HH Age of Darkness Anthology (many Spoilers!)

[Ahriman238]

The Last Remembrancer- John French. A great story, but not really a lot to talk about from a purely technical perspective. I’ll spare myself the quotations for this one. Horus sends a ‘gift’ to his brother Rogal Dorn, the last remembrancer, who dared to find the Warmaster and ask for his side of the story.

Pg 178
Imperial Fist ships patrol the Solar System. Boarding torpedoes carry twenty Astartes. There is a Vault on the Chaos ship with doors “three times the height of a Space Marine,” wide enough to drive a tank through, and two meters thick. It takes four melta bombs to get inside, where they find the chained remembrancer.

Iacton Qruze, the ‘half-heard’ of the Luna Wolves is in this story and it is nice to see him again. The ending of Flight of the Eissenstein strongly implied that he, Nathaniel Garro, and Amendara Kendall had been enlisted as the first members of the inquisition. Now Qruze appears as a secretive agent of Malcador the Sigilite, and it seems clear that he really is a member of the nascent Inquisition, though no one is flashing around ‘I’ badges just yet. He is Dorn’s guide to a secret prison where the remembrancer, one Solomon Voss, is being held, and mentions having passed through many trials since he left his Legion. Which could conceivably just refer to the events of Flight. He wears unadorned grey power armor, and carries a master-crafter power sword named Tisiphone, for one of the three Furies. One wonders if this means Nate and Kendall have matching swords called Alecto and Megaera, and if these blades have survived into the 41st Millenium. I imagine it could be an interesting story, some sort of quest for the Swords of the First Inquisitors.

Anyway, this is a good time to discuss the, I’m not sure its present and developed enough to be called a theme, let’s go with the unifying idea of these stories. The opening page, what in ‘modern’ set books begins ‘it is the 41st millennium..’ and varies more in the HH series, says “the age of enlightenment and reason is over. The age of darkness has begun.” For much of 40k, the time of the Great Crusade is held up as a semi-utopian era, though less so than the Dark Age of Technology. It is believed that the Imperium of the time was progressive and scientifically inclined, men were real men, Space Marines kicked even more ass and no one entered pacts with the Dark Gods. A golden age, a time of relative naiveté before the true horrors of the galaxy became apparent.

So imagine my surprise when I started on the HH series and it was all death to the xenos, death to anyone who is nice to the xenos, death to the hereticsbelievers, bloody wars, bowing and scraping to nobility, and the AdMech hoarding useful knowledge. In short, pretty much business as usual. Sure there was no Inquisiton yet, and no Imperial Cult, but you did have iterators spreading the Imperial Gospel all the same. Only now, when it slips away, does it become clear what the Imperium had and lost. This was mostly hope for a better galaxy, and ideals that they could strive for even if they never really achieved them. Only now, are there secret prisons, summary executions, commissars, and kangaroo courts, because until Horus turned the Emperor and the Imperium would not stand for such things. Call it a belief in an objective truth and justice.

The war, and the pressing security needs of it, has irrevocably changed the Imperium, this is the point Horus uses Voss to make. It can never go back to being the high-minded government that it was, with some regard for individual rights and relative honesty, because now there are so many dangerous secrets. They cannot allow freedom of speech, because they dare not give any agent of Chaos the chance to spread his propaganda. The Imperium can no longer trust its citizenry. Even though Horus is eventually destroyed, Chaos wins in the sense that the Emperor was neutralized, and the Imperium forever gave up its ideals in the name of short-term survival.

This also shows that Horus thoroughly understands the Imperium, and Dorn’s psychology. He sent Voss just so Dorn would understand everything he was destroying by turning Terra into a fortress. So he could hear his old friend ask to tell his story publically, and say ‘no.’ so he could “look it (the ideals) in the eye as you killed it. He wanted you to realize that you two are much alike, still, Rogal Dorn.” That was cruel, more so since Dorn will still do his duty fully understanding the cost. After he kills Voss, he orders his book burned, and it is a powerful moment. Dorn understands the Imperium will never again be what it was supposed to be, but he’s gone too far to turn back, and knows whatever Horus would build would be even worse.

[Ahriman238]

I haven't abandonded this, its just taking a very long time.

Rebirth by Chris Wright. A pair of Thousand Sons not present for the battle at Prospero return to their homeworld. One is captured and interrogated by Kharn the Betrayer. This is, in spite of all else, a story about Kharn and the choices that led him to who he is in the present. Told in a 'unraveling the mystery of what happened' style, so if you ignored the spoiler warning in the title, and the one since, and this one and get upset: you're probably an idiot.

Pg 203

I have no idea how long I’ve been out. I should have; my enhanced memory and catalepsean function should have retained some trace, but everything is blank.

Space Marines can normally tell roughly how long they’ve been unconscious.

He’s a Space Marine, I guess. There’s very little else like that voice, rolling up from those enhanced lungs and that muscle-slabbed gullet and that great barrel-chest like water from a deep mill.

Space Marines can be recognized by voice alone.

There were no Stormbirds left in the hold, and the Geometric had never carried Thunderhawks, so the descent had to be in a bulk lander. The destroyer’s crew had been whittled down to a bare skeleton-a couple of hundred mortals, some still in Spireguard livery.

If the Thunderhawks weren’t produced until the loss of Mars, why does Kalliston even know what they are? Astartes Strike Cruiser can be run by a ‘couple hundred’ but that’s just a skeleton crew.
Pg-231 The World Eaters retrieve the Moon Wolf amulet that allowed Magnus to contact Horus during his temptation, not wanting anything with a sorcerous link to the Warmaster to be unsecured.
Pg 245-246

Only one certainty remained. Arvida knew, as only a Corvidae could know, that death would not find him on Prospero. That was no consolation for what he had lost, but at least it lent the task of planning his next move a certain urgency.
He would survive. He would discover the true causes of his Legion’s destruction, and live to fight them. He would neither pause nor stumble until everything had been revealed to him, everything that would give him a weapon to employ.
‘Knowledge is power,’ he breathed.
Then he turned away from the scene and stole quickly back into the occlusion of the ruins. As he went, the dim red light of the magma-fires caught on his shoulder guard, exposing the serpentine star set about the black raven-head of his cult discipline.
Then he was gone, a shadow among shadows.

More teasing from GW. Here’s the thing, I enjoyed the Dawn of War games, but I feel absolutely no desire to speculate on where the Blood Ravens came from. There are a great many chapters of unknown Founding and gene-stock, and I just don’t feel the need to pursue the mystery.
Especially when they keep throwing contradictory clues at us, and expecting us to jump all over them.

[Imperial Overlord]

There really isn't much speculation. Almost all of the clues point to the Blood Ravens being descendents of the Thousand Sons. Thousands Sons itself stops short of saying it directly and provides considerable circumstantial evidence to support that belief.