Before the publication of ‘The End and the Death (Part
One)’, I came up with a BINGO CARD; would I, a man who has read or audibled
nearly the entire Horus Heresy series, be able to predict the end?
Only Part One is out so far, lets see how I am doing…..
Erda: she’s back baby! Back from the VASE.
Erda! The Emperors sort-of GF and mother of the Primarchs (not Amar Astarte, a different one). She had enough of Neoth and his spooky ways and, after playing some part in the triggering of the Scattering of the Primarchs, went off to live in the desert and be a super-witch.
Dan Abnett invented her out of whole cloth, and at the last minute, I think in Saturnine? Then I think Chris Wraight packed her away neatly in ‘Warhawk’ (I think?). I had assumed she was just too similar in concept to Amar Astarte, the Selinar Gene Witches and a few other factions.
Last seen – beat up by a bunch of chaos demons and her remaining anima… in a vase?
I had assumed that since Abnett had invented her she would magically pop back up in the final book. I was wrong! So far… One of the few Abnettverse characters who doesn’t get a look in, I retain high hopes for her rebirth in the last volume FOR SOME REASON.
Enuncia
The magical Enochian word-of-god super-sorcery language Abnett invented in the middle of the Heresy, and gave as part of the backstory to Oll Persson and the Emperor while at the same time integrating it into his latest Eisenhorn books set 10,000 years later.
YES! Of course we have to have more Enuncia. Or at least its mentioned. John Grammaticus still has a magic word he can say once which will do something super-magical though he doesn’t know what.
It’s a free get-out-of-plot tool and I fully expect John to say his magic word in the next book.
Place your bets for what the last word of the super-magic language to be spoken will be in the comments below!
GASP! Something-someones-on-the-golden-throne!
So there are a bunch of 40k conspiracy theories about who ends up on the Golden Throne and how. Some say the Emperor dies and Horus ends up on it, others Malcador or whatever.
Its book one so too early to see but at this state I highly doubt any jiggery-pokery will take place. Abnett seems committed to producing a relatively orthodox interpretation of events with sketching round the edges but no massive twists.
I will call this now – The Emperor ends up on the Golden Throne.
He Wrote Three Fucking Books
And
O My God He Wrote Four Fucking Books!
Failed so far and I would judge unlikely to be fulfilled.
HOWEVER
The Book we do get is not only physically gigantic but Voluminous as hell. A huge, rambling, staggering baroque Titan of a thing, stumbling towards its end.
Will the next book be any shorter? Mmmmmmaybe. It will certainly have all the actual events in it. For reference, the last scene of the previous book; Echoes of Eternity has the Vengeful Spirit lowering its shields. It takes until the last third of this one for the Imperials to actually go up there.
Euprati Keeler; LETS BURN!
Not only wrong but so ridiculously wrong its nearly laughable. Keeler, so long as Abnett was writing her, was a classic Abnetty likeable Paragon. In ‘Warhawk’ Wraight takes her on a hard right turn into proto-Torquemada, she is found wandering around with skulls, carefully planning mass suicide assaults on enemy Astartes where her flock will clog the enemies chainsword with their own flesh, simping for Sigismund in his super-sayan puritan mode and talking about how aces the power of pure hatred is.
I half-expected this to carry on in ‘TEatD’.
It does not at all. Abnett pretty much ignores the Keeler of ‘Warhawk’ and just rotates Keeler back to being the paragon saint of a pretty-reasonable-actually Imperial Cult;
“What I’m saying is that hope contains the future, and it’s the one thing we have. More potent than a cartload of shells.’
‘Is this where you tell me the Emperor has a plan?
…
‘Alright then. I think He does have a plan, and its contingent on us believing in it. Our hope in it, our faith in it, makes it happen. We are the plan and the plan is us. The Emperor doesn’t have a plan that, if we perish, will still come to fruition. The plan is us.’
Basilio Fo! Remember me? Supervillain guy? Kill-All-Astartes-Guy? Remember?
Well if we didn’t before we will now!
Basilio Fo turned up in an Abnett short story ages ago; a former Age-of-Strife Warlord/Evil Scientist, a Mega-Bile if you will, who was driven off Terra by the Emperors rise. A super-evil (?) plot-armoured ‘genius’, he has a plan to make a super-weapon to kill all the Astartes, good and bad. How? Who fucking knows. He turned up in Saturnine and was involved in various shenanigans, now he is back for a sub-plot of his very own where the Custodes and Malcadors-chosen are fighting over him and his last-option super-plot.
His sections are a little silly. He outwits custodies by being arch and mysterious. He will for sure be back to do something in the final book! Although since that something clearly isn’t setting off his anti-astartes super weapon fuck knows what it will be.
jJHonN GramATTIcuS
A character that absolutely no-one but Dan Abnett likes, but he’s the one writing this book so FUCK ALL YA’LL, it’s John Grammaticus Adventure Time baby!
Strangely, one of the only pseudo-American accented characters in all of the Audiobook-universe of 40k, John is some dingus who was made immoral by creepy aliens in return for turning on his own species. The aliens had a plan to make sure Horus won, thinking he would ‘burn out’ chaos in a grand madness that would end with humanity extinct and the galaxy at peace. In pursuit of this, old John ran around doing secret agent stuff.
He helped turn the Alpha Legion to the xenos’ cause, tried to off himself, changed sides (?), met Erebus, met Eldrad Ulthuan, nearly killed Vulkan but healed him instead? Got magic scissors(?). Just did a bunch of random ping-pong shit, generally without a stable plan and while complaining about himself, ended up joining up with Oll Persson with some kind of, again very vague, plan to somehow something-something the Emperor. Oh along the way he got a fragment of Enuncia.
I am pretty sure Abnett thinks this guy is a sexy enigma wrapped in a tantalising interior moral conflict where as he is just the avatar of the least interesting aspects of Abnetts writing style. The whole get-Oll-into-the-Palace plan is riddled with last-minute janky plot bullshit, ultimately Grammaticus has an “I know this guy from work” moment where he meets with Vulkan again in the Throne Room and Vulkans like I know you, you stabbed me with that thingy that time back in book twenty or something.
Probably this tiresome fuck will play some kind of major role in the final (?) book and speak his magic word somehow.
TROOP-PER-PER-SON
So.. Oll Persson, have I explained this yet? I will try to be quick.
Oll Persson (“All Person/Everyman”) is a Perpetual Abnett invented in ‘Know No Fear’. He has been alive maybe longer than the Emperor but instead of becoming a super-psychic magic man or Dr Who or something he has just lead life as a near normal guy. He is allegedly ‘Catheric’ and has a crucifix (which gets stranger when Abnett infers that the Emperor might have been Jesus at one point;
“He has appeared
as male or female or neither, as child or elder, peasant or king, magician or
fool. He as been an entire cartomantic arcana, for the Master of Mankind if
also a master of disguise. He has performed all of these roles ell, with
delicacy. He has been humble when humility was needed, gentle when softness was
the best device, sly, amiable, reassuring, commanding, caring. He was been
terrible when terror was the only recourse, and sometimes meek in order to
inherit the Earth.” [Italics mine].
Oll was the Emperors original ‘Warhampster’ and helped him destroy the Tower of Babel (I know, it gets worse), before literally stabbing him in the back. After the fall of Calth he picks up a magic knife and an assortment of symbolic/representative followers and has been traipsing about the Galaxy planning to reach the Emperor in order to do…. Something? Honestly for the sheer amount of blood and treasure expended in it, Olls plan is pretty fucking vague.
One of his followers is ‘Graft’ a farm servitor who seems to be getting a bit more sentient after exposure to a galaxies worth of madness, and its Graft who calls him ‘TROOP-PER-PER-SON’. And yes Graft is in this, though doesn’t do much! Maybe he/they will do something in the next one.
DOOM-BREED
Ok so the Emperor canonically fights Hitler on the Vengeful Spirit. (It hasn’t happened yet).
Arguably he does. In the 2nd Edition
Chaos Codex DoomBreed is mentioned as a Demon prince who was a warlord of old
earth and became a chosen of Khorne and there are vague suggestions he may have
been Hitler.
But Ok, even if he isn’t Hitler, he’s still a
warlord of old Earth which means the Emperor almost certainly knew of him, and
we know Doom Breed-related demons are on Terra during the siege as Horus names
them.
SO, if the Emperor doesn’t meet Doom-Breed and at least say something like; “Ah, we meet again.. Ghengis Khan” or some shit like that, I will be well pissed off.
But it hasn’t happened yet.
Dream-War in the Warp
Not that much in this book really.
In ‘Saturnine’ Malcador goes and visits the Emperor in some dream-scape where he is facing off against the Chaos Gods and Horus, much of all the Siege books has the Emperors ‘psychic shield’ slowly decaying and falling apart and in tE&tD the chaos powers are basically melting space and time in and around the palace, making it even more of a dreamscape (and very convenient for moving people around for various scenes). Plus the Vengeful Spirit is itself now basically a portal to the Realms of Chaos. But there is no explicit Dream-War scene.
Dark Angels Turn It Off And On Again
The Astronomican! The Dark Angels are up inside it and are trying to activate it! A bunch of Plague Guys are trying to stop them! There are various plots and business going on! They have not yet turned it on and its looking like in this one instance Abnett may subvert our expectations by setting up some kind of psychic beacon in the palace itself.
Someone makes a pointed comment about history, memory and truth, translation; SHUT UP NERDS.
Ok, not quite. There is no ‘shut up nerds’ but as we know, every late-period Heresy book must include a digression on history and memory so the writer can be sure we know they have a degree.
“…. ‘I meant… what’s the point of a poem? And when does a poem stop being just words and become something else? When do words gain power? Under what circumstances?’
‘Power?’
‘You know what I mean. The reason we’re here.’
He does know what she means, and yet he still can’t answer. If any abreactive magik lurks in the Hall of Leng, he has no idea how they will find it, or recognise it if they do find it. Where does verse, or prose, or memoir stop, and ritual begin? Can things be both at once? Are there incantations of control stashed here in this great collection, under lock and key, or merely the indulgent scribblings of the ages, the fancy of idle men in easier eras, who set out to do no more than praise a lover, or articulate some feeling, or describe a flower or, perhaps, merely rhyme for the sake of rhyme? The arts, whatever they might be, have come to play an increasingly insignificant role in Imperial life, eroded by Strife and Old Night, until they are vestigial memories, non-functioning organs dwarfed by rational science and secular industry. He recognises, belatedly, his own lack of knowledge. Did the arts ever have a purpose, at any time in history, or have they always been decorative? Does some art have true function and capacity and other art not? How does he, with a mind raised in the schools of the modern Imperium, even tell?”
Flashback-to-history-as-recalled-in-the-21st-Centry (and no other time. Remember the Age of Terra? No, us neither.)
As we all know, when someone in 30k or 40k quotes something from the history of man (at least 30 millennia, in which we are in the 3rd), its always something from ‘our’ history
I may not be able to score a complete victory but I think I can score a strong victory.
“Day will not save
them, and we own the night.”
– Horus
Lupercal wait, no, Amiri Baraka ??
In the above mentioned ‘Library’ chapter we have quotes from Milton, Tennyson & Shelly!
Fuck It, Oll & Neoth were in WWII Together
Sadly not a score. I can live in hope though.
Of all this Bullshit, only I Kyrill Sindermann survived to tell the tale,
and die in a kind of crappy book much later, hey, I’ll take it!
Sangy Dies in Some Bullshit Way
He ain’t dead yet! And looking at how things are going I
expect his death to be classic rather than subverting expectations. Abnett
loves a paragon and Sangy is the paragon of paragons. I am hoping for Horus to
be like “I could break his spine, but I could not break.. his spirit”
and for Sangy to get like four noble death speeches.
“It was all part of my plan”
Pretty much, see ‘Horus Cries’ below.
Hows-Malcador-Doing-Cutaways. OUCH!
Ouch indeed! Not just cutaways but he is the semi-omniscient first-person narrator of much of the book!
Its a neat conceit. Malcador is less insanely godlike that the Emperor so he can talk to the audience almost like a normal person. He spends a few chapter giving us a lowdown on how things are going. Once he is on the Golden Throne, as well as being slowly incinerated, he gets quasi Dr Manhattan powers and can perceive the flow of fate or whatever but can’t actually communicate with anyone in-world, but he can see all the tricks and schemes of the siege, talk to us and do spooky straaands-ov-faate ‘nudges’ to try to stop the unfolding disaster, which links him to almost everyone’s overplot.
I, Robute Guilliman, am also in this book! (And more than you might have
expected!
NPC arrives, gives chapter-length “explanation” for another writers previous fuckups, disappears
Amazingly for a Siege of Terra book, this does not happen at all! (I think.) (But it may in the next one, see below).
The Above Happens More than Once
I don’t think it even happened once. Pain.
Rogal Dorn; “The Emperors Dream is Dead (again, but more this time), also, I am Goth now
Nnnnearly. I was so close, all I needed was a classic ‘The Emperors Dream is Dead’ from RG, but I don’t think I even got one. He does go a bit dark and edgy towards the end where he is trapped in the chaos realm for relative centuries.
Oh Fuck the Blood Angels have gone Mental! Fucking ruuuuuuuun!
Hasn’t happened yet but I hold out hope for the next book.
Ha ha! Its me; Abaddon, I’m ba… of fuck its Sigismund! Run!
Abaddon is briefly in this, he has a classic traitor siege scene of ‘This is no longer a war of legions boo hoo’, and decides to go back to the Vengeful Spirit. That’s all we get and I think Sigismund is still on the surface? So we may not get that meetup.
Surprise Intervention by … Oan Mkoll! He fell through time! (And is also a perpetual)
It was low odds but I almost feel I got this one in spirit. tE&tD is so… Abnetty, I almost wouldn’t put it past him to just go ‘fuck it’ and somehow link it into his 40k work. At least so far as his heresy books have gone, he has brought back… well, everyone, every character he ever invented, every plotline, every bit of fluffy nonsense, every good idea and every bad idea. Its like he never left. More and more it seems to me there isn’t one Heresy series but several, with each writer essentially following their own themes and tendencies and pet characters, and favourite character portrayals even when it doesn’t quite work.
That Sniper Who Went Mad On The Vengeful Spirit, remember him? Well he’s back, and he snipes someone!
Sadly completely forgotten, though he may still be on the ‘Spirit’ and the majority of this massive book was spent just getting the main cast there so I have some hope for book two. What if he snipes Doombreed! I will probably shit myself in pleasure.
Dogent Krank (who?) You Did a Thing!
One of Olls not very interesting companions, I think in this he does actually do something though I can’t remember what.
I Herbert Zyes (who?) am the key to this mystery!
Who indeed. Another of team-all-person. He is in this. He says some things? I don’t think he is the key to any mysteries.
The Final Paragraph will be broken down into individual sentences, each sold separately.
No signs of this so far, unless you could the sheer gargantuan SPREAD of the book itself. I feel like there is half a chance that GW will try something at the end though. Come on geedubs! There is always more cash you can squeeze from a property!
The final sentence will be broken into letters and punctuation marks, each sold through a gachapon ‘lucky dip’ system, can YOU collect them ALL?
Could still happen.
CORAX! turns up through the webway and helps out Vulkan! SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS! (they never meet again)
This might still happen and I am holding out hope! I will have a cry if it happens!
Russ is useless
Of course Russ is always useless and is so again here. He is dying on some moon or something.
Actaea; "Yes I was CYRENE VALANTION all this time!
She was! (Or at least says she was). The mysterious blind sorcerer lady who just turned up and who seemed a lot like the sexy blind prophetess who hung out with the Word Bearers was in fact that lady, or at least says she is.
One of Olls ablative-plot-armour-companions, she it traipsing along with them with some vague but mysterious purpose in mind. Will she turn out to be evil? (It’s the Abnettverse so probably yes.)
Actaea; "Yes I was NOT CYRENE VALANTION all this time! Surprise motherfuckers!
Ok, this doesn’t happen this book, HOWEVER, its not completely impossible that it will happen.
Xtra points if both of the above
We will see……
Yes I, KATT, random psychic farm girl, actually become MORIANA! (you thought it would be Actea but she was actually.. [randombullshit random bullshit]"
SO – Moriana is a mysterious seer in later 40k, she is meant to be one of the original members of the Inquisition who has “seen too much” and turned traitor and gone to hang out with Abaddon. It is not clear what she is up to, if she is really a traitor or a double or triple agent or what.
Probably someone will turn out to be Moriana, but whom.
Katt is another of Team-Oll. A random farm girl who has been “seeing too much” in the horrible spaces between realities and whose psychic powers have slowly been growing from exposure to the warp and general awfulness.
Will this turn out to be the blind seer Moriana, Katt or someone else?
Someone turns out to be Promeus!
Promeus is another of the ‘original’ Inquisition. No idea who this is going to be.
Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn closes the book, "And that was the (fictionalised) history of the Horus Heresy somehow, a fascinating text" .. then he WAKES UP - even him reading the book was a DREAM!
It could still happen!
Dream-Sequence where Abnett seems genuinely baked on epilepsy meds but the editors were all too scared to admit they didn't understand it.
Sadly nothing quite like this yet.
It’s me! Limited Edition Space Marine 2! did a thing! AND I was part of a gigantic overplot which sounds like a just made it up let me explain very quickly
Erda had a pet space marine she called ‘LE2’, probably a reference to a very early GW sculpt. LE2 has joined team-Oll and will presumably do something interesting at some point. Hopefully.
It’s me! The Fucking Emperor First Person chapter baby! I finally get to do something and I am going to look COOL AS SHIT doing it! I FIGHT HITLER IN THIS!
He does NOT get a 1st person chapter, or fight Hitler (YET), but we do get to hear more of him speaking (near) frankly with Sanguinius et-al and we get to see him actually DO STUFF so that’s nice. Hopefully he will do ever more stuff in the next one. He should try to pack in the events as he doesn’t have much time.
Yes I, Amar Astarte have returned! To do a thing! Probably ether destroy the Astartes or save them from Basilio Fo offscreen.
She has not turned back up and there is no sign of her so far. She’s not an Abnettverse character so I would be surprised if she does turn up.
The final, final FINAL book is actually a series of sub-articles which will be sold separately through Games Workshops
Ok I overplayed the joke but would you really be THAT surprised if they actually did this?
Horus Cries! (Burning Tears)
Horus!
I have spoken a lot in my Corposant series about the ‘black boxing’ of both Horus and the Emperor so we get to see very little of the actual drives and personalities who are at the centre of this super-mega-war. The Emperor is a multi-minded trans-reality warp-beast and Horus is increasingly shut down, visibly insane, deluded and broken.
Here we get to see Horus actually DO STUFF. He is fucking nuts! Great.
Ever since ‘Horus Rising, Horus has increasingly been isolated, insane, erratic, and as I said, hollowed out. In tE&tD Horus is clearly fugueing and has space altzheimers and is barely holding any sense of reality together.
It looks like what Abnett is going for is that Horus is SUPER SANE ACTUALLY, or at least, that the real (?) Horus was deliberately hiding his true core and now super-demonic personality behind a series of masks set up to be just competent enough to get him here, and to persuade the Emperor that he was actually as broken and empty as he looked. Then, when the Emperor commits to his final attack, these para-personalities fall away and are forgotten and Horus comes out as a cackling super-badass. Will Horus become the ‘Dark King’ who has been prophesied for, well just for this book as Abnett just made him up, or will fighting him be the catalyst to turn the Emperor into the ‘Dark King’ the 5TH CHAOS GOD BABY!
The ultimate ‘WELL, ACTUALLY’ of a mega-series already well-stocked with ‘Well Actually’. Forget Chris Wraight explaining that Mortarion isn’t dumb, just badly written, or ADB explaining that actually the Emperor said something completely different to Magnus, it turns out that well, actually, all the bits of the series where Horus was written as a puppet of chaos were ALL PART OF HIS PLAN! SEE ABOVE!
"Its me, SAMUS! Samus is.. scared.. look, just please stop hurting me, please..."
Poor innocent Samus. The first demon encountered by the Imperial forces in ‘Horus Rising’, ever since then he has been wheeled out by every writer imaginable as a secondary rent-a-villain who always ends up getting beaten and banished by the hero of the book.
After a while we start to feel sorry for the poor chump.
Well, Samus is back and he gets an whole opening narration chapter! It seems he was just keeping it loose or whatever for reasons or something, and in fact has a DEEP SCHEME which supersedes the whole Heresy and which he just didn’t mention until now.
It looks like he has some kind of deal where he wants to end reality or something and is looking for a figure to help him with that. Could this be his big chance to finally end all reality?
Abnett doing a polish on even poor old Samus is pretty emblematic of the book as a whole. Our boy Dan knows who he came in with, and he is leaving with exactly those people and those FUCKING THEMES THANK YOU.
………………………
Join me and a couple (million?) other people for the LAST
FUCKING BOOK at some point in the future!
