to join chaos, like Loken or Garro. And they were shown the same power as their old teammates, but they had an stronger sense of morality.

LightKing wrote:when you think about it, all the mess of humanity today begins with Kor Phaeron and Erebus, not Horus.

Imho it starts with the Emperor itself. If he hadnt used the chaos powers to obtain his own power, his sons woundt have been so "delicate" to chaos. [The first heretic, False Gods reference]. Apart from that, if he had told Horus why he had to left the crusade, he would had probably had more chances to refuse the chaos path, believing that his father had to take his time to prepare the alternative to disformity jumps. In addition yep, Erebus and Kor Phaeron are two sons of a b***, and if you mix that with the intelligence they have, things can get easily fked more easily. But they've no real power, apart from being able to talk to the primarch in person and 24/7 (as Erebus does, irritating all the Mournival in the process), or so Lorgar says in The first heretic and Betrayer. So I wouldn't excuse Horus because of their "chaos power". He was thirst of power and doubted in his mission, so he failed.

The choices Horus made were his own at least at the beginning of the Heresy, he could have confronted the Emperor in person about his supposed plans for a fanatic Imperium instead of turning traitor, given how close they were he would know whether to believe the Emperor or not when gauging his reply. I definitely think Horus would have had plenty of chances to turn around, during the Heresy and think that just maybe he was doing just as much, if not far more damage than his Father would with his supposedly future, rotten to the core, Theocracy that his visions warned him about.

That being said, the Emperor really, really ought to have informed him of the existence of the Chaos Gods and the true purpose of the Imperial truth, I think indirectly events were largely the Emperor's own fault.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Horus deliberately chose to make a deal with the devil(s). There's nothing sympathetic about that, even if they lied to him. And of course they lied to him, they're the devil(s) and he's an idiot.

To make it worse, Erebus even admits that Chaos lies yet Horus goes ahead and rebels anyway. In fact, Magus had already proved that Erebus had already lied to him in pretending to be Sejanus. That short exchange completely undermines False Gods for me. It would have worked if we (as readers) had known the visions were false but Horus had not. As it stands the conversation goes something like this.

Horus: So these visions are completely true and reliable?
Erebus: Umm, no, not really. In fact Chaos lies all the time.
Horus: Is that so? OK, I'll rebel anyway on the basis of a totally untrustworthy hallucination.

The turds to me are the Alpha Legion. They walked in eyes wide open on the stupid plan that if Chaos won big enough, it'd snuff out the gods (like a fire that burned too fast). Their source: psychic visions from aliens who hated humans.

That's smart.

kaszak wrote:
In the books Horus was shown a vision that resembled 40k version of the Imperium, which disturbed him greatly, just like it disturbs Guilliman now. Ruinous Powers tricked him into thinking that Emperor did that, while in reality his rebellion was the cause for such decline. He made a conscious decision to rebel based on false information, but it still was his decision. He probably lost most of his free will later on when Chaos Gods started pouring power into him.

" A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. "
- Jean de La Fontaine
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jeandelafo107696.html



Horus was trying to save the Imperium initially, seeing the future Imperium and believing it to be the Emperor's fault. Admittedly he was in the depths of a death-bed psychosis, and not really in the position to make such a decision, but he made the decision himself. Arguably, a decision he would have never made without Erebus and the Anathame. So who is reponsible for the Heresy is up for debate. But, the fact is, he took the facts he had, made a decision, and rebelled. With noble cause maybe, but still his choice.

More or less, Horus built the boat, but chaos pushed it outta the harbor.