I'm sure in the next few editions we'll find out that they are all controlled by a Chaos Daemon or something like that of course. trying for trade, integrating people into their society even other races, going for non-military solutions first.
What flaws? I only read their source book when they came out and other than the greater good thing, they were pretty reasonable.
I think its kind of unfortunate they had to rapidly introduce flaws in order to make them fit into the setting better. War hammer is so fucking depressing the only race I have desire to play/empathy for are the tau. But there's a believable progression to it, there's always a reason for things being the way they are. And those horrible races? They too have a reason for being awful.Īnd before Old Night there was the Dark (as it is now called) Age of Technology, which was cool but which had its own problems with rebelling AIs and with psykers first appearing and causing trouble and I'm sure other things as well.Īnd on it goes, backwards in time: one damn thing after another, most of them making the universe more horrible. The races they were created to fight are more horrible still. The terrible orks? They were created for a reason. Those aliens however? They too have problems. I have no trouble believing there was popular support for the Emperor's program of military build-up and reconquista, when the state of affairs beforehand was humanity getting eaten by demons and aliens. Like any organism, when threatened with destruction the Empire grew defensive and bristled. Mankind battled itself, daemons, and aliens. Several alien races such as Orks, sensing mankind's weakness, raided and devastated many human-colonised worlds. Several worlds, particularly Terra, dependent on the export of other worlds to feed their enormous populations, suffered massive famine. With the emergence of Warp storms through most of the galaxy, travel through the Warp became more and more dangerous until all but impossible, isolating many planets. Widespread insanity, daemonic possession, and inter-human war suddenly took hold throughout the human worlds. And if he tries to do more, that causes even more problems. You have a dude who really wants to do good things and make the horrible universe a little bit better, but there's only so much he can do. If it weren't for the corruption of Horus, the humans would have just kept on going until they wiped everyone else out and established an unending totalitarian rule.
Aliens were to be destroyed utterly, and human colonies that didn't immediately swear unending fealty to the Emperor were to be crushed just as mercilessly. They basically made superheroes and then cloned them so they could crush the Galaxy by force. But the motivations of the Emperor and the Primarchs were not that noble. I was hoping for more of a feeling of how things were really great in 30K, so that maybe one day they could get back there again. The sense I got was that the 30K universe was already pretty damn terrible, but then Demons arrived and made everything a billion times worse. When you read the 30K books you understand, finally and viscerally, why and how the universe in 40K is as despairingly, soul-crushingly horrible as it is. It's really something, I can tell you that.īut that doesn't make the boring crap books not boring crap. The Horus Heresy an epic, epic saga, and after a couple o' dozen books you come to understand why the Emperor might come to be worshiped, how the regress into religion might work and affect everyone, and how intricately and detailedly interconnected the mesh of outside context problems in the 40K galaxy is. It's definitely in my top 10 SF universes. Honestly, I really, really like the 40K universe. Books 13 - 20 have more good books among them, by the way. 1 and 2 so you have an idea where it all started. So no, I wouldn't recommend buying the pack, if you're not already a die hard gotta-read-'em-all 40K fan. This and its dual Prospero Burns are among the very bestĤ0K books I've read, and also stand tall on their own Looked very much like more of the same boring plodding slogĪ Thousand Sons - amazing. Tales of Heresy - good collection of seven good short storiesįallen Angels - again with the Dark Angels, like Descent of Angels. Mechanicum - quite interesting, for its depictions of the Mechanicum and of 40K's Mars Legion - amazing worth reading on its own Abnett knocked this one out of the park The Flight of the Eisenstein - fine, though a bit repetitive