EFFORTPOST [Effortpost] The Horus Heresy is officially over. Here's some and

Background

Warhammer 40k is the worlds most popular tabletop miniatures wargame and attracts over 9000 nerds every year to empty their wallets buying overpriced figures. The Horus Heresy (HH) is a time period set in the 10,000 years before Warhammer 40k, thus it is called 30k for short. It was supposed to be about the good times before the galaxy turned to shit and war all the time, but when they decided to write 500 books about the HH it all sounded suspiciously similar to the grimdarkness of 40k.

If you don't know anything about this series I want you to read every word on this page and then click every link. I will explain no further because you're not entitled to my emotional labor sweaty. (https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Horus_Heresy)

Now that the final book is out and the Horus Heresy is over let's see what the fa/tg/uys on a mongolian basket weaving forum think.

Now that the most epic novel series in history has ended, what do you think about it? What is your general opinion of the Horus Heresy?

I think it's based because it made fat stacks of cash caring about anything besides profit motive is for lorestrags

Kind of underwhelming, but that's more or less what I was expecting it to be.

fpbp

It should have remained an uncertain vaguely defined mythic past. The demystification of the Horus Heresy is the single most damaging thing GW has done to the setting since its inception. And all that damage, just for a hundred books of daddy issue shlock. Jesus Christ.

Elaborating on what happened in Horus Heresy ruined the whole mood of the HH setting. Horus Heresy should've been the tales of epic battles and conflicting myths that historians had to argue on which ones were the truths. It should've been the Epic of Gilgamesh of 40k, but instead we got fricking capeshit into it.

Nerds screw everything by insisting every loose thread or unclarified apocrypha get a spin off series running twleve seasons minimum with a breakfast cereal.

(also I think they have 40k funkopops )

>frick there's so many contradictory accounts of who runs into the throne room, plus we have our pet characters we want to shove in there too

>what the frick are we going to do

>how about we have all of them conga line in?

>genius, print it!

It's hilariously stupid

I read the first half dozen and a couple of others. I might read a few more of the ones that cover actually significant events rather than just treading water. Eventually. Perpetuals are still r-slurred.

They ruined more than they add, but I do enjoy the odd novels here and there. I just wish they'd lean more into the vagueness of it all, like having conflicting information between novels and characters, just to make it less a canon novel and more in-universe records of the events. Also >>91714956 is correct, Perpetual is an r-slured concept.

In case you're wondering a perpetual is an author invention where they thought inserting random human OCs that are totes immortal, and come back from the dead in a setting about constant war and dying, would be super cool and not dampen the setting or their heroic sacrifices at all.

(I haven't read these books so don't ask me to elaborate on my smugposting about someone else smugposting)

In the end, was there some nameless soldier torn to shreds by Horus in front of the Emprah or not? I don't care enough to read 500 pages.

More or less. He's a perpetual, so he's got a lot more experience with a guardsmen (which understandably pisses a lot of people off) but he is ultimately just a guy armed with a lasgun and his balls.

>Originally just a marine

>Fans take the idea and make it of a normal relatively unremarkable dude, the whole point being that its not anyone important, just a normal man standing there.

>It becomes incredibly popular, to the point where you have to remind people its not the origional story

>BL takes the idea and missed the entire point by making him a perpetual, some immortal (for no reason) super hero that they inserted for no reason

Gosh, this was all a huge mistake.

The single worst thing about the series is making the setting revolve around highlander knockoffs, who have no relevance to anything outside their novels, except to be OC donut steals for the authors to mouth off with. Even though the emperor, pre-history, and arguably primarchs should have remained mysterious and ambiguous, the lore of the perpetuals sucks in its own right even prior to considering how much else they shut the door on and devalue.

For the zoomers in the audience

this is a good point. Perpetuals are such a spectacularely tone-deaf and useless addition that it feels like a shitpost. They could not have made the feeling of the setting more awkwardly inconsistent if they had decided that every 200th person born in the Imperium has a big dildo growing out of their forehead but up till now nobody has mentioned them - now though, read all about Inquisitor dildohead and make your own dildohead space marine chapter and didn't you know that Dante has a dildo growing out of his forehead under his mask?

dildoman is living rent free

The lore speculations as to what he was were more interesting than being told that he was just one of many randomly born highlanders who overlevelled and bit off more than he could chew in PVP with the chaos gods, because he was too toxically masculine to listen to the "earth mother" and the whiny narcissist perpetuals who critically sabotaged him.

bc he was too to listen to and

Plus perpetuals are fricking dumb. Throw that shit in the trash. Emps should have been the last of the Men of Gold trying desperately to right the sinking ship after the DAoT. He gained huge psychic power by devouring the Sigilittes of which he spares Malcador because he defected. This allows him to be seen both as "the best of humanity" seeing as the men of gold were the best. A "shaman gestalt" if you see the Sigilittes as shaman. & a powerful relic of the DAoT in being the last truly powerful figure of that time. In my headcanon this is the best way to bring it all together. You don't need to agree with me

this is not the worst idea I've heard, and I've read a lot of trash opinions on /tg/

>Erebus

>The anathame

>Changing the ending

There were so many problems but these are probably the greatest ones. Black Library comes out looking so fricking mid from this series. Forget the promise of a golden, nigh-mythical age of which so much has been forgotten. Forget the promise of legendary demigods encompassing all the greatness and good of mankind falling into the rank madness of Chaos in payment for their sins, for they are just playthings of a single super-plotter who walks around with evil tattooed on his face.

Erebus and the Anathame being the prime cause weakened the entire Horus Heresy because it instantly made readers ask why couldn't someone have just realized he was a fricking sus mofo and knifed him before he did anything with the magic McGuffin. It was so damaging that they had to damage control and go "nononono, Horus was already turning on the Emperor and his brothers before this! It's not because some mook with a knife tainted him!" when, of course, that's literally how they portrayed it. And Erebus just conveniently shows up everywhere to serve as the prime motivator

Erebus and the Anathame basically read like the authors thought the audience would be too stupid to understand resentment, jealousy, ambition, and pride driving the most powerful of warlords to rise up against their father, so BL decided that they needed a real antagonist and a magic item to make plot happen at the start of the series.

Speak your truth King

In the original (real) 40k background, Horus is an obvious Lucifer figure who takes half the angels with him instead of a third because it's a grimmer, darker, edgier setting. He was the best of the Emperor's Primarchs but comes to believe he can run things better than the Emperor himself and so turns on him. This fits with him continuing the crusade, doing all the work as far as he can see, yet being told to just turn over everything he has conquered to his father. Why? Having seen all he has seen, met the corruption of chaos on the fringes beyond mankind, being the best warlord he knows of, trusted by his men, why not conquer the Imperium for himself?

All the headcannonn the authors madeup about the Emperor making a webway is meant to explain the question the original story begged

>what is the Emperor busy with that's more important than the crusade? Why can't he keep leading on the frontline? Is he just lazy?

but it replaces one problem with another

>why couldn't the Emperor simply tell the primarchs what he was up to?

>or get someone like Pertubo or Dorn or Ferrus to help him build faster

>why the need for secrecy from his own?

"perpetuals" one of the worst concepts introduced by the bad writers. There are multiple earlier explanations of the Emperor's origin which are better. Rick Priestly's unofficial headcanon (as it was supposed to be a mystery allowing the player to create his own story) was the Emperor was an AI from the Dark Age of Tech who needed psychic souls to run. The reason it seemed so callous was because it did completely lack sympathy. It led for mankind to survive at all costs with no consideration given the suffering of an individual imperial serf. Like Caesar's ideal for the Legion in FNV.

Another superior origin for the Emperor from earlier was a bunch of shaman, noticing how daemons born of human emotions were getting more powerful, and starting to eat them thereby empowering themselves and preventing psykers from reincarnating, performed a ritual of group-suicide, whereby they all merged in the warp to make 1 super-psyer, more powerful than any of the daemons, and reincarnate as this ubermensch.

Also, here's some gay redditors talking about the book: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ad2xca/just_finished_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_and_now

People spoiling it: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac2nzm/the_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_spoilers_summary

People complaining they can't buy the book: https://old.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1ac2nzm/the_end_and_the_death_vol_iii_spoilers_summary

@jannys please do the sneedful and pin this effortpost