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right this should be a warning, I'm pretty inept when it comes to greying out stuff and ti makes it more of a chorre to read a post, so


LAST CHANCE, THIS IS A SPOILER LIST, do not read furthe if you want to read the book, and I would reccomend that you do..

Firstly, wow, what an ending

Raises a few issues with established fluff though doesn’t it.

1) OMEGON,

Is he one of the missing primarchs. If he is 2 then 11 gets killed by horus in his vision and we now know where they all are, which in turn will save gigbytes of bandwidth as no longer will it need to be discussed on chatrooms…

If he isn’t and is a joint primarch with Alpharius (which seems to be what is implied) then how is this a secret that no one outside the alpha legion know (surely the emperor and lab workers can tell the difference between on baby in a jar and two babies in a jar) or was one of them created during the scattering through the warp?

If Omegon was the 2nd primarch then it’s not beyond the wit and wisdom of the alpha legion to hush up the merging of the legions due to the fact that the twins wouldn’t want to be separated.

2)the motivation of the Alpha legion turning traitor.

Seems to me from the book that the Alpha legion (repeatedly referred to as pragmatic) chose the lesser of two weavils and turned traitor to stop the formation of the post heresy imperium, and now spend their time trying to bring down the imperium to stop chaos’ ascendence.

Of course it seems pretty likely that the whole thing has some Tzeentch influence, it’s not a great leap of faith to see Tzeentch revelling in telling the truth to manipulate both a whole group of elder beings dedicated to destroying Chaos, but also to turn the most sneaky and Tzeentch like legion to chaos.

If we assume that the Alpha legion believe they are doing the lesser of two evils in combating the imperium would that make them natural allies of the Fallen. That would explain why they cause the Dark Angels to react so strongly to their prexence in the Seige of Vrax in IA5.

3) Finally, think it’s now pretty clear that either alpharius or omegon or both are not dead…

Sorry for the long winded mindsplurge, Legion has got me back into marine fluff for the first time in years..

I'm quite glad they let Abnett get away with some of these secrets, it upsets what we thought we knew about the Alpha Legion without retconning anything.

I personally believe Omegon is one of the missing Primarchs. It just makes things so much easier and is far less of a stretch of the imagination to imagine two pods being scattered to the same place, as opposed to one pod splitting into two people. But then again, that makes this huge.

But what I'm still not sure on: Did they actually turn traitor? The book doesn't even imply what path they took, if you read it carefully. People just assume they chose the path of traitor because of what we know, or what we THINK we know about them now. And the last line in the book IS "For the Emperor".

They are masters of subterfuge, after all, and it would not be a far-flung notion that they chose to APPEAR as traitors, to better infiltrate or undermine the efforts of the traitor legions. And if they did indeed decide to walk the path of the betrayers it means the Cabal was wrong, and their predictions did not come to pass. Of course it is completely possible that this prophecy was wrong to start with, and the Alpha Legion couldn't sway the heresy, one way or another (or they just didn't try hard enough, and failed).

Or going along that reasoning, what if the Alpha Legion was upset by internal fighting? Is it not possible Omegon and Alpharius disagreed on which path to take? Maybe one fell to Chaos, and one stayed loyal, which would actually explain alot (why they appear to have turned to Chaos, but not accomplished the prophecy of the cabal).

As usual, this book raised far more questions than it answered. It's somewhat inspired me to finish my one special forces squad of Alpha Legion, though.

Maybe they'll be less chaosy...

given we don't know anything about the alpha legion homeworld, what's to stop omegon and alpharious being from different planets and thier unusually strong bond drawing them together, meaning when the emperor found them they were already inseperable, and then merging both legions as the brothers refused to operate independently/ made a good case for the whole hydra arguement

dr vompire wrote:
Is he one of the missing primarchs. If he is 2 then 11 gets killed by horus in his vision and we now know where they all are, which in turn will save gigbytes of bandwidth as no longer will it need to be discussed on chatrooms…

See, I'd like to think that this is the case, but I imagine that they'll decide never to directly address this again, consequently leading to even more bandwidth of discussion in chatrooms.

dr vompire wrote:
If he isn’t and is a joint primarch with Alpharius (which seems to be what is implied) then how is this a secret that no one outside the alpha legion know (surely the emperor and lab workers can tell the difference between on baby in a jar and two babies in a jar) or was one of them created during the scattering through the warp?

Considering the fact that we have a Primarch who had friggin' wings, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility in the 40k universe for a primarch to have the ability to split into two beings (and maybe merge himself back?) or for a clone to be created during the scattering through the warp.

dr vompire wrote:Seems to me from the book that the Alpha legion (repeatedly referred to as pragmatic) chose the lesser of two weavils and turned traitor to stop the formation of the post heresy imperium, and now spend their time trying to bring down the imperium to stop chaos’ ascendence.

I haven't read the book yet, but from what I understand of the prophecy, it seems to me that there's a possibility that the prophecy is unfolding on a much larger timescale than most people are thinking about and that as with the question of whether Omegon is part of Alpharius or whether he's the 2nd Primarch, GW won't give a clear answer on this and will let us continue to stew in our own juices over it. Because, hey, buzz sells.

I really don't think Omegon is one of the missing Primarchs. Given the Primarchs are supposed to be in various stages of development when scattered in the warp it and the mutations visitied upon the others, Alpharius splitting into two within his capsule after the scattering seems quite reasonable.

After all, plenty of real life human beings split into two people in vitro - that's how we get twins. It strikes me as a much more plausible mutation than wings or being a cyclops...

Phazer

How symbolic is it that the primarch(s) - for the Legion whose heraldry bears a hydra - to have split into two people at some point?

For those that don't get it, a hydra was supposed to grow back two heads if you cut one off.

Which seems to me the likely reason the legion is uses that symbol.

Actually, they specifically say this in the book.

i.e. you can't behead the Legion. Thus there's a very real possibility one (if not both) of the Primarchs are still alive.

Which is a scary thought.

I dont think so. Guilaman himself killed alpharious. I am sure one primarch can tell another primarch from one of his lutenents. Come on.

One thing I have been wondering since finishing the book is whether or not it would have been possible for Alpharius to lead the fight against the imperium and Omegon to lead the fight against chaos, hence going a third path to the two shown by the cabal and causing a civil war within the Alpha legion themselves.

@legoburner, to what ends would they fight on both sides?

I finished the book yesterday and I found it amazing. It answered so many questions, but left me with so many more.
Too bad the new CSM codex killed the specific legions, I would seriously consider building an Alpha Legion army otherwise.

Darrian

Well both saw the two potential futures, and the futures were pretty clear, so presumably if they went to fight for Chaos, Horus would have won. We know that at least part of the legion went to fight for Chaos as they are a traitor legion now. Since they fight for chaos but Horus lost, something else happened and I wonder if it could be the alpha legion splitting in two and fighting itself with a primarch at the head of each side?

Well now I'm spoiled, and tempted.

I read the first HH book and liked it but there was no way I was going to read through countless Ben Counter and Gav Thrope books just to keep up.

So my question is, is this worth buying as a single book? Will it make sense?

Any of the books except #2 and #3 will work well as a one off read. #2 and #3 will work but will benefit a lot more from reading in order from #1. Legion is set before Horus Rising so easily works as a solo read.

I don't really get the feeling that the Alpha Legion split. The brothers seem to communicate without speech, They seemed very much on the same page. My guess is that they simply fail to turn the tide for Horus and are now stuck trying to complete the mission in their own way.

I checked in here to see if anyone could identify the six secrets revealed in the book. In a recent WD (The one with the Harad on the cover I think) Abnett said he went to GW with five plot line secrets thinking they would have to barter one for another and to his surprise they not only approved all five but offered up a dandy themselves. My guess is the dandy was the ending, why the Alpha Legion chose the path that they did. What are the others? Obviously Omegon as a twin primarch. I think this is a double, though, because it implies that one of the two brother is still alive. Alpharius says to the Cabal that nobody outside of their legion knows of this duplicity. That means not Horus, not Guilliman, not the Emperor. So, Guilliman killed one of them. He did not kill them both.

I think one was not really revealed. When John met the emperor, he saw something.

What else did I miss? I think I need to reread it. I think it says that Omegon is shorter when John is observing them from the tower. That implies to me that Omegon is the one who met the other primarchs and was killed by Guilliman. Also, was it Omegon that had a Mars accent? Implying that the primarch was not as lost as you would think?

No bites on my question? Okay, how about this. The Eldar claim that the Emperor sees far as they do. That may imply that he knew when he made the primarchs that the alternatives were to die and let Horus extinguish the human race, or he would live on forever as a corpse god and let chaos reign. Perhaps he sees further??

Either way it looks as if the bad guys were correct, the Emperor did turn his back on them to accend to godhood.

pheobus290 wrote:No bites on my question? Okay, how about this. The Eldar claim that the Emperor sees far as they do. That may imply that he knew when he made the primarchs that the alternatives were to die and let Horus extinguish the human race, or he would live on forever as a corpse god and let chaos reign. Perhaps he sees further??

Either way it looks as if the bad guys were correct, the Emperor did turn his back on them to accend to godhood.

Interesting point, and perhaps that is what John sees in that moment with the Emperor. On a related note...

Since I just finished it last night I think I might speculate on one or two of the secrets revealed.

1) In Horus' vision in the earlier books, it was said that the Emp created a deal with the chaos Gods, that might be what John saw. Or, he saw the Emperor's desire for ascension.

2) The reference by the Cabal to the First and Last (Primarchs? Legions?) if so, that means that the Lion has more of a role to play, unless it was a veiled allusion to Alpharius and Omegon (Alpha and Omega)

3) The reference to the other legions being tainted by the warp and the Xenos wars. Tainted how?

4) The continual reference to the geno of the imperial army. While a plot device, and further background to the Pre-unification days, and a nice allusion to the USMC (Unit, Corps, God, Country), it might have more to play out. Especially since it flat out said that there was a planet wide extermination of populations after the Unification.

5) Alpharius knew about Chaos. The other primarchs didn't seem to have anything more than an inkling. How did he know?

6) The Emperor knew about the Cabal. He knew who John was by looking at him, so it stands to reason that the big E knew John's missions and whom he worked for.

Speculation abounds, and to paraphrase a quote from another website: "Abnett, you magnificent bastard!"

1.) True, but wasn't this the Chaos visions Horus was seeing in the temple? Given the source, I don't think we can believe it. But....
2.) I was wondering this myself. Perhaps Lion was #2, but as #1(Alpharius) wanted to be with #20(Omegon), they shuffled that one spot. Seems a bit of a stretch, but just a bit.
3.) I think they were tained in ways that we had already seen in the previous books(Luna Wolves, Emperor's Children) and by ways implied but not explained in the previous books (Word Bearers).
5.) Some did(Magnus, Lion) and some claimed not to, and others may not have. Who knows. I think Horus knew of it. Didn't he have a talk with Loken about it?
6.) No. John had not yet died and become a member of the Cabal. I wonder though, if the emperor had him killed and the Cabal saved him.

How the hell did the EMP not know about omegan, come on thats just crap. I think the fluff is getting re worked a bit excessivly

WELL the book was a good read i think they did side with the Emp. and in stead of leting mankind die in a couple years said we will let the emp. win . And the reson they fight for choas now ,well remeber they all said it was in mankinds way to fight . and why they always mess with utra marines they killed one of there Primarchs.


wow need sleep lol my two cents

Ok, I just finished. Wow, that was a Prestige moment (though having seen the Prestige, I figured it out pretty quick that Omegon was Alpharius' brother). Here's the way I see it, it is impossible to work for Chaos for an extended period of time without becoming corrupted. I think they started out Noble, working to exterminate Chaos with their own demise, but in the end I think they succumb to Chaos (they are already pretty close with all the stealth and subterfuge tactics they use). Its kind of like Magnus of the Thousand Sons. He starts out idealistic but the Emp knows that meddling with the warp will ultimately corrupt.

Basically, no I don't think that the Alpha Legion still is loyal and I do believe that one of the twins was killed by Guilleman.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Given all of the "I am Alpharius" business in the book, I don't think EITHER twin was done in by Roboute.

And besides, the Ultramarines have NO record of the event.

And on top of that, this new HORUS HERESY series is really re-writing the history books, so to speak, so I'm not sure how 'valid' ANY of the old INDEX ASTARTES articles really are anymore...

I think they are outside the imperium/chaos or renegades working on thier own agenda or the cabals. The vision they see at the end shows a imperium that is worse off or stagnant if the emperor wins and in the vision they see the emporer as a dead husk on the golden throne which is just as bad as seeing him dead and Horus victorious. In the vision thiers a reference of chaos winning in the long run any way regardless so they may be trying to head that off and change the future?

Some thoughts.

Speculation: Alpharius and Omegon are identical twins. The Emperor probably knows, but allows them their secrecy. It's doubtful any of the other Primarchs know. They are not 2 of 20. They are 1 of 20. If Abnett was really going for the Hydra motif, they'd have been triplets

Who says the Cabal is completely honest? Besides the Cabal. The choice they offered was sacrifice yourself for the universe. In that moment, Alpharius/Omegon agreed to do so. What happened after that is unknown. They could have merely been manipulating a possible outcome.

And it's quite possible the AL are still "loyal", though that is probably a meaningless term for them 10,000 years later. Their battlecry is "For The Emperor" (and was, well before this book). They do not operate out of the Eye, remember. They operate within the Imperium.

They failed. Their task was to ensure Chaos won (though how that benefits the Emperor in unknown - he had to die to make that happen). Chaos lost, and blah, blah, blah, all the nonsense the Cabal said (or the Eldar in the book before to Fulgrim). So where are they now? Abnett left plenty of questions, and it's doubtful there is still a solid certainty, even within the Legion.

I just finished the book and...wow it was a good read.

As for them slowly being corrupted, I dont think they are in the 41st.

They have stayed away from most chaos by operating in the imperium, and I think they have isolated themselves for a reason.

My personal belief is that one or two of the primarchs are alive in the Alpha Legion. And that they are showing the supreme definition of patience to stop the imperium from being overun by chaos, which was foreseen.

Alpharius wrote:Given all of the "I am Alpharius" business in the book, I don't think EITHER twin was done in by Roboute.

I think that Guilliman would be able to tell the difference between a Primarch and a Space Marine.

And besides, the Ultramarines have NO record of the event.

A very good point. Given the Alpha Legion's penchant for lies and misdirection, nearly any account about them is suspect, especially if it isn't corroborated by other sources.

And on top of that, this new HORUS HERESY series is really re-writing the history books, so to speak, so I'm not sure how 'valid' ANY of the old INDEX ASTARTES articles really are anymore...

40K background material doesn't come with an expiration date. It's all lies, anyway!

I just finished it last night and as far as Omegon being a different Primarch I doubt it. The reason I say this is that there are so many "mutations" (for lack of a better term) from one to the other it would only make sense that atleast "ONE" of them would actually be twins, and who knows, maybe he is actually like a hydra, he gets killed then there are two of him that come back to life (though Im probably just shooting in the dark on that one).

beef

How the hell did the EMP not know about omegan, come on thats just crap.

I'd say the emperor knew all along about Omegon and like dienekes96 said he allowed them their secrecy but probably calls them Alpharius Omegon to which ever's face just to let him know that he knows about them and that he does not want to disrespect one of his sons by calling him the wrong name so he then uses both.

Overall I really enjoyed the book especially the last 20-30 pages, it was a nice pallet cleanser after Decent of Angels and its bitching the lion.

It is an awsome book, read it 5 times and it still never fails to confuse and pose new questions.

The Alpha legion could well be still loyalists in some respect, with them warring against members of the Imperium who may briong about corruption from chaos, or who aren't really loyal to the Imperium at all? Just a theory

Also I thought it was Horus who found Alpharius/Omegan and never actually sent him to meet the Emp, instead got him straight to fighting for the Emp. Lexicanum backs this up a bit as it says Alpharius found Horus and nearly killed him... so would the Emp have known about the twinship between Alpharius and Omegan?