"I am Rogal Dorn!"
Yeah, anyway...oh, and I think you've gotten spoilers from everywhere. Malcador sits on the throne, the Emperor rises, Horus lowers the shields on the Vengeful Spirit to lure his father to a trap, Sanguinus is dying from the mortal wounds he sustained during his combat against Ka'bandha and Angron, and even Basilius Fo makes an appearance, having created the virus capable of destroying the Adeptus Astartes by targeting them genetically, and is about to be executed by the Adeptus Custodes, only to have a stay of execution by Malcador's Chosen. That's the Terminus. Right, I don't know if I'm missing anyone else. Oh, yeah! Katsuhiro is still kicking about, carrying around the baby, Euphrati Keeler the saint is evacuating everyone to the north after the Sanctum has been shut and the Eternity Gate has been closed, thus condemning everyone still outside to a long, slow death as they sell their lives for as high a price as possible against the tide of traitors. Fafnir Rann and Zephon are among those fighting outside the Eternity Gate, only to joined by Archamus, Second of that Name, who left Rogal Dorn's side to lead the fighting outside after the fall of Bhab Bastion. The White Scars continue to hold Lion's Gate, but even though they see that the shields of the Vengeful Spirit are down, they are unable to hit the damned ship with the ground to orbital cannons or batteries. Warp magic at work here.
I think by now everyone knows about how half the Adeptus Custodes are corrupted when they teleport onto the Vengeful Spirit. Well, they sort of went mad (something about Horus lulling them to a false sense of security by not having any enemies to greet them and then worming some taint into their mind and driving them insane) and are deceived into attacking the Emperor, who proceeds to kill the corrupted ones and purge the taint out of the surviving Custodes who resisted. One of whom was blessed by Malcador, which was really cool. As mentioned earlier, Rogal Dorn is trapped in a desert for what seems like a century or two and is slowly going mad as Khorne attempts to sway him, but he resists it. Sanguinus and his sons teleport successfully and massacre a bunch of Sons of Horus on their way to Horus Lupercal, but Constantin Valdor and his contingent are teleported separately from the Emperor and his own squad of Custodes, and they end up in a hellish place in the Vengeful Spirit, fighting against hordes of Daemons and basically repeating the War for the Webway. Meanwhile, Abaddon is getting disillusioned with the war, seeing the Daemons and corrupted Astartes just doing their own thing, butchering and massacring and using warp magick instead of fighting like honorable warriors. Not only that, he is informed that the shields on the Vengeful Spirit are down. So what does he do? He orders all those Sons of Horus Captains and companies still willing to obey him instead of rushing forward and massacring Loyalists to get onto the stormbirds and return to the Vengeful Spirit to save their gene-father because he suspects that something is horribly wrong, and he thinks Horus is being deceived by the forces of Chaos and has underestimated the Emperor.
Horus Lupercal is written entirely in second person, which is really cool. I think it reinforces the sense that he's just a puppet - like the reader. We feel like we're in control (as does Horus), but our actions and decisions are being guided by the author. It's like Abnett subtly directing the way we think and feel and what we do, but deceiving us into thinking that we have a choice, and yeah, Horus is a puppet of the Four. However, he reveals that he has been hiding his true power all this time, feigning madness and staying aboard the Vengeful Spirit because he wants to lure the Emperor out and not allow Him to escape when He senses his real power or how strong he has become. I doubt it'll go according to Horus's plan, but...yeah.
Corswain and the Dark Angels are holding the Astronomican mountain, and Zahariel is with them. Guess who? Zahariel is Cypher! Anyway, Typhus and the Death Guard assault the Astronomican mountain and attempt to take it from the Dark Angels, with Typhus initially trying to persuade Corswain to join them, but obviously he refuses. Meanwhile, despite murdering Vassago, Zahariel and his fellow ex-librarians agree to help Corswain reawaken the Astronomican and guide Guilliman's retribution fleet to Terra. Oh, they are nine hours away, but they can't warp into the Sol system because they can't see the Beacon. The Sol System is engulfed in empyric storms and warp energies, so it's impossible for the fleet to translate out. That's why Corswain instructs Zahariel and friends to set up the Astronomican and guide the fleet in, but they end up being attacked by the Death Guard. At first, the Death Guard is winning because their...uh, warp magic demoralized the Dark Angels and made them lethargic or something. I don't know, but the Dark Angels are in despair and depressed or something. However - and this will have further implications on future Dark Angels lore and the Fallen - Zahariel and the proto-Fallen refuse to side with the Warmaster and help to fight against the Death Guard. Zahariel explains that Horus will lead the Dark Angels to ruin and destroy Caliban, and that there's no future if they follow the Traitors. He insists that the proto-Fallen are loyal neither to the Emperor nor to the Warmaster, but their loyalty lies only with Caliban. So this sort of explains Cypher's agenda in current 40K and why sometimes he seems to help the Imperium and why the Fallen side with Chaos sometimes. They are beholden to neither side, but instead prioritize Caliban above all else. Now that Caliban is destroyed, this is sort of moot, but maybe they are loyal to the Rock, which is the last remnants of Caliban, and that's why Cypher is not a Traitor (or a Loyalist), but has his own agenda - he wants to protect the legacy of Caliban? Anyway, Zahariel puts on the mask of Cypher and appears as Cypher to the sagging Dark Angels force, and using his powers, he revitalizes them and expels the lethargy and despair that the Death Guard placed on them (most likely Typhus's Nurgle sorcery). Invigorated, the Dark Angels fight more fiercely than before and even begin to drive back the Death Guard. Anyway, I suspect this is what we'll see for the Fallen in modern 40K - neither loyal to the Imperium nor Chaos, but aligned only to Caliban (and perhaps the Lion? Who knows?). Then again, the Fallen are a splintered faction, with some embracing Chaos and seeing Lion El'Jonson as a traitor, and others probably worshipping him, so they'll just...y'know, be as varied as the multitude of forces in either the Imperium or Chaos, and you can homebrew your own Fallen to be loyal to wherever the hell your own loyalties lie. I suspect Cypher is aligned with Caliban and Caliban only. That's why he's trying to slay the Emperor (?) in his own novel, but at the same time, helps Roboute Guilliman against the Red Corsairs and other Chaos factions. He's not on either side, but just guides them along the path most appropriate for the legacy of Caliban (since, well, Caliban is destroyed).
Oh, and we have Ollanius Persson and his merry band traveling through the palace, only to be too late to catch up to the Emperor. Instead, he and John Grammaticus and the rest are brought to Vulkan, who is guarding Malcador at the throne. Oh, and Alpharius turns out to be Ingo Pech, the guy from Legion, if you still remember him, and he's activated by a code word to ignore both sides and defeat Chaos, even though he's supposed to be Loyalist (there's a code word for him to be loyal to the Emperor, which is what he's supposed to be). Actae playing her games. John succeeds in incapacitating him with a mine clamped onto his chest, shortly after Pech saves him from a Traitor Alpha Legionnaire who has been activated by the loyal to Horus codeword, Mathias Herzog. Ungrateful logokine...
While all this is going on, Kyril Sindermann and a Prefectus lady went to the archives to find something that might help them fight against Daemons. Forbidden archives, I might add, stuff that they aren't allowed to access, but since this is the End and the Death, no one is there to stop them. They meet Garviel Loken there, who has been thrown all around Terra while he fights as rearguard to help Keeler, or reinforce the defenders, but apparently space and time have been warped so he keeps getting teleported to...uh, places. There's also a hint that this is Malcador's doing - and Malcador's chapters are written in first person, which is awesome. Anyway, Malcador, upon sitting on the Golden Throne, receives enlightenment and sees the trap and gains all sorts of knowledge. It is taking everything he has to keep the Daemons in the webway at bay, so he can't communicate, but somehow he can subtly nudge people in places toward...hints? Which is what he's doing to Kyril Sindermann, Loken, maybe John(?), Euphrati Keeler, and more. Maybe even Hassan, which is why Hassan brings Ollanius and John and their merry band to Vulkan. In the last chapter, Loken finds a door in the library where he and Sindermann are researching, and it leads to...you guess it, the Vengeful Spirit. Loken finds himself aboard the Vengeful Spirit, most likely for one final confrontation with his gene-father. I suspect he'll be taking on the role of Ollanius Persson (or Piers) where he is the one who stands up to Horus Lupercal and ends up distracting him long enough by sacrificing his life for the Emperor to slay his wayward son. So that's where the whole Saint Ollanius Piers legend came from - it was Garviel Loken all along, but Space Marines don't really worship saints (except the Black Templars and Saint Sigismund), so it ends up being hybridized with Ollanius Pier's last stand against Angron in Santurnine. Nice.
Okay, that's pretty much the events in The End and the Death: Volume 1, but what is this about the fifth Chaos God? Well, throughout the entire novel, there are whispers of the Dark King. No one knows who this Dark King is, but I think it's hinted that it's Samus. Hell, Horus mentions Samus at one point because he knows all the names of the Daemons that are fighting alongside the Traitors. The thing is that Samus literally means "The End and the Death", and that's the title of this book. The words "the End and the Death" are repeated so often, always with mentions of the Dark King, so it has to be Samus. That's the connection - and Samus also shows up in Horus Rising, the first Horus Heresy novel by Dan Abnett. Abnett is bringing the series full circle, and certainly, Samus the Dark King will make a return. It's inevitable.
Furthermore, Actae reveals that the civil war isn't just Chaos trying to destroy humanity or Horus's rebellion against his father, the Emperor. The death toll and amount of psychic energies being unleashed from this whole phenomenon is on par with the fall of the Aeldari, which led to the birth of Slaneesh. Well, I say birth, but it's more complicated than that - time doesn't really matter to the Chaos gods, and they have always existed. More like Slaneesh finally manifesting after the fall of the Aeldari or something, rather than being birthed. Um, "The Fall of the Aeldari did not cause the birth of She Who Thirsts, merely her occurrence." Anyway, Actae claims that Horus is the vessel in which the fifth Chaos God will arise in. Actually, she says that Horus will be the new, true and terrible god, but I suspect he's just the vessel for Samus, or he's meant to fuse with Samus. We'll see in volume 2.
This means that Vashtorr isn't the only Daemon demigod trying to ascend and become the fifth Chaos God. Yeah, he's currently attempting to ascend in the current Arks of Omen series in "modern" 40K, but he's not the first. Samus tried to ascend back during the Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra...and obviously he failed. There's no mention of Samus in modern 40K at all, so I assume he was destroyed along with Horus, whose body he tried to possess as a vessel when he ascends to become the fifth Chaos God. But this ties into the current narrative arc for 40K so far, and has huge implications for the lore or universe in general. Samus, Vashtorr and perhaps even Be'lakor are all demigods trying to ascend to become the fifth Chaos God or something, but the only way to do that is to ignite a conflict on the scale of the fall of the Eldar or a cataclysm on the scale of the Horus Heresy. The Key might not be some galaxy destroying superweapon in the traditional sense, but something that can trigger a galaxy spanning conflict? I don't know. Right now it's a damned Macguffin, but with all these thread connections tying the current 40K lore to the Horus Heresy, and Samus doing almost the exact same thing as Vashtorr, I've to say...yeah. It's definitely not a coincidence.
Also, Actae continues, "So too with all other gods, be they foul entities of Chaos, or divine forces of sentient power."
Actually, I might as well give you the full quote:
‘Lord,’ says Actae, with some reluctance, ‘the Dark King is… it is the name first written in the time before man, and repeated ever since, unbidden, by the prophets of all species. It is a name symbolising the rising god to come.’
There are no gods!’ scoffs Raja.
‘You’re a fool,’ Actae tells him. ‘Before the fall of the aeldari, there was no fourth power of Chaos. The gods of Chaos breed and multiply, propagating like storms through the empyrean. They are born in turn, though they have all existed forever. Time has no meaning for them. The fall of the aeldari did not cause the birth of She Who Thirsts, merely her occurrence. So too with all other gods, be they foul entities of Chaos, or divine forces of sentient power.'
‘She Who Thirsts was born out of the death of an entire sentient culture,’ says John.
‘Such is the inevitable fate of all advanced, psychic species,’ says Actae. ‘And the Dark King is our fate. This war, my lord, is not one of loyalists against traitors. It is not about the conquest of Terra and mankind by Chaos. It is certainly not about a son at war with his father. This is the Triumph of Ruin. Horus and the Emperor have taken their conflict to such a pitch, that we are about to suffer the same fate as the cursed aeldari. The human race will die in birth-fire, consumed by blood-rage, pestilence, violent transmutation and blind desire. And from the grave-pyre of our civilisation, the broken galaxy will see Horus rising, absolute and complete, as a new, true and terrible god.’
Dan Abnett. The End and the Death: Volume I (Kindle Locations 9669-9682).
Oh my holy Emperor. So this is how the Emperor becomes a god. He's not a foul entity of Chaos, but a divine force of sentient power. The Horus Heresy is what propels Him from being a perpetual and the greatest human psyker into becoming a literal god. When Horus dies, all that warp energy and whatnot probably causes the Emperor to transcend in the fifth Chaos god's place, but instead of being an entity of Chaos, He is a divine force of sentient power. Damn. But that opens the road for other demigods to become the fifth Chaos God, like Vashtorr, who's following in the footsteps of Samus.
Will Vashtorr succeed? I doubt it. Samus failed, and I doubt Be'lakor will let him succeed anyhow. Maybe Valrak will talk about this when he gets back from his holiday in Florida (hey, you should visit Minneosta, Valrak! Not that you'll ever read this blog), but that's up to him. I just brought it up because I haven't seen it mentioned in any lore video or Warhammer 40,000 content creator out there. Huh. Anyway, enough waffling from me (yes, I watch too many Valrak videos) and I'll see you guys next time.
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