PART 10

THE ISTVAAN SYSTEM

Despite the volume of material now available on the virus bombing of Istvaan III and dropsite massacres of Istvaan V, nobody has ever asked why two entire Legions were sent to restore Compliance in the Istvaan System, and then why the Legions of the reprisal force would even deploy on the surface of Istvaan V at all. According to the claims concerning the Astartes, one Legion should have been more than enough to deal with the rebels at large in the Istvaan System.

The reasoning was, initially, that the Warmaster sent two Legions to make an example. It was an overwhelming force to deliver a message of shock and awe, a warning to every other world that was part of the Imperium about the fate of traitors. We know now that the real motive was to purge the loyalists from the ranks of the Legions involved – the Emperor’s Children and Death Guard, as well as the World Eaters and Sons of Horus. But what followed made no sense.

A heat of a million stars wreathed their primarch, and no matter that he was one of twenty towering pinnacles of gene-wrought superhuman warriors, even he could not survive such an attack. The Horus Heresy, volume XII, A Thousand Sons, p144

Istvaan V was a dead world of ancient ruins that, from all accounts, were xenos in origin. While the civilisation on the worlds of Istvaan seemed to have been built on the ruins – and heavily influenced by – the Eldar, this did not appear to be the source of the ruins on Istvaan V. In fact, the descriptions sound disturbingly similar to those of Necronty sites. The history of the Eldar speaks of conflict between their own culture and the Necrons before their empire collapsed and the Emperor sought to fill the void with his own empire, so this makes sense.

Vengeful Spirit, 2014, by Graham McNeill

But Istvaan V was a barren, inhospitable wasteland, and the fortress there little more than ruins. The ruins were so decrepit that Horus had to order Fulgrim to oversee the Dark Mechanicum’s efforts to augment them, but – by that stage – Fulgrim’s faculties and abilities were no longer reliable. But it made no sense for the traitor’s to choose this site for their stand, of the loyalists to prepare for a ground war when they had more than enough firepower to destroy an entire planet from orbit, and that was an attack not even a Primarch could survive.

Nothing living had survived the brutal bombardment outside the shimmering dome. Those inhabitants of Forty-seven Sixteen that had been exposed to the full brunt of the barrage had been obliterated, flesh, muscle and bone instantly consumed in roaring flames, leaving only circles of ash where they had stood as evidence to their ever having existed at all.  The Horus Heresy, volume X, Tales of Heresy, p168

Unless there was something on the surface that had to be reclaimed, and the traitors were protected by a shield of some kind that protected them from orbital bombardment or any other attack from those outside. The brutal and cowardly genocide of the population of Forty-seven Sixteen conducted by the Word Bearers, in what they claimed was justified under the terms of Compliance, may provide part of the answer. It seems likely the Dark Mechanicum forces serving Lorgar and the Warmaster may have repurposed the shield technology captured on Forty-seven Sixteen to protect the fortress on Istvaan V. 

Assuming the was the case, there was still no reason the reprisal force could not have simply blasted the planet apart, Konrad Curze and his renegade Night Lords were able to do so with the few vessels they had when they exploited a weakness in the crust of their home world, Nostramo. The vessels of the elements of seven Legions sent to Istvaan V to eradicate the traitors were more than capable of destroying the planet, yet legionnaires were deployed on the surface, in the Urgall Depression, a massive crater that became a kill zone.

Again, it makes no sense unless they were ordered to reclaim something in addition to destroying the traitors, and even less if they were supposed to fight their way through shield technology like that found on Forty-seven Sixteen. There is mention of caves in some of the official records detailing the Urgall Depression, and that the surrounding hills were open areas with little cover, so it would make sense the loyalists deployed in the crater near the fortress if these caves provided access to the fortress.

Thousands were dying every minute, the slaughter terrible to behold. Blood ran in rivers down the slopes of the Urgall Depression, carving thick, sticky runnels in the dark sand. Such destruction had never yet been concentrated in such a horrifically confined space, enough martial power to conquer an entire planetary system having been unleashed in a line less than twenty kilometres wide.  The Horus Heresy, volume V, Fulgrim, p466

The very idea that any Primarch would be stupid enough to send their troops into a relatively narrow gully under heavy fire with little, if any, hope of breaching enemy defences is ludicrous. There had to be something more to the incident. Indeed, according to the official account in Fulgrim, the death toll would have meant the actual fighting would have been over inside just six minutes. 

Its creators had selfishly sought to keep it for themselves, little realising their time as masters of the galaxy was over. Even with their empire in decline, they kept their secret jealousy close to their hearts. Magnus sensed one of their hidden pathways nearby and opened his inner eye, seeing the glittering fabric of the Great Ocean in all its revealed glory. The hidden capillaries of the alien network were visible as radient lines of molten gold, and Magnus angled his course towards the nearest.   The Horus Heresy, volume XII, A Thousand Sons, p438

According to the account in Fulgrim, the six Primarchs involved in the actual fighting in the Urgall Depression were killing scores of legionnaires with each blow while the Titans killed scores with every shot. Between them, the Primarchs and Titans were killing thousands every minute on their own, and that doesn’t even take into account the tallies of the sixty-thousand legionnaires fighting in the conflict during the first wave, or the other fighting machines that were involved.

If the efforts of their sixty-thousand legionnaires and other fighting machines matched or doubled that of the Primarchs and Titans, then approximately ten-thousand legionnaires were being killed every minute. The whole first wave conflict would have accounted for all of the fighting forces involved in six minutes. It is hard enough to reconcile the absolute stupidity of the tactics involved without having to deal with the extreme exaggerations of the author. The record is unreliable, and suggests such poetic licence as to appear a complete fabrication.

He pushes the knife harder, deepens the cut. He makes the slit vertical, the height of a man. He makes a slit in the air, so that reality parts. The daemon sounds come closer.  Oll draws back the edge of the cut like a curtain. They gasp as they see what’s on the other side. It isn’t here. It isn’t Calth. It isn’t broken, pitch-black beach.  The Horus Heresy, volume XIX, Know No Fear, p408

Worse, Deliverance claims the Raven Guard survivors on Istvaan V managed to evade the traitors who sought to destroy them for ninety-eight days. The extreme carnage and then ineptitude combined with so many glaring contradictions is unforgivable and evokes feelings of complicity and obfuscation. The official accounts of what happened on Istvaan V are only based on the incidents that occurred rather than the absolute facts.

The Emperor returned to Terra to fight a war to claim the Eldar Webway using an access portal located deep within the dungeons of the Imperial Palace. There are believed to be access points to this network all over the galaxy, although many were infiltrated and corrupted by the entities of the warp when Magnus tried to deliver a warning to the Emperor that Horus planned to betray the Imperium. Given the Eldar may have once inhabited the Istvaan System, and could have created the Webway using Necrontyr teleportation technology, there seems to be a very good chance that there was a Webway access on Istvaan V.

If there was an access to the Webway on Istvaan V, then Horus and his traitors could travel to any other world with another access point, including Terra. The traitors could travel to worlds like Calth, for example, within a few days rather than relying upon warp-capable ships that would arrive years after leaving Istvaan. This could explain how Lorgar and other Word Bearers could have participated in the Istvaan V incident and then arrived at Calth so quickly rather than arriving years after the Istvaan V dropsite massacres.

Whether Istvaan was located close to Terra or was Isstvaan in the northern fringes, a journey through the warp to Calth in the eastern fringes would mean the travel arrived years after they left in real time. Access to Necrontyr teleportation technology or the Webway would allow movement around the galaxy in far less time. If theory is accurate, the portal on Istvaan V may have been large enough to accommodate even the largest traitor vessels, because there is no way they could have travelled across the galaxy so quickly through the warp.

Far beneath the birthrock of the race that currently bestrode the galaxy as its would be masters, a pulsing chamber throbbed with activity. Hundreds of meters high and many more hundreds wide, it hummed with machinery and reeked of blistering ozone. Once it had served as the Imperial Dungeon, but that purpose had long been subverted to another. Great machines of incredible potency and complexity were spread throughout the chamber, vast stockpiles and uniquely fabricated items that would defy the understanding of even the most gifted adept of the Mech-anicum. It had the feel of a laboratory belonging to the most brilliant scientist the world had ever seen. It had the look of great things, of potential yet untapped, and of dreams on the verge of being dragged into reality. Mighty golden doors, like the entrance to the most magnificent fortress, filled one end of the chamber. Great carvings were worked into the mechanised doors: entwined siblings, dreadful sagittary, a rearing lion, the scales of justice and many more.   The Horus Heresy, volume XII, A Thousand Sons, p439-40

There is also another possibility. The traitor vessels that appeared in an engagement on one edge of the galaxy may not have been the same ones as those on the other edge of the galaxy. They may simply have had the same names in order to sow confusion while individuals that served aboard them journeyed through the Webway or by means of Necrontyr teleportation technology.

The men of Tzenvar Kaul approach, carrying other offerings from the Istvaan system. In procession, they bear along portable stasis flasks like censers in some Catheric worship. The fluid in the stasis flasks is murky with blood.  Harvested progenitor glands. Harvested gene-seed. The lost life of betrayed souls now offered for the final blasphemy.  There is Salamanders gene-seed here, Iron Hands, Raven Guard. Erebus knows that the Ruinous Powers make no distinctions, so there is other gene-seed here besides: Emperor’s Children, Death Guard, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, even Lunar Wolf. Any that fell during the secret abominations of Istvaan III or V are suitable. The Horus Heresy, volume XIX, Know No Fear, pp99-100

One of the key examples used as evidence to claim the Calth incident occurred after the Istvaan V dropsite massacres is the ritual enacted by Erebus. While communication between distant worlds was disrupted by the warp storms that began as the Horus Heresy took hold, the traitor fleets were not afflicted by the isolation that prevented loyalist forces from moving out of the Systems where they had been ordered to muster by Horus.

The manipulation behind the Warmaster’s orders, combined with the warp storms, provides an explanation as to why the Ultramarines were unaware of traitor activities in the Istvaan System, but these factors could not be relied upon to maintain the ignorance of the loyalists. The betrayal would, therefore, have to occur close to the timing of the treachery in the Istvaan System.

It is also an assumption to believe the ‘secret abominations of Istvaan III or V’ referred to the purge during the virus bombing and dropsite massacres. It is entirely possible that the Word Bearers had been conducting vile rituals on those worlds in the years leading up to those acts of treachery, and the gene-seed was collected from loyalist legionnaires that had been abducted or otherwise betrayed long before the full-scale purge. The use of the word ‘abominations’ also hints at a connection to what occurred during the Contagion of Ganymede and the fate of the unrecorded Legions, both of which include references using the word ‘abominations’.

In the dusty Terran legends that survived from the histories of nation states like Merica, Old Ursh and Oceania there was a myth of a walker in the darkness who came to claim the freshly dead, a skeletal individual, an incarnation that threshed souls from flesh as keenly as wheat in the fields. They were just stories though, the speculations of the superstitious and fearful, and yet, here and now, a billion light-years from the birthplace of that folklore, the very mirror of that figure rose into the half-light aboard Endurance, tall and gaunt beneath a cloak as grey as sea-ice.  The Horus Heresy, volume IV, The Flight of the Eisenstein, p29

Evidence that the Legions sometimes encountered anomalies or artefacts that transported them great distances in far less time than they would expend in the warp does sometimes appear. There is a curious entry recorded in The Flight of The Eisenstein that claims elements of the XIV ‘Death Guard’ Legion were located ‘a billion light years’ from Terra – an amazing feat given the galaxy was only one-hundred-and-twenty thousand light years from edge to edge. And then there is the ability of Tuchulcha as detailed in The Primarchs – a device that can relocate objects of almost any size, instantaneously, within the galaxy.

“We are adjoined to the place you call Perditus, Lion.” The Primarch turned to Iaxis, brow furrowed. “Adjoined? We are in the warp. How is this possible? We were far too close to the world, to the star, for a translation.” “Tuchulcha does not have to worry about that sort of thing, Lion,” the tech-priest said with a toothless grin, “it is able to burrow directly from real space to warp space, without any backlash of graviometric displacement.” The Horus Heresy, volume XX, The Primarchs, p311

PART 9

PART 11