PART 13

DOGMA AND HERESY

Despite the official version of Imperial history concerning Unification, the Great Crusade, the Horus Heresy, and what followed, there appears to be enough contrary evidence to suggest a wealth of untold events that raise several disconcerting questions which suggest the Imperium is not what it claims. The Legions Astartes appear to predate the Great Crusade by at least a century and may, in fact, be the legendary Thunder Warriors of the Unification Wars on Terra and Mars.

 Descent of Angels, 2007, Mitchel Scanlon

He pulled back as he sensed the rampant hostility of the man’s unconscious mental defences, all belligerent and vicious barbs – like an attack dog guarding a threshold. There would be no dominating this man with the Athanaean arts. Arthava opened his eyes, looking at the bulky, crudely-armoured form of the man with a new sense of wonder and awe.     The Horus Heresy, volume XVII, The Outcast Dead, p338

The claims that the Thunder Warriors were all wiped out during the Battle of Mount Ararat, the last great conflict of the Unification Wars on Terra, seem to be contradicted by the continued existence of Babu Dhakal and Ghota. Dhakal was once known as Arik Taranis, a Thunder Warrior known as the Lightning Bearer. Dhakal carried the Banner of Lightning at the declaration of Unity, which seems to predate his ‘death’ during the Battle of Mount Ararat in the Kingdom of Urartu.

Ghota was also a Thunder Warrior, another survivor, and served as Dhakal’s enforcer and ‘attack dog’. It is the “like an attack dog guarding a threshold” remark that reminds the audience of the assumed personality of Gavriel Loken during his time surviving in the virus bombed ruins of Istvaan III. The loyalist Lunar Wolf referred to himself as Cerberus, the name of a fabled three-headed war dog that guarded the gates to Hades, the threshold between the living and the dead.

There is a very real possibility that the Thunder Warriors were the first legionnaires, and that Ghota and Loken were once part of the same gene-source that formed one of the two unrecorded Legions. If this is true, Cerberus may have been the title carried by their Primarch, just as Ferrus Manus was referred to as the Gorgon, and his purpose seems to be that of a guarding a threshold. In the Imperium, it seems likely the Emperor created such a Primarch to ensure the creatures of the warp remained where they were.

“You should know better than to take what history says literally. Such tales as are told of us come from the mouth of the last man standing, and it would not do for the Emperor to have to share his victory with others. Where is the glory when you conquer a world with an unstoppable army at your back? To begin a legend, you must win that war single-handedly, and there must be no one left alive to contradict your version of events.” The Horus Heresy, volume XVII, The Outcast Dead, pp405-6

It becomes apparent in The Outcast Dead that whatever method was used to create the Thunder Warriors was flawed. Dhakal was dying by instalments, his mind and body failing. He could not remember the name he had before being recreated as a Thunder Warrior, and his violent behaviour revealed serious psychological failures and sociopathy. Dhakal’s obsession with securing gene-seed appears to suggest the method used to correct these flaws, and it seems he knew this would work. Given his background, it is likely that gene-seed was used to in the creation of the Astartes to regulate whatever caused the problems that afflicted the Thunder Warriors.

This could explain some of the time discrepancies that appear in regards to certain legionnaires. There is a very real possibility that Bulveye and Jugen of the Space Wolves, and Iacton Qruze of the Lunar Wolves, were once Thunder Warriors but were implanted with gene-seed to counter any inherent genetic failure resulting from the methods used to create them. Dhakal and Ghota, for whatever reason, do not appear to have been given the same treatment for their condition, and in some cases this did not work – the genetic flaws in the Emperor’s Children, Blood Angels, and Thousand Sons being good examples.

There is even a very real possibility that some of the Thunder Warriors, a chosen few generals, may have been given some form of rejuvenation treatment for the process of further enhancement to become the Primarchs. Although it sounds implausible, it would explain a great deal. The Primarchs appeared to possess knowledge and memories that they would not normally have as infants, and hypno-indoctrination during their gestation alone cannot explain it all. Indeed, Ferrus had memories of Vulkan leading the Salamanders Legion around the year 804M30 yet he and Vulkan were located and reunited with the Emperor in 840M30 and 846M30.

Why the thought of defeat should be painful to him when he did not fear to die he did not know. After all, what did a man with no memory or future have to fear? On the heels of that thought came another. Looking at the thinness of his arms and imagined height, he guessed he was not a man, but a boy. The Horus Heresy, volume XXIII, Angel Exterminatus, p15

Since Horus was located and reunited with the Emperor in 802M30, it is possible that Ferrus was rounding the time down - it is unlikely he would round it up by just over forty years, and makes more sense if the time of his memory predated the recovery of Horus. Perhaps the first stages of the Great Crusade occurred before 800M30 and successes were so limited that the Emperor was forced to adopt a new strategy to deal with the resistance – creating the Primarchs.

As a simple Space Marine, albeit one enhanced with gene-seed to off-set the flaws suffered by the Thunder Warriors, the individuals who became Primarchs were still – in a sense – only human. Infused with the genetic material of the Emperor (if that is what it was), and conditioned with hypno-indoctrination to further enhance them, these chosen few would suddenly become so much more. It would also help to create a myth around them to cement their status as ‘supermen’ amongst populations where they would be deployed, providing a ready seed for that adopted homeworld to submit to the Emperor’s rule as the people of one of his demi-god ‘sons’.

In addition to evidence that some Primarchs appear to have been reunited earlier or later than the official timeline of their rediscovery indicates, the evidence seems to support the idea that they were created after the Astartes, not before. There is also enough evidence to suggest that whatever fate befell the unrecorded Primarchs and their Legions appear to have occurred around the same time as the Squat Leagues left the Imperium, and loyalist elements of the two unrecorded Legions were disbanded and reassigned to other Legions.

CONCLUSION

Simple math discredits the claim that the treachery that occurred in the Istvaan System actually occurred in the Isstvan System on the northern fringes of the galaxy, and that the Raven Guard were ever part of the first wave. There is also no possible way that seven entire Legions could have formed the Istvaan reprisal force because a number of them were already divided by loyalties or unable to muster due to the locations of various elements. The treachery on Calth appears to have occurred within months of the Istvaan atrocities, and the math behind distances and travel times does not coincide with these events.

There were many stories: that Mortarion of the Death Guard was incapable of feeling pain, that Corax could cloud the minds of men with but a thought or the Khan could talk to the storms…These were a strange intertwining of myth and cold truth, and when one was speaking of beings like the primarchs it was impossible to say where fact ended and fiction began.  The Horus Heresy, volume XXI, Fear to Tread, p93

It is clear that the commandeering of the Furious Abyss occurred years before the treachery on Calth, and that traitor elements joined those already in the Ultramar Systems after the treachery in the Istvaan System by other means rather than travelling through the warp aboard space faring vessels. The math undermines any claims to the contrary. It seems likely that the Emperor’s efforts to take control of the Eldar Webway not only failed, but that the traitor Legion managed to access corrupted parts of this network or ancient Necron teleportation systems which may have been present on Istvaan V and other worlds scattered across the galaxy.

Simple math also raises serious doubts about the numbers of legionnaires that were supposedly involved in the Istvaan V dropsite massacres. Even if the four Legions recorded as being involved in the Istvaan III atrocity had each numbered a hundred-thousand legionnaires, the purge appears to have halved their fighting strength in both loyalist and renegade losses. There is also the absence of renegade fleet forces to consider, and other tasks the renegade Legions embarked upon – the remaining strength of the four renegade Legions could not have been present in their entirety upon Istvaan V during the dropsite massacres.

It seems far more likely that only a quarter, at most, of the original fighting strength of the renegade Legions was present during the Istvaan V incident, no more than a hundred-thousand renegade Space Marines altogether. There are also serious flaws in the claims concerning the official version of that incident, and not just who was involved, and in what capacity. The renegades were entrenched in a fortified stronghold and Perturabo had been assigned to the reprisal fleet.

Dorn and Perturabo didn’t get along, but Dorn knew that Perturabo and his Iron Warriors were the Legion that was needed to breach the renegade fortifications. It makes no strategic sense for the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard to launch a full-scale assault as part of a first wave. These forces would be used to secure a landing site and defend it while the second wave established their own fortifications, and no Primarch would be so idiotic as to march into the killing field that was the Urgal Depression.

Any plan to destroy the renegade Legions on the ground would have exploited whatever weakness Perturabo could find, and this would have included the caves and tunnels around and under the fortress on Istvaan V. The loyalist forces would have been used to defend against renegade counter-attacks to disrupt their siege. Ferrus Manus was easily goaded into making the kind of reckless decisions Angron made, wasting the lives of his own legionnaires, but Vulkan was a thinker and Corax favoured hit and run attacks on weak-points. Official accounts of the dropsite massacre make absolutely no sense.

           

He same can be said of the official accounts about the incidents on Calth. The losses the Ultramarines suffered on Calth, and during the conflict in the Ultramar system with World Eater and Word Bearers forces, contradict earlier official records that claim the XIII Legion were largely unscathed by the Horus Heresy, and were able to field twenty-three Second Founding Chapters after the Horus Heresy. The new version of official history raises serious doubts, and seems to support the idea that loyalists from Legions branded traitor, who managed to avoid death during the Horus Heresy, may be the source of some of the ‘Ultramarines’ Second Founding Chapters.

And, finally, the final battle between the Emperor and Horus would appear to have occurred on Terra, not aboard the Vengeful Spirit as official records claim. It would appear that the official history of the Imperium is rife with obfuscation, misinformation and outright lies upheld and enforced by the dogma of the Ecclesiarchy and brutal reprisals of the Inquisition in response to the so-called heresy of those that dare to point out the obvious flaws, anomalies and contradictions.

Fear to Tread, 2012, by James Swallow

But despite these irregularities, and the fascism Imperial sycophants unleash on those who do not accept their ranting dogma without question, the hints of an untold story present something far more exciting and inclusive environment in which to engage. There appears to have been several human cultures outside Imperial control that may have survived the Great Crusade, and the Squat Leagues present a counter-culture to that of the Imperium – one where humans possess advanced technology and trade (possibly even affiliate) with various xenos species.

Whether by accident or design, Games Workshop has a great opportunity to engage with their market, expanding from a narrow base to something much broader – older, original enthusiasts (those that remain at any rate), other fringe dwellers, and potential audiences excluded by poorly considered Company attitudes. These anomalies and contradictions are something to build on, not tear down, conceal, and write out using the aggression the Company has become infamous for unleashing upon its market - a behaviour and practice that is disturbingly similar to the background literature of the Imperium where oppression, arrogance, elitism, and fascism leads to stagnation, failure, decline, and, inevitably, doom. The time for positive change is long overdue. 

PART 12