The End & The Death - BINGO!
Before the publication of ‘The End and the Death (PartOne)’, I came up with a BINGO CARD; would I, a man who has read or audiblednearly the entire Horus Heresy series, be able to predict the end?
Only Part One is out so far, lets see how I am doing…..
Erda: she’s back baby! Back from the VASE.
Erda! The Emperors sort-of GF and mother of thePrimarchs (not Amar Astarte, a differentone). She had enough of Neoth and his spooky ways and, after playing some partin the triggering of the Scattering of the Primarchs, went off to live in thedesert and be a super-witch.
Dan Abnett invented her out of whole cloth, and at thelast minute, I think in Saturnine? Then I think Chris Wraight packed her awayneatly in ‘Warhawk’ (I think?). I had assumed she was just too similar inconcept to Amar Astarte, the Selinar Gene Witches and a few other factions.
Last seen – beat up by a bunch of chaos demons and herremaining anima… in a vase?
I had assumed that since Abnett had invented her shewould magically pop back up in the final book. I was wrong! So far… One of thefew Abnettverse characters who doesn’t get a look in, I retain highhopes for her rebirth in the last volume FOR SOME REASON.
Enuncia
The magical Enochian word-of-god super-sorcery languageAbnett invented in the middle of the Heresy, and gave as part of the backstoryto Oll Persson and the Emperor while at the same time integrating it into hislatest Eisenhorn books set 10,000 years later.
YES! Of course we have to have more Enuncia. Or atleast its mentioned. John Grammaticus still has a magic word he can say oncewhich will do something super-magical though he doesn’t know what.
It’s a free get-out-of-plot tool and I fully expect Johnto say his magic word in the next book.
Place your bets for what the last word of the super-magiclanguage to be spoken will be in the comments below!
GASP! Something-someones-on-the-golden-throne!
So there are a bunch of 40k conspiracy theories about whoends up on the Golden Throne and how. Some say the Emperor dies and Horus endsup on it, others Malcador or whatever.
Its book one so too early to see but at this state Ihighly doubt any jiggery-pokery will take place. Abnett seems committed toproducing a relatively orthodox interpretation of events with sketchinground the edges but no massive twists.
I will call this now – The Emperor ends up on the GoldenThrone.
He Wrote Three Fucking Books
And
O My God He Wrote Four Fucking Books!Failed so far and I would judge unlikely to be fulfilled.
HOWEVER
The Book we do get is not only physically gigantic butVoluminous as hell. A huge, rambling, staggering baroque Titan of a thing,stumbling towards its end.
Will the next book be any shorter? Mmmmmmaybe. It willcertainly have all the actual events in it. For reference, the lastscene of the previous book; Echoes of Eternity has the Vengeful Spirit loweringits shields. It takes until the last third of this one for the Imperials toactually go up there.
Euprati Keeler; LETS BURN!
Not only wrong but so ridiculously wrong its nearlylaughable. Keeler, so long as Abnett was writing her, was a classic Abnettylikeable Paragon. In ‘Warhawk’ Wraight takes her on a hard right turn intoproto-Torquemada, she is found wandering around with skulls, carefully planningmass suicide assaults on enemy Astartes where her flock will clog the enemieschainsword with their own flesh, simping for Sigismund in his super-sayanpuritan mode and talking about how aces the power of pure hatred is.
I half-expected this to carry on in ‘TEatD’.
It does not at all. Abnett pretty much ignores theKeeler of ‘Warhawk’ and just rotates Keeler back to being the paragon saint ofa pretty-reasonable-actually Imperial Cult;
“What I’m sayingis that hope contains the future, and it’s the one thing we have. More potentthan a cartload of shells.’
‘Is this where youtell me the Emperor has a plan?
…
‘Alright then. Ithink He does have a plan, and its contingent on us believing in it. Ourhope in it, our faith in it, makes it happen. We are the plan and the plan isus. The Emperor doesn’t have a plan that, if we perish, will still come tofruition. The plan is us.’
Basilio Fo! Remember me? Supervillain guy? Kill-All-Astartes-Guy? Remember?
Well if we didn’t before we will now!
Basilio Fo turned up in an Abnett short story ages ago; aformer Age-of-Strife Warlord/Evil Scientist, a Mega-Bile if you will, who wasdriven off Terra by the Emperors rise. A super-evil (?) plot-armoured ‘genius’,he has a plan to make a super-weapon to kill all the Astartes, good and bad. How?Who fucking knows. He turned up in Saturnine and was involved in variousshenanigans, now he is back for a sub-plot of his very own where the Custodesand Malcadors-chosen are fighting over him and his last-option super-plot.
His sections are a little silly. He outwits custodies bybeing arch and mysterious. He will for sure be back to do something inthe final book! Although since that something clearly isn’t setting off hisanti-astartes super weapon fuck knows what it will be.
jJHonN GramATTIcuS
A character that absolutely no-one but Dan Abnett likes,but he’s the one writing this book so FUCK ALL YA’LL, it’s John GrammaticusAdventure Time baby!
Strangely, one of the only pseudo-American accentedcharacters in all of the Audiobook-universe of 40k, John is some dingus who wasmade immoral by creepy aliens in return for turning on his own species. Thealiens had a plan to make sure Horus won, thinking he would ‘burn out’ chaos ina grand madness that would end with humanity extinct and the galaxy at peace.In pursuit of this, old John ran around doing secret agent stuff.
He helped turn the Alpha Legion to the xenos’ cause,tried to off himself, changed sides (?), met Erebus, met Eldrad Ulthuan, nearlykilled Vulkan but healed him instead? Got magic scissors(?). Just did a bunchof random ping-pong shit, generally without a stable plan and while complainingabout himself, ended up joining up with Oll Persson with some kind of, againvery vague, plan to somehow something-something the Emperor. Oh along the wayhe got a fragment of Enuncia.
I am pretty sure Abnett thinks this guy is a sexy enigmawrapped in a tantalising interior moral conflict where as he is just the avatarof the least interesting aspects of Abnetts writing style. The wholeget-Oll-into-the-Palace plan is riddled with last-minute janky plot bullshit,ultimately Grammaticus has an “I know this guy from work” moment where he meetswith Vulkan again in the Throne Room and Vulkans like I know you, you stabbedme with that thingy that time back in book twenty or something.
Probably this tiresome fuck will play some kind of majorrole in the final (?) book and speak his magic word somehow.
TROOP-PER-PER-SON
So.. Oll Persson, have I explained this yet? I will tryto be quick.
Oll Persson (“All Person/Everyman”) is a Perpetual Abnettinvented in ‘Know No Fear’. He has been alive maybe longer than the Emperor butinstead of becoming a super-psychic magic man or Dr Who or something he hasjust lead life as a near normal guy. Heis allegedly ‘Catheric’ and has a crucifix (which gets stranger when Abnett infersthat the Emperor might have been Jesus at one point;
“He has appearedas male or female or neither, as child or elder, peasant or king, magician orfool. He as been an entire cartomantic arcana, for the Master of Mankind ifalso a master of disguise. He has performed all of these roles ell, withdelicacy. He has been humble when humility was needed, gentle when softness wasthe best device, sly, amiable, reassuring, commanding, caring. He was beenterrible when terror was the only recourse, and sometimes meek in order toinherit the Earth.” [Italics mine].
Oll was the Emperors original ‘Warhampster’ and helpedhim destroy the Tower of Babel (I know, it gets worse), before literallystabbing him in the back. After the fall of Calth he picks up a magic knife andan assortment of symbolic/representative followers and has been traipsing aboutthe Galaxy planning to reach the Emperor in order to do…. Something? Honestlyfor the sheer amount of blood and treasure expended in it, Olls plan is prettyfucking vague.
One of his followers is ‘Graft’ a farm servitor who seemsto be getting a bit more sentient after exposure to a galaxies worth ofmadness, and its Graft who calls him ‘TROOP-PER-PER-SON’. And yes Graft is inthis, though doesn’t do much! Maybe he/they will do something in the next one.
DOOM-BREED
Ok so the Emperor canonically fights Hitler on theVengeful Spirit. (It hasn’t happened yet).
Arguably he does. In the 2nd EditionChaos Codex DoomBreed is mentioned as a Demon prince who was a warlord of oldearth and became a chosen of Khorne and there are vague suggestions he may havebeen Hitler.
But Ok, even if he isn’t Hitler, he’s still awarlord of old Earth which means the Emperor almost certainly knew of him, andwe know Doom Breed-related demons are on Terra during the siege as Horus namesthem.
SO, if the Emperor doesn’t meet Doom-Breed and at leastsay something like; “Ah, we meet again.. Ghengis Khan” or some shit likethat, I will be well pissed off.
But it hasn’t happened yet.
Dream-War in the Warp
Not that much in this book really.
In ‘Saturnine’ Malcador goes and visits the Emperor insome dream-scape where he is facing off against the Chaos Gods and Horus, muchof all the Siege books has the Emperors ‘psychic shield’ slowly decaying andfalling apart and in tE&tD the chaos powers are basically melting space andtime in and around the palace, making it even more of a dreamscape (and veryconvenient for moving people around for various scenes). Plus the VengefulSpirit is itself now basically a portal to the Realms of Chaos. But there is noexplicit Dream-War scene.
Dark Angels Turn It Off And On Again
The Astronomican! The Dark Angels are up inside it andare trying to activate it! A bunch of Plague Guys are trying to stop them!There are various plots and business going on! They have not yet turned it onand its looking like in this one instance Abnett may subvert ourexpectations by setting up some kind of psychic beacon in the palaceitself.
Someone makes a pointed comment about history, memory and truth,translation; SHUT UP NERDS.
Ok, not quite. There is no ‘shut up nerds’ but aswe know, every late-period Heresy book must include a digression onhistory and memory so the writer can be sure we know they have a degree.
“…. ‘I meant…what’s the point of a poem? And when does a poem stop being just words andbecome something else? When do words gain power? Under what circumstances?’
‘Power?’
‘You know what Imean. The reason we’re here.’
He does know whatshe means, and yet he still can’t answer. If any abreactive magik lurks in theHall of Leng, he has no idea how they will find it, or recognise it if they dofind it. Where does verse, or prose, or memoir stop, and ritual begin? Canthings be both at once? Are there incantations of control stashed here in thisgreat collection, under lock and key, or merely the indulgent scribblings ofthe ages, the fancy of idle men in easier eras, who set out to do no more thanpraise a lover, or articulate some feeling, or describe a flower or, perhaps,merely rhyme for the sake of rhyme? The arts, whatever they might be, have cometo play an increasingly insignificant role in Imperial life, eroded by Strifeand Old Night, until they are vestigial memories, non-functioning organsdwarfed by rational science and secular industry. He recognises, belatedly, hisown lack of knowledge. Did the arts ever have a purpose, at any time inhistory, or have they always been decorative? Does some art have true functionand capacity and other art not? How does he, with a mind raised in the schoolsof the modern Imperium, even tell?”
Flashback-to-history-as-recalled-in-the-21st-Centry (and noother time. Remember the Age of Terra? No, us neither.)
As we all know, when someone in 30k or 40k quotessomething from the history of man (at least 30 millennia, in which we are inthe 3rd), its always something from ‘our’ history
I may not be able to score a complete victory but I think I can score astrong victory.
“Day will not savethem, and we own the night.”
– HorusLupercal wait, no, Amiri Baraka ??
Opening verses by Charlotte Mew, the Emerald Tablet andCorinthians HE HAS FOUROPENING QUOTES PEOPLE!
In the above mentioned ‘Library’ chapter we have quotesfrom Milton, Tennyson & Shelly!
Fuck It, Oll & Neoth were in WWII Together
Sadly not a score. I can live in hope though.
Of all this Bullshit, only I Kyrill Sindermann survived to tell the tale,and die in a kind of crappy book much later, hey, I’ll take it!
Yes Kyrill is in this, its him crawling through thelibrary. Too late to say if only he survives but if the last book is asmuch of a ‘Greatest Hits’ story as this one, can we expect Kyril to face offwith poor old Samus again?
Sangy Dies in Some Bullshit Way
He ain’t dead yet! And looking at how things are going Iexpect his death to be classic rather than subverting expectations. Abnettloves a paragon and Sangy is the paragon of paragons. I am hoping for Horus tobe like “I could break his spine, but I could not break.. his spirit”and for Sangy to get like four noble death speeches.
“It was all part of my plan”
Pretty much, see ‘Horus Cries’ below.
Hows-Malcador-Doing-Cutaways. OUCH!
Ouch indeed! Not just cutaways but he is the semi-omniscientfirst-person narrator of much of the book!
Its a neat conceit. Malcador is less insanely godlikethat the Emperor so he can talk to the audience almost like a normal person. Hespends a few chapter giving us a lowdown on how things are going. Once he is onthe Golden Throne, as well as being slowly incinerated, he gets quasi DrManhattan powers and can perceive the flow of fate or whatever but can’tactually communicate with anyone in-world, but he can see all the tricks andschemes of the siege, talk to us and do spooky straaands-ov-faate ‘nudges’ totry to stop the unfolding disaster, which links him to almost everyone’soverplot.
I, Robute Guilliman, am also in this book! (And more than you might haveexpected!
Failed! He’s barely in it! Maybe he will be in the next one?
NPC arrives, gives chapter-length “explanation” for another writersprevious fuckups, disappears
Amazingly for a Siege of Terra book, this does not happenat all! (I think.) (But it may in the next one, see below).
The Above Happens More than Once
I don’t think it even happened once. Pain.
Rogal Dorn; “The Emperors Dream is Dead (again, but more this time), also,I am Goth now
Nnnnearly. I was so close, all I needed was a classic‘The Emperors Dream is Dead’ from RG, but I don’t think I even got one. He doesgo a bit dark and edgy towards the end where he is trapped in the chaos realmfor relative centuries.
Oh Fuck the Blood Angels have gone Mental! Fucking ruuuuuuuun!
Hasn’t happened yet but I hold out hope for the nextbook.
Ha ha! Its me; Abaddon, I’m ba… of fuck its Sigismund! Run!
Abaddon is briefly in this, he has a classictraitor siege scene of ‘This is no longer a war of legions boo hoo’, anddecides to go back to the Vengeful Spirit. That’s all we get and I thinkSigismund is still on the surface? So we may not get that meetup.
Surprise Intervention by … Oan Mkoll! He fell through time! (And is also aperpetual)
It was low odds but I almost feel I got this one inspirit. tE&tD is so… Abnetty, I almost wouldn’t put it past himto just go ‘fuck it’ and somehow link it into his 40k work. At least so far ashis heresy books have gone, he has brought back… well, everyone, everycharacter he ever invented, every plotline, every bit of fluffy nonsense, everygood idea and every bad idea. Its like he never left. More and more it seems tome there isn’t one Heresy series but several, with each writer essentiallyfollowing their own themes and tendencies and pet characters, and favouritecharacter portrayals even when it doesn’t quite work.
That Sniper Who Went Mad On The Vengeful Spirit, remember him? Well he’sback, and he snipes someone!
Sadly completely forgotten, though he may still be on the‘Spirit’ and the majority of this massive book was spent just getting the maincast there so I have some hope for book two. What if he snipes Doombreed! Iwill probably shit myself in pleasure.
Dogent Krank (who?) You Did a Thing!
One of Olls not very interesting companions, I think inthis he does actually do something though I can’t remember what.
I Herbert Zyes (who?) am the key to this mystery!
Who indeed. Another of team-all-person. He is in this. Hesays some things? I don’t think he is the key to any mysteries.
The Final Paragraph will be broken down into individual sentences, eachsold separately.
No signs of this so far, unless you could the sheergargantuan SPREAD of the book itself. I feel like there is half a chance thatGW will try something at the end though. Come on geedubs! There is always morecash you can squeeze from a property!
The final sentence will be broken into letters and punctuation marks, eachsold through a gachapon ‘lucky dip’ system, can YOU collect them ALL?
Could still happen.
CORAX! turns up through the webway and helps out Vulkan! SURPRISEMOTHERFUCKERS! (they never meet again)
This might still happen and I am holding out hope! I willhave a cry if it happens!
Russ is useless
Of course Russ is always useless and is so again here. Heis dying on some moon or something.
Actaea; "Yes I was CYRENE VALANTION all this time!
She was! (Or at least says she was). The mysterious blindsorcerer lady who just turned up and who seemed a lot like the sexy blind prophetesswho hung out with the Word Bearers was in fact that lady, or at least says sheis.
One of Olls ablative-plot-armour-companions, she ittraipsing along with them with some vague but mysterious purpose in mind. Willshe turn out to be evil? (It’s the Abnettverse so probably yes.)
Actaea; "Yes I was NOT CYRENE VALANTION all this time! Surprisemotherfuckers!
Ok, this doesn’t happen this book, HOWEVER, its notcompletely impossible that it will happen.
Xtra points if both of the above
We will see……
Yes I, KATT, random psychic farm girl, actually become MORIANA! (youthought it would be Actea but she was actually.. [randombullshit randombullshit]"
SO – Moriana is a mysterious seer in later 40k, she ismeant to be one of the original members of the Inquisition who has “seen toomuch” and turned traitor and gone to hang out with Abaddon. It is not clearwhat she is up to, if she is really a traitor or a double or triple agent orwhat.
Probably someone will turn out to be Moriana, but whom.
Katt is another of Team-Oll. A random farm girl who hasbeen “seeing too much” in the horrible spaces between realities and whose psychicpowers have slowly been growing from exposure to the warp and generalawfulness.
Will this turn out to be the blind seer Moriana, Katt orsomeone else?
Someone turns out to be Promeus!
Promeus is another of the ‘original’ Inquisition. No ideawho this is going to be.
Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn closes the book, "And that was the (fictionalised)history of the Horus Heresy somehow, a fascinating text" .. then he WAKESUP - even him reading the book was a DREAM!
It could still happen!
Dream-Sequence where Abnett seems genuinely baked on epilepsy meds but theeditors were all too scared to admit they didn't understand it.
Sadly nothing quite like this yet.
It’s me! Limited Edition Space Marine 2! did a thing! AND I was part of a gigantic overplot which sounds like ajust made it up let me explain very quickly
Erda had a pet space marine she called ‘LE2’, probably areference to a very early GW sculpt. LE2 has joined team-Oll and willpresumably do something interesting at some point. Hopefully.
It’s me! The Fucking Emperor First Person chapter baby! I finally get to dosomething and I am going to look COOL AS SHIT doing it! I FIGHT HITLER IN THIS!
He does NOT get a 1st person chapter, or fightHitler (YET), but we do get to hear more of him speaking (near) frankly withSanguinius et-al and we get to see him actually DO STUFF so that’s nice.Hopefully he will do ever more stuff in the next one. He should try to pack inthe events as he doesn’t have much time.
Yes I, Amar Astarte have returned! To do a thing! Probably ether destroythe Astartes or save them from Basilio Fo offscreen.
She has not turned back up and there is no sign of her sofar. She’s not an Abnettverse character so I would be surprised if she doesturn up.
The final, final FINAL book is actually a series of sub-articles which willbe sold separately through Games Workshops
Ok I overplayed the joke but would you really be THATsurprised if they actually did this?
Horus Cries! (Burning Tears)
Horus!
I have spoken a lot in my Corposant series about the‘black boxing’ of both Horus and the Emperor so we get to see very little ofthe actual drives and personalities who are at the centre of thissuper-mega-war. The Emperor is a multi-minded trans-reality warp-beast andHorus is increasingly shut down, visibly insane, deluded and broken.
Here we get to see Horus actually DO STUFF. He is fuckingnuts! Great.
Ever since ‘Horus Rising, Horus has increasingly beenisolated, insane, erratic, and as I said, hollowed out. In tE&tD Horus isclearly fugueing and has space altzheimers and is barely holding any sense ofreality together.
It looks like what Abnett is going for is thatHorus is SUPER SANE ACTUALLY, or at least, that the real (?) Horus wasdeliberately hiding his true core and now super-demonic personality behind aseries of masks set up to be just competent enough to get him here, and topersuade the Emperor that he was actually as broken and empty as he looked.Then, when the Emperor commits to his final attack, these para-personalitiesfall away and are forgotten and Horus comes out as a cackling super-badass.Will Horus become the ‘Dark King’ who has been prophesied for, well just forthis book as Abnett just made him up, or will fighting him be the catalyst toturn the Emperor into the ‘Dark King’ the 5TH CHAOS GOD BABY!
The ultimate ‘WELL, ACTUALLY’ of a mega-seriesalready well-stocked with ‘Well Actually’. Forget Chris Wraight explaining thatMortarion isn’t dumb, just badly written, or ADB explaining that actually theEmperor said something completely different to Magnus, it turns out that well,actually, all the bits of the series where Horus was written as a puppet ofchaos were ALL PART OF HIS PLAN! SEE ABOVE!
"Its me, SAMUS! Samus is.. scared.. look, just please stop hurting me,please..."
Poor innocent Samus. The first demon encountered by theImperial forces in ‘Horus Rising’, ever since then he has been wheeled out byevery writer imaginable as a secondary rent-a-villain who always ends upgetting beaten and banished by the hero of the book.
After a while we start to feel sorry for the poor chump.
Well, Samus is back and he gets an whole openingnarration chapter! It seems he was just keeping it loose or whatever forreasons or something, and in fact has a DEEP SCHEME which supersedes the wholeHeresy and which he just didn’t mention until now.
It looks like he has some kind of deal where he wants toend reality or something and is looking for a figure to help him with that.Could this be his big chance to finally end all reality?
Abnett doing a polish on even poor old Samus is prettyemblematic of the book as a whole. Our boy Dan knows who he came in with, andhe is leaving with exactly those people and those FUCKING THEMES THANK YOU.
………………………
Join me and a couple (million?) other people for the LASTFUCKING BOOK at some point in the future!
