Horus Rising - Also known as a “Recipe for self-raising Horus Heresy cakes”

Disclaimer

Forward, for free hair care product!

Spoilers abound in these posts, if you haven’t read the books and will get upset by finding out what happens just stop.

This is also not a recap, if you want a recap go to Lexicanium.

What The Black Library says about the book

After thousands of years of expansion and conquest, the human Imperium is at its height. His dream for humanity accomplished, the Emperor hands over the reins of power to his Warmaster, Horus, and heads back to Terra. But is Horus strong enough to control his fellow commanders and continue the Emperor’s grand design, or will such incredible power corrupt him?

What the book is really about?

In the most part, it’s about world building and scene setting.

Not a lot actually happens in the book, sure there are some action sequences and character development but there isn’t a lot of WHAM BAM reveals and earth shattering developments. It’s actually a pretty subtle book that mixes the BIG BOYS COMMANDO ACTION style of 40k with some nice character development and gentle exposition.

Nothing seems horribly forced and the 30k world is allowed to develop naturally over the course of the book. 

Introducing the Hero-Protagonist

Serious.... serious profession

Get used to this archetype as you will be seeing a lot of it in the future. Garviel Loken is a good honest humble warrior without delusions of his own importance. He loves The Emperor, His Primarch, His Legion and the Imperium in roughly that order. He has a square jaw and a poorly developed sense of humour. He fights hard but he fights fair and he has the welfare of his men as a top priority and has a rigid sense of good conduct and honour and stuff.

Seriously, you should really get used to this type of character as it will form the template for many other Horus Heresy protagonists. One of them is even introduced in this book.

What separates Garviel from the pack? Well, he does have some doubts about things that many other characters don’t consider. After seeing one of his men fall to chaos possession he has a bit of an existential crisis and he develops genuine relationships with no less than three non-space marines in the book. 

Yep, even 8 foot tall killing machines have self-doubt, and having Garviel show this demonstrates his character.

Why are there humans in my book about super-powered Space Marines?

Well, for the 1^st point, so it isn’t 100% a macho, yet homo-erotic, circle-jerk like a lot of this kind of fiction.

Without the human characters to show contrast and be “real” any gravitas of the events unfolding would be lost. If everyone in the world is a colossal Space Marine, you can’t see them for what they are. The human characters give us this perspective, to see the inhuman monstrousness and grandeur of the Astartes in human eyes.

And a bonus it also allows the story to have some female characters… and real characters at that, not just hot boobs in power armour.

This is a good thing unless you are currently sitting in your lounge masturbating to "guns and ammo". 

The mechanism used to introduce the human characters is genius. They are rememberancers, a fleet of artists and scholars sent by the Emperor to chronicle the crusade. They dodder about, like artists, exploring the ship, trying to get interviews, taking photos and writing poetry. It’s a nice way to explain why there is an untrained human at a battle who has to be told everything from scratch and it’s a tasteful way of dumping a bundle of exposition needed for world building.

The photographer, Keeler, gets to witness chaos first hand and to take a photo of it. Her reaction is suitably human and she breaks down and finds religion as a comfort. This kind of frailty would have been out of place if every character was a Marine and I think the story is far richer for including her.

This brings me to the real hero of the book…..

Um officer..... our cat is stuck up that tree......

MVP – Ignance Karkasy

I love this character. Karkasy is an iconoclastic, drunken, loud mouthed, smart-assed poet with one redeeming feature, he speaks truth to power. Garviel and Karkasy strike up a fascinating relationship after Karkasy gets his ass kicked for suggesting the imperium will not last forever. He serves as a comic foil to the straight laced Garviel, while remaining a believable and likeable figure.

Worst Character – Abaddon

Try harder to be bad please!

I was going to say Lucius, but I have plenty of time for that in later books. What Lucius and Abaddon have in common is that they are established characters in the 40k universe, and they are bad guys. You almost feel that the author had to put them in, so wrote them with resentment.

Abaddon is basically Worf…. Or at least a bad Klingon analogue.

“What should we do Abaddon”

“UGH! SMASH! KILL! SMASH! DERP!”

He’s predictably boring and totally unlikeable, I can see why all his black crusades fail in the future.

“My lord, it is time for another crusade into the Imperium, what are your plans”

“UGH! SMASH! KILL! SMASH! DERP!”

Get to know your Legion – The Luna Wolves

Right, I still don’t get the Luna Wolves and I’ve always hated that name. They seem to be good at everything without any real weaknesses. As fierce as a Space Wolf and as planned as an Ultramarine.

The net result is they end up pretty bland.

The one cool thing they have is the Mournival, a group of four senior captains who advise the Primarch. This artifice is used in conjunction with the four humours,

•  Sanguine (Full of life and energy, HUZZAH!)
• Melancholic (Grumpy, moody, perfectionism)
• Phlegmatic (relaxed, content, diplomatic)
• Choleric (UGH! SMASH! KILL! SMASH! DERP!)

Each member of the Mourival represents one of these aspects, with our hero Garviel being the Phlegmatic one. These four voices are balanced by the Primarch in his decision making process, which is quite a neat concept. These four humours are also used in most of the books by Marines to describe their current emotion state.

The Mournival

Get to know your Primarch – Warmaster Horus

I must say I was a little disappointed with Horus. A big deal is made about him being the bees-knees but he really comes across as an insecure stuff-up.

The book has three set pieces and Horus pretty much fucks everything up on each occasion and then has a cry about how hard being so amazing is. “What’s this, a planet infested by killed arachnids with no strategic value; best piss away my forces while ignoring requests from all the other Primarchs for advice…. Seeing as I’m their boss and everything”.

He also plays some political games using the Mournival, but it’s Machiavelli 101 stuff. Then he has a cry about it.

I know the Author is trying to show that even the mighty Warmaster has weaknesses, but seriously.

Why the Emperor is a giant douche

This will appear in every single book because the Heresy only happens because the Emperor is a giant douche.

This time around it’s failing to transition power to Horus with nothing more than an over the top parade and a short speech. He orders and entire continent flattened for one parade, then says

“Right… I know the war isn’t over but I’m buggering off, I won’t tell you why, but keep fighting….. oh you work for this dude now…. BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

It’s like you were in class one day and your teacher organised a big event, introduced the relieving teacher as Bob, and then got on his Harley and drove off into the sunset while giving you the finger. No wonder people though “holy shit…. Is he coming back? Have we been abandoned?”

Probably, and it’s because your god-king is a giant douche.

Gentlemen..... i'm popping down the shops for a pack of smokes.... i'll be right back

Moustache twirling evil-bastard award - Erebus

Yep.... this guys is initially introduced
as a level headed adviser

Erebus is introduced as an even handed advisor from the Word Bearers to Horus and later revealed to be a complete cock.

His involvement is small at this stage, but he is pretty much the only evil character in the story. One aspect of his story is his involvement in the Warrior Lodges (secret bloke societies of space marines that Garviel does not approve of but that everyone but Garveil seem to belong to).

He does singled-handily start a war with a benevolent species however, and for that alone he gets the evil bastard award.

The writing – technical review and evaluation

This is a good book and a must read for the series, if only to get the context of the rest of the books. The action schemes are pretty solid, if that’s what you are in this for, but the real strength is the world building and characters, specifically the human characters.

It’s not as creative as some of Abnetts later books and I feel at times he is struggling within the tight narrative guidelines he would have been given. Oh, I also wished he hadn’t just watched Starship Troopers as well.

This book gets a “must read” rating. If you are going to read any of the books, you may as well start here. 

 *disclaimer, borrowed art is borrowed. 

Horus Heresy – The books reviewed – Overture

I started playing 40k back in the old Wild West days before it became the soulless megacorp we love to hate. Rogue trader was fun, though it was a mess of a system, but it contained some real gems in its background (along with a pile of crap).

The game that started it all

It was in this era that I bought my 1^st two stand-alone GW games, Space Hulk and Blood Bowl. These games still represent to me what GW can do when it gets things right. The other game I got into was Space Marine 1^st edition.

This game was 6mm epic scale battles between armies of Marines, set in the 30^th millennium, during what was to become known as the Horus Heresy. I loved the civil war concept and the fact all players had the same list to choose from, it was pretty much Space Marines & Land raiders, not much else. But it was the setting that intrigued me.

I've always preferred 30k to 40k. I guess the theme of "brother vs brother in an age of heresy" does more for me than "

The core story

Get to know your Primarchs

Over time that setting has been developed, reworked and rebuilt more times than I can shake a stick at. The core concepts remain though. The Emperor created the Space Marines, 20 different legions of kick ass super soldiers to help him conquer the galaxy. Each legion had a Primarch, an even more super-powered leader who embodied the core principles of each legion (indeed, the marines were grown from the Primarchs).

Some wacky misadventure in time & space caused the Primarchs to be stolen away from their growing chambers while still infants and scattered across the galaxy. While conquering said galaxy the Emperor finds all his lost lads and reunites them with their legions. Good times are had until the Emperor appoints his favourite Primarch (Horus) to the title of Warmaster and puts him in charge of everyone else.

Horus goes nuts, declares war on the Emperor, kills a bunch of loyal Space Marines and the galaxy divides into two camps to fight a civil war. Horus looks like he will win, attacks Terra, cripples the Emperor who then promptly kills Horus. The Emperor is left mangled and the entire human domain pretty much becomes a steaming pile of crap from here on in.  

These events describe why the 40k world is such a bleak grimdark future.

What the story really is (according to me)

Lucifer cast down

I think the story is a Christian parable in space. It is the rebellion of Lucifer against the throne where all the protagonists are wearing power armour.  Space Marines are already described as the Angels of Death, and have enough Judaeo-Christian iconography on them to back this up. Purity seals, Hymms to the Emperor, relics, Iron Halos, you name it. There is so much predominately Catholic imagery in marines alone to make the angelic connection. And when an angel falls it becomes a demon.... you know, bat wings, fangs, that kind of stuff. 

This of course makes the Primarchs the Arch-Angels. The Arch-Angels have normally been portrayed as exceedingly more powerful and influential than any individual angel. Archangel Gabriel, for example, heralds the birth of Jesus and recounts the Qu'ran to Mohammad while Archangel Michael is meant to have broken Lucifer’s back and cast him down from heaven.

  

Lucifer, according to Christian mythology (The war in heaven is briefly mentioned in the bible in revelations 12:7 but most “fact” about this comes from other sources) was the best and brightest of the angels. Various versions of the story revolve around one core concept, that Lucifer’s pride caused him to rebel against the throne of god, and that he and his allies (fully a 3^rd of the host of heaven) were defeated and cast into hell.

Horus is Lucifer, the best and the brightest of the Primarchs. He, through various actions, opens himself to temptation, in this case the forces of Chaos. Through his power of persuasion he brings fully half the host of heaven (the Imperial military) under his sway and begins to assault the throne (Terra). Finally, the defeated hordes of Chaos are cast down and exiled to hell.  In the 40k world, we call that “the eye of terror”.

Metatron is out of fucks

The Emperor is of course God, all powerful and stuff, so powerful that he needs Malcador the Sigilite to speak for him so mortals don’t go crazy. This is comparable to the Metatron, the angel who spoke for God, so wonderfully portrayed by Alan Rickman in Dogma.

Each of the fallen Primarchs also embodies a Christian mortal sin that leads to their demise. Fulgrim is full of pride as he strives towards perfection. Magnus is also undone by pride, in his case believing he can master dark arts and dark forces better than the Emperor. Konrad Kruze and Angron fall victims to their own rage and hatred. Peterabo and Mortarion are undone by jealousy of their brothers. Lorgars fall is triggered when he love for the Emperor is spurned, driving him in to the arms of Chaos. Finally, Alpharius is tricked into falling through his own suspicions and isolation.

Why this makes the story cool!

Each Primarch and each Legions fall is told in such a way to highlight their mortal fragility and the human nature of their sin. The battles might be epic in scale, but the tragedy is frequently presented in very human ways.

The story is epic, it spans hundreds of years, has a cast of thousands battling across thousands of worlds. But it is the mix of epic scale and real humanity that makes the Horus Heresy a lot better than it could have been. It could have been dull as shit: “I get magic sword, it makes me angry, I fall, SMASH EMPEROR! CHAOS GOOD!” fiction. The writers, for the most part, avoid this obvious but easy pitfall and attempt to write real people. This is a very good thing.

Horus and Sanguinius pre-heresy

So far, it's 20+ books, each with a different perspective and story, all building into a massive narrative. Yes, we know how it all ends, but that’s not the point. The journey is far more interesting than the destination in this case.

My reviews, what to expect

I plan to recap and review each book. I don’t want to do the traditional “I give this 7 oblongs out of 10” style review. I want to look at how the writers, as a team, build the world. How they build characters and make you feel for characters that are essentially immortal 10 foot tall giant wearing power armour with retarded names like ROBUTE! I want to explore the failings and successes of each story and how each book is an individual brush stroke in the Horus Heresy painting.

These reviews will not be for people who haven’t read the books as I will talk about all the key “big stuff” that happens. Why they are important and what implications they have on the series.

At its best, the Horus Heresy series is A Game of Thrones in space ... at its low points it's freaking Commando comics in space. The series benefits and suffers from its “panel writing” approach. Some writers are gold, Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Dan Abnett stand as giants in this writing team, but they get sorely let down by the team at times.

So, join me as I embark on this process of examining the heresy. Join in with comments and critique. Let’s discuss the crap out of these books. 

100,000 page views

Holy moly, 100,000 views.... nearly 2 years worth and 134 freaking posts.

That seems like a bucket load.

I don't really know what to say asides from thanks for taking the time to read the blog.

It all started because Megapope goaded me in to contributing on the interwebz. Get a blog, he said, it will be fun, he said.

The crazy bearded fool had a point, it has been fun.

The biggest highlight was the response my NOOB's guides to Warmachine received. The faction guide alone has over 12,000 direct views which is pretty epic. Being stickied on the official PP forums, Battlecollege and /warmachine on reddit has been a really big deal.

My Axis and Allies painted set has drawn a lot of readership as well, about 6,000 views for that series. I'd like to thank the team at http://www.axisandallies.org for keeping my posts stickied in their Anniversary edition section. Pretty stoked to see the number of people inspired to make their own painted sets after reading those posts, and some of their work kicks the crap out of mine.

I've used to blog to motivate me to paint and play, it's become a symbiotic relationship type thing. "I should play something because I need to update the blog" one week, then the next week its "I should blog about the things i just did".

Finally, a thank you to those people who have given feedback, played games with me, or offered support at different stages. Real names hidden to protect the guilty.

Master of the Forge conversion

• Ms. Vomkrieg
• The Monday night gaming lads, Megapope, Professor M, DJ Ekim & Rahana 
• The Port Nicholson privateers but most of all Sicarius & Palarel. 
• The Ministry of Wargaming team, Ginger Ninja, Lintman, The Scottish Play and the Ships Cat. 
• Everyone i've played at a tournament who allowed me to take pics for my battlereports
• Everyone who has run a tournament that i've been to. 
• My dealers (namely John from Pukeko games and Chris from Mark 1)

The blog will keep going strong for a long while yet, so here's a random assortment of photos to show whats been covered on the blog to date. 

I look forward to adding to it. 

Chaos in the Old World

Sons of Medusa veteran conversions

Descent

Grubby Tank

Descent Heroes

Space Hulk

Sculpting 101

War of the Ring

Axis and Allies

Magic Runes!

Breaking arms and custom bases

War of the Ring expansion

Storm Strider

Storm Lord

A damm fine cloak!

Battlestar Galactica with freaking bells and whistles

Horus Heresy

Relic

Card games – Collectible vs. Living (or... how magic is the great satan)

Collectible card games are the devils work, and Magic the Gathering is the GREAT SATAN.

I can hear fans of the game wailing and gnashing their teeth, but it’s a simple brutal truth.

Few things are as financially crippling as a MTG habit. Addicts spend their time in a daze, waiting for payday to buy another booster just to get that “Blue Eyes White Dragon*” they've been craving to complete their super deck of doom. The rush of opening a pack, the lament at seeing a pile of cards you already have and a crappy rare no one wants to trade.

How many cards you will discard to get that one rare you need. 

Magic the Gathering has one big thing going for it.

The game is actually pretty freaking brilliant.

Oh wow.... this fits so well it makes me
lament my wasted youth playing this game even more

Satan’s own finance model aside, the game-play has that brilliant combination of easy-to-learn and impossible-to-master. There are multiple paths to victory, millions and millions of card combinations, and a seemingly endless variety of tricks, strategies and card interplay to explore. The game is a master piece.

Satan’s own hand is on it, that much is self-evident.

I was once an addict like you, spending my hard earned (well, that’s a stretch, but it was money I could have used on other things) on Vampire the Eternal FREAKING struggle cards. I spend a fortune on that game and do I play it anymore?

No!

NO ONE PLAYS IT ANYMORE!

But there is another option, A way to get your card game fix without shelling out half a house deposit on cards that won’t be useable in a few sets time (MTG tournament rules exclude the older cards… makes business sense after all….. IF YOU’RE SATAN).

Living card games

Fantasy flight game developed a new business model for card games a while back, and I think whoever game up with it deserves a nice yacht or something similar…. an aircraft carrier to cruise the Caribbean perhaps?

The living card game is different to the collectible card game. It was clearly developed by someone who had sunk a lot of cash into MTG and was left feeling cheated, dirty and crying in a shower.  

The fundamental difference between the two models is you know exactly what cards you are getting in a booster pack, and you only need to buy one of each booster to get all the copies of a card you will need (unless you’re crazy).

The starter boxes come with enough cards to make some decks, and each booster so far comes with 3 copies of the 20 cards in that set.

That’s it.

No digging through boosters to get that rare you want. You buy the booster and get 3 copies of everything. BOOM! Just like that.

You still get the fun of unboxing the cards, reading what they do and figuring out how to use them.

Each game also has a drip feed release schedule, one booster a month, at about $20 NZ a pop.

Now if you get into one of these games, you can still sink a lot of money, but it will be over time and eventually, once you catch up to releases it will be $20 a month. That’s less of a crack habit and more of an occasional joint at party’s type habit.

What LCG’s are there?

Fantasy Flight games have six on the market right now, and they are targeting some pretty strong fandoms. I own two of them, Netrunner and Star Wars and they are both excellent games.

Netrunner is a cyberpunk hacker vs. an evil mega-corporation in an asymmetric game of bluffing and deduction. Netrunner is currently the 5^th highest ranked game on Boardgamegeek, if your serious about card games, it’s a must try. Also, one of the corporations is Weyland…. Of Alien fame.

Star Wars is another asymmetric card game, with a predictable rebel vs. Empire theme. The gameplay however is wonderful, and it is the first card game I have come across that does not have “bad cards”. I’ll review the game another time, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and I rate it highly.

Also on the list are Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer Invasion (for all those GW fanbois), Lord of the rings and A GAME OF THRONES.

Yep, FFG got Cyberpunk, Warhammer, Cthulhu, Star Wars, LOTR and AGOT. That’s targeting a lot of geek fandoms, and I’d be surprised if anyone reading this isn't a fan of one of those.

So, go online, look up the rules for the LCG and buy a starter box. You’ll save roughly bazillion dollars by flogging you magic cards off online and picking up an LCG instead.

* Yes, I know that’s a Yu_gi_oh reference. 

Bust a move - Finale

 When my painting muse is not with me, it takes forever to paint anything.

This relic project has taken a lot longer than I would expect, and that has little to do with the quality of the figures and everything to do with me being a bit burned out by painting.

The final three paintjobs turned out alright I thought though. I tried a few different things this time, but of most interest to others would be the continuing experiments with pigment powders.

The ogyrn has a small amount of pigment work on his sweatshirt to make it look dirty (note, nipple highlighting was not the intent).

But the new thing I tried was using pigment to represent camouflage paint. In the past, if i have tried do camo paint on a model I've used paint. This time, especially on the ratlings face, I wanted the camo to look like it has been applied "on top" of the original colours.

I used a technique similar to dry brushing to get the effect. You can still see the flesh-tones of the face through the camo, but it's an unmistakable effect. (inspired by platoon and tour of duty). I quite like how gritty the Ratling turned out.
























As mentioned earlier, painting updates will be more sporadic from here on in for a while until my urge to paint returns. Until then the blog will shift focus on to boardgames and the Horus Heresy books for a while.

A new direction

My painting muse has fled… this happens to me from time-to-time. I can paint non-stop like a rampaging half-bull half-manbearpig hybrid at times…. And then, all of a sudden, I cannot be bothered with it.

I’m nearly done with painting Relic, but lordy, has that been a pain. What I've noticed is the amount of time I spend painting is directly related to the time I spend playing PC games. I just started playing The Old Republic and I’m enjoying the stuffing out of it.

So what does that mean for the blog?

Probably very few painting updates and game reports for a while, but I do have something else planned, excellent stuff in fact to fill the void. I’m planning a new regular column for my blog. It’s  hobby related, but not to do with painting.

Horus Heresy recaps

Probably the most iconic scene in the 40k universe. 

I’ve been reading the Horus Heresy books and I quite like them. I started off playing “Epic Space Marine” instead of 40k. I’ve always preferred the 30k setting to the 40k setting and I think the book reviews will be a good project to do. They will be filled with spoilers, so if you don’t want the books “ruined” for you then I suggest ignoring this section.

Right, that’s about it from me. Hopefully, if the weather is fine I can take some pics of the Relic busts and finish off that project. Until next time…

Bust a move - Part three

Right, so indoor photos were just not working out for me and the weather here as been a bit bad. So it's taken longer than expected to get this update sorted.

Three more relic busts done and i'm passably happy with these guys.... not really over the moon but not upset. Weird thing is i'm enjoying painting them for the most part, they are pretty cool figures, but something is missing, but that's probably just my painting mojo ebbing.

I tried doing something a bit different with the colour selection on the rogue trader (mostly, because most of the other models are red, i thought purple would be a nice change). I also tried doing an odd style of highlighting on the jacket by choosing two shades that aren't on a natural continuum. The photo of the back gives you a better idea of the effect i was after, i'm not 100% sure it worked, but it looks different at least.

The mechanicum Tech-Priest Enginseer is an annoying model to photograph. I tried making his eyes glow, but shot of shining a bulb in his face you just cant make out any of the detail there.... sigh.

Very pleased with the red on this guy, it's nice and solid. Used a few motes of dust to "wear up" the model as well. I do like pigments (and you'll see more of those on the ogryn later)

Finally the Inquisitor. He looks alright I guess. The red again looks pretty good, and overall I've been pleased with the faces. Was tempting to try some lightning source shenanigans with the glowy thing under his chin, but  decided against it. (mainly as i was pleased with the face and didn't want to gloop it up with green)