Anyway, the important points of The Fall of Cadia are...well, everyone should probably know what it's about.
First, Trazyn the Infinite's Necron base gets ruined when some holy bell in his collection, which was supposed to toll when Cadia is in danger, starts ringing.
Secondly, Belisarius Cawl is told to go to Cadia after clearing out an Ork infestation and collecting Noctlith or blackstone and studying pylons on some world.
Battlefleet Cadia has just beaten back the traitor fleet, only for a new wave of Traitor fleet to emerge, and this time, Abaddon aboard the Blackstone Fortress, The Will of Eternity, emerges, and basically destroys the Loyalist fleet. Ugh. Interestingly, Abaddon has some daughter who controls the Blackstone Fortress for him. Or tries to, but The Will of Eternity has a will of its own (hah! Get it?), and Dravura Morkath (which apparently means Child of the Fortress) has limited control. Still enough to fire the warp cannon at Cadia, but Magos Klarn with the help of Trazyn succeeds in activating the null field to nullify it.
Oh, before that, we have Urkanthos, the ex-Lord Ravager of Khorne. Now, the four representatives of the Chaos Gods (basically, Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch) are always competing to sway Abaddon toward a single god, so the success of one would give him more influence than the others. So Urkanthos is en route to making Khorne the dominant god in the Black Legion if he ascends to become a Daemon Prince.
So you have a bunch of politics where he's competing against Devram Korda, the Slaanesh dude, and his ship detects Trazyn's ship and recognizes it as Necron. But instead of shooting it down, he orders them to "focus on" Cadia, hoping they save Cadia from being blasted by the warp cannon of The Will of Eternity. Reason being so that he has a chance to descend on the surface of Cadia and slaughter, and with the amount of blood spilt, he can ascend to a Daemon Prince.
He's on his way to ascendancy when slaughtering his way in the orbital defense platforms above Cadia, but gets shot upon by one of Korda's ships and gets interrupted, so he becomes Half-Prince. Heh. Hilarious. He gets furious and confronts Korda, only for Abaddon to step in before the two can kill each other. Turns out Abaddon ordered Korda to fire upon Urkanthos (obviously he doesn't tell the poor dude) because he knows of Khorne's plans to sway him toward him by making his represented Chosen a Daemon Prince and disrupt the balance of power. Abaddon isn't to be played around by the gods and doesn't want to disrupt the balance of power.
Anyway, Urkanthos gets onto the surface of Cadia, gets his wish, and slaughters a bunch of Sisters. There, he finally completes his ascension and becomes a full daemon prince. Congrats, I guess?
There's also a bunch of other Loyalist, including Black Templars, where one guy fakes being the Champion, only to become a real Champion when he gets brutalized by Urkanthos, and finally sees a vision for real. This calls upon Celestine, and transforms the two twin sisters into her Geminae Superiors (they were also killed by Urkanthos, but were revived when Celestine descends). Meanwhile, Urkanthos butchers his way into the null array machine, kills Klarn and the Skitarii in there, and destroys the machine, disabling it. Fortunately for Cadia, the blackstone fortress has to recharge before it can fire the warp cannon again.
I shouldn't forget about our main boy, Ursarkar Creed. He's a strategic genius (or tactical genius - a callback to the old Warlord Trait), but he also has his flaws, where he doesn't consult the air marshal and basically sacrifices their air power when trying to stop the Black Legion's landings on Cadia. Whoops. Creed's speeches are also mainly written by Jarran Kell, and since he isn't highborn, they play the "common soldier" card, where Creed relates more to the soldiers on the ground than the highborn officers. It raises morale.
The Kasrkins are awesome. They basically destroy the Hounds of Abaddon, led by Urkanthos. They are recognized as beyond anything the Black Legion has faced, save the Astartes, far above the common soldier, and with plasma and melta, as well as turning one of the kasrs into a kill zone, wreak an awesome kill tally on the Khorne Berzerkers.
Iron Wolves under the command of Orven Highfell destroy the Iron Warriors in a tank battle. Huh. The Black Templars defend the Martyr's Pass even though they didn't have to, and Mordlied had to lie to Marshal Amalrich, pretending to be the Champion (I mentioned this above), to force him to abandon the pointless defense and return to Kasr Kraf to help the Cadians. The Dark Angels do Dark Angels things and fight on their own. Ugh. The Sisters almost get wiped out by Urkanthos. The Knights of House Raven are the only ones who actually listen to and respect Creed, and they're off holding Legio Vulcanum.
There's also this small part where Marda Hellsker is sent to hold a place in the mountains where Creed has placed aside as a secret evacuation place for when all things go to hell. And yes, you should remember the name Hellsker because she's mentioned again in Ashes of Cadia.
Creed also has problems trying to unite the disparate Imperium forces fighting on Cadia. The Space Marines tend to want to do whatever they want to do, with Sven Bloodhowl taking a regiment from Creed to board the Blackstone Fortress in an attempt to cripple it. Abaddon teleports on their ship and slaughters a lot of the boarding forces, but a few make it - especially the Space Wolves and a bunch of Cadians, and though Morkath is tasked to track them and eliminate them, the Will of Eternity has a will of its own and helps the Imperial Forces to the center, where they disable the shields.
Enter the Phalanx. The Imperial Fists arrive to reinforce Battlefleet Cadia and cripples the Will of Eternity just as Abaddon and his Black Legion elite ambush the Space Wolves, but are unable to stop them from destroying the shield generator capacitators or cables or something. The Space Wolves get slain to a man, including Sven Bloodhowl, who died at Abaddon's claws, but hey, they go out like the badasses they are. Before the Phalanx fires upon the Will of Eternity, Abaddon and friends teleport out, but abandoning poor Morkath, who despites her father's betrayal, remains loyal to him until the end.
Meanwhile, back on Cadia, Celestine descends and turns the tide, and slays Urkanthos. The poor dude is sent to the warp screaming for eternity, realizing that he was abandoned by Abaddon. The Warmaster had never intended to let him live, and sent him into a trap, scheming to kill him alongside the Cadians. Celestine sort of spoiled things for him, but at least he is rid of a political threat that might sway him toward Khorne. Anyway, the Cadians wipe out the Hounds of Abaddon after Urkanthos's death. Though much of Kasr Kraf that Creed made his base is destroyed, they hold. For now.
A Mechanicus fleet translates in, and Belisarius Cawl appears to reinforce them with more Skitarii and robots and Knights of House Taranis! Yay! Baron Ryevan from House Taranis is the leader of the Knights, and he speaks binharic.
Belisarius Cawl shows up and tells them Abaddon's objective - to destroy the pylons. Therefore, the Imperium must defend Elysion Fields, because that's Abaddon's goal.
In the meantime, Marda Hellsker defends the mountain pass successfully, and Kell hands her Creed's diary, which she is to hand to Ursula Creed in Ashes of Cadia later. Yes, spoilers, which is why I'm discussing both books here. She's also given command of a new regiment because her poor troops got wrecked defending the mountain pass from the traitorous Volscani (if I spelled that right). And promoted to colonel.
Cawl also tells them he has a way to seal the Eye of Terror forever. So they are to defend him while he works on that. While he does, he meets Trazyn, who actually likes Cawl and respects him. They are both innovative, humorous and strike up an odd friendship. Trazyn plans to add Cawl to his collection, and as a conversation partner because their conversations are fun. They have good banter.
Creed finally unites all the Imperial forces under his command. The whole "Cadia Stands" slogan is revealed to actually be "Cadia Stands United." But the vox got cut off before he could finish his sentence, and now everyone shouts Cadia Stands. But it's more of a funny accident than intentional.
He gets influenced by Salvar Ghent, who's a crime lord and played an influential role in stopping the artillery spotters for Chaos, and he promotes to colonel of logistics so that the guy can help supply the Cadian regiments with weapons from the black market. Ghent tells him about a metaphor on how he united the gangs in the underworld of Cadia. Basically, if you hit with one finger, you break it. But if you ball them into a fist, or slap (he slaps Creed to illustrate his point), all five fingers together do a lot of damage, and don't break. Creed then uses this metaphor to persuade all Imperial forces - Adepta Sororitas, Adeptus Astartes - to work together with the Imperial Guard, Knights and Adeptus Mechanicus (the Knights and Tech-priests have been very cooperative with the Cadians, unlike the errant Space Marines and overly pious Sisters). They finally see the light and cooperate with him in the final battle.
So while they do so, Abaddon lands at the Elysion Fields and launches his final attack. One Cadian regiment is routed. House Raven and House Taranis hold off Legio Vulcanum, but at the cost of Baroness Vardus's life. The Black Legion makes it to the Cadian 8th, where Creed does his last stand. Kell sacrifices his life to send Creed to safety, with the Kasrkins dragging him to a Valkyrie. And Kell is a badass who faces Abaddon in a one-on-one duel and fights his Talons with a power fist and a sword. Awesome. Remember Sigismund's "You will die as your weakling father died. Soulless. Honorless. Weeping, ashamed."? Kell has something similar.
He locked his power fist around the battle standard, refused to let it drop.
‘Cadia stands.’
‘But you can’t. And I will kill him,’ the Despoiler said. His voice was deep and rich, laden with a passion Kell did not expect. ‘In the meantime, he will watch you die as he runs. And your death will be a dishonour.’
Kell could feel his ribs creaking under the pressure. Blood was in his mouth. It was hard to get breath.
‘You’re slaying me with the same gauntlet that killed an angel and touched the Emperor,’ he choked. ‘How is that a dishonour?’
The noble face turned down in fury. ‘I am no failure like Horus.’
‘If he’s such a failure, why do you dress like him, eh? Tell me th– Ccccchhhhhkkk…’
BURN.
Anyway, Creed survives, and Abaddon and the Black Legion fight their way through the subterranean tunnels where Cawl is. Trazyn does Trazyn things and unleashes several pocket dimensions, including Vostroyans, Heresy-era Ultramarines (complete with Contemptor Dreadnoughts!) and a Custodes Blade Champion. Oh, and Greyfax and her Kappic Eagles stormtroopers. They buy Cawl time to finish the null array or whatever, but they still get wiped out (except Greyfax and the Kappic Eagles, who only join the battle at the last moment). Ouch. Even the Blade Champion got beheaded in a single stroke by Abaddon. Highfell...fell in battle at some point, but Wulfen show up to help the Cadians fight off the Black Legion, but most of them die. At that moment, Celestine descends to help Creed fight against Abaddon. Anyway...
‘Archmagos.’ Trazyn juggled chrysoprase tablets, reading alignment grids and dimensional fissures. ‘We have reached the critical stage. Either unleash the pariah matrix, or the planet shakes itself apart.’
‘Then we activate!’
Cawl scuttled to a bank of cogitators and logic-banks at the centre of a cabling nest. Tapped out a consecrated cypher-mantra on a clackboard.
‘Oh Omnissiah, one who brings us function, please bless and sanctify this befouled marriage of xenos architecture and sacred Mechanicus input devices. Judge us not for our trespasses into the labyrinth of forbidden knowl–’
‘Archmagos!’
‘Please just let the damn thing work,’ he said, and pressed the ACTIVATE key.
You got to love Robert Rath's humor. And it works because Trazyn and Cawl are amazing characters with a great sense of humor. No wonder they make a great pair.
Anyway, it works, and the Eye of Terror begins to be sealed. Unfortunately, this means Celestine loses her powers and she's defeated by Abaddon. The bright side is that the daemons get extinguished. Creed and the Kasrkins get desperate and try to save Celestine. Greyfax does some psychic thing to distract Abaddon, and he returns to killing Creed. Creed lost a few of his fingers when trying to shoot Abaddon, but Celestine stabs him in the back. Apparently, Abaddon teleports out of there, and in a rage, hurls the Will of Eternity at Cadia.
Morkath is still on the blackstone fortress, and he apologizes to her.
‘Father!’
He leaned backwards, as if struck. The word had touched some pain in him she did not realise existed, but she didn’t care. If she hurt him, so be it. He was not the one hurtling towards terminal orbit.
‘I am sorry, Morkath,’ he said. ‘I have disappointed you.’
Morkath blinked. She had never heard the Warmaster apologise – for anything. Within, she felt an old hope bloom. A moment bathed in his light.
‘But in my experience, that’s what fathers do.’
He cut the transmission, and her further hails were not answered.
And so it ends. Cadia falls.
Fortunately, the evacuation site that Hellsker defended is intact and they evacuate from there. Creed and some of the eighth stay behind as a rearguard, and everyone else gets off the planet. It's chaos, but hey, at least there are lots of survivors.
Trazyn wants to grab Cawl for his collection, but Cawl talks him out of it, even providing info about the Primaris Marines, and convinces him that there's someone better for his collection.
Yup...Creed. He and the remnants of Eighth, defiant to the last and shooting at the daemons that encroached upon their position. Trazyn sees it and thinks it'll make a magnificent centerpiece for his collection. So...yeah.
The Great Rift opens. And thus the stage for 8th edition (now 10th), the Dark Imperium, and the Indomitus Crusade is set.
Enter Ashes of Cadia.
It was okay. I can't say I like it as much as The Fall of Cadia, but there are interesting parts.
Basically, Roboute Guilliman pulls Ursula out of a campaign to send her to the remnants of Cadia to get some secret thing that her father, Ursarkar Creed, left behind. Not Guilliman necessarily, but the Adminstratum, a Rogue Trader and a bunch of higher ups think it'll be great propaganda for the daughter of Creed to sucessfully retrieve his legacy. Unfortunately, apart from plot, none of this is practical or makes any sense.
Without a proper regiment, they think sending penal legions to distract the daemons and Heretic Astartes roaming the surface of the biggest fragment of Cadia after it exploded is a good idea. And Ursula is sent with a relatively small team (think Kill Team) to brave the ruins of Cadia. I can't tell you how horrible of an idea this is, but...I guess the story needs to happen. The team is made of Cadians, with one exception - a Catachan, who is later hinted to be an Inquisitorial agent implanted into the team to keep Ursula alive with his Mary Sue Sly Marbo Godlike repertoire of skills, which includes fixing equipment, rudimentary first aid and a bunch of other Deus ex Machina stuff in addition to his experience with death worlds. Well, that's fine in itself, I suppose, and I thought he was an interesting character, especially if the Inquisitorial background explains all his skills.
The rest are all Cadians, including an old man who served with Creed. He passes Ursula a diary from her father, which Hellsker passed to him (I don't know why she didn't show up, she gets a mention here, but no more than that). At first, Ursula wants nothing to do with the diary, so the sergeant passes it to Mac Ossian, a penal legionnaire who's also a Cadian. Who later passes it to Ursula after the sergeant dies, and that's when she finally accepts it. Anyway, Marda Hellsker - that's the one connection between The Fall of Cadia and Ashes of Cadia. Nice.
Ossian is a penal legionnaire because he killed his commanding officer for murdering his patients with an artillery strike. Apparently, the asshole colonel used the injured to lure the enemy into position before obliterating both the traitors and the patients of his own regiment with artillery strikes, and then went bragging about it. Ossian got mad and shot the bastard in the face. Then got court martialed and placed in the penal legions. Anyway, they meet him and another lady when they are running away from Poxwalkers, and they become part of the group. Unfortunately, prior to that, one of the Whiteshield snipers accidentally shot the ogryn friend that was accompanying those two, and the lady penal legionnaire is pissed at that. No surprise there.
In addition to the Cadians, who make up about 10, including two whiteshield snipers who are no longer whiteshields, they have small fireteams of Tempestus Scions scattered about. The fireteam of stormtroopers with Creed and friends get wiped out, but they manage to group up with another 2 survivors from another fireteam that had dropped nearby.
They explore the whole place, and get into one place that's sealed by a Sister of Battle. Unfortunately, the place is keeping in Karnak and Flesh Hounds, and when they inadvertently break the seal, Karnak gets released. Whoops. Oh, and the two Tempestus Scions they found die here. C'mon.
There's also a Death Guard dude who's pursuing them, while leading an army of Poxwalkers and Nurgle Daemons. The lady penal legionnaire leaves the group and joins the Death Guard dude to become his servant, in exchange for survival (and because she thinks she won't survive with the Imperials). Also, because she has a grudge when her ogryn friend gets shot earlier, and she believes the Imperium doesn't value their lives. As if the Death Guard dude does...but how else are we gonna get tragic irony?
After the debacle with Karnak, they run away and finally run into surviving Cadians on the fragment of Cadia. What? How did they survive?! Doesn't matter, they are slowly being corrupted by the taint of Chaos that permeates the place and turned the fragment into a daemon world. Anyway, they are loyal, having been assigned to a bunker to guard the secret that Ursarkar Creed left for them and entrusted them to pass it to his daughter. They...have been there for years, and had to breed, but they weren't able to produce new children after a while, so there's only a couple of kids left. They all die anyway, including the untainted one. What the hell...
Turns out that the thing was data of planets. I'm sure you guys read this on Reddit with spoilers and stuff, so...I won't elaborate other than confirm that it's a bunch of unexplored systems for Ursula to found new Cadias. Again, Guilliman thinks this is more potent than any weapons. There's also information on the data stick where Creed tells his daughters that there are connections and she can call in for favors. Allied Imperial Guard regiments or Adeptus Mechanicus forge worlds that owe him favors, and will lend their aid to colonization of these new systems if she asks.
They make it out in the end, even with the Death Guard dude hot on their tails. The surviving Cadians of that world are wiped out, leaving just the Cadian Kill team (who by that point has been decimated, with the Catachan, one whiteshield sniper, one highborn Colonel officer, a longtime friend and aide, Ossian and Ursula left). Even the last untainted child was killed, despite the sniper's efforts to save her. Damn.
The Death Guard dude ascends to a daemon prince in the midst of his pursuit, but Karnak fights with him, only to be defeated. Fortunately, a Valkyrie arrives and blasts the ground beneath the daemon prince to oblivion, which leads to him sinking into the molten magma and dying. You won't be missed, you Nurgle worshipper. His servant, the traitor penal legionnaire, also dies, despite trying to persuade Ossian to join her (and fails). Let's just say her death was ironic because she got killed by an ogryn friend who was Nurgled into a Poxwalker.
There's also this silly plot device where Ursula's closest aide begs her to bring him along, and it's so obvious he's the traitor that I was rolling my eyes. He tries to steal the stick and...kill Ursula at the very end to steal credit for retrieving Creed's legacy (like, why? His motives make no sense, other than to make him a villain). Look at it this way, killing Creed will deal a crippling blow to Cadian morale and deprive them of a brilliant strategist. But nope, he's sick of being in her shadow and wants glory because, uh...I dunno. Has he not considered the consequences of his actions? Does he really think they'll appoint him as Lord Castellan just because he brought back Creed's legacy and the previous Lord Castellan died? Nah, even if they don't blame him for failing to protect the Lord Castellan, he doesn't have the tactical nous or strategic brilliance to succeed her. Like, it's so...incredibly shortsighted and ridiculous. A twist thrown in there for the sake of it, and worse, it's predictable as feth because there is no one else who could possibly be the traitor, and we all know Ossian isn't one.
The kicker is that this is the very same aide who attempts to persuade Ursula not to agree to this suicidal mission in the first place, because he knows there's very little chance of success. And somehow we're supposed to believe he suddenly has a change of heart, thinks they'll be able to walk away with the legacy thing, and that he'll somehow have the chance to kill Ursula right before they evacuate? That he has been scheming this from the very start, despite being fully aware of how unlikely Ursula would survive or succeed in this mission? Really?
Anyway, the sniper kills the traitor, and they drag his body back to cut it open because he swallowed the data stick. Dumbass.
Guilliman is impressed, as I said earlier, but when Ursula asks him for permission to withdraw Cadian regiments to found a new world on these systems, he hesitates and says he'll consider it. I think this is where all these favors are going to come in useful - I'll speak more about this later.
For now, I'll have to say - while Jude Reid is a competent writer, there are some...uh, oddly Harlequin romance moments where Ossian wonders how it would feel to brush his lips against Ursula, and Ursula boldly kissing him near the end while they need to evacuate (and being hounded by daemons)...for no reason. Like, why are they attracted to each other? That makes no sense. They've known each other for...like a couple of days, meeting for the first time on the planet. They're in danger, fighting off crisis after crisis, and somehow...they want to kiss? That was so out of place. I'm not saying there can't be romance, but you have to develop it right. Like Dan Abnett, for example. Ibram Gaunt's relationship with, say, Merity Chass, or Ana Curth. Merity doesn't really "love" Gaunt in the romantic sense, but sleeps with him because she's more in love with the idea of a soldier than because she loves him. As for Curth, she had several books to slowly develop her relationship with Gaunt. And even then, while there are intimate moments, there are no awkward scenes where they think of brushing their lips against the other, or kissing right in the middle of a battle. Any intimate moments are done after the heat of battle. Like Gaunt and Chass, for example.
Jude Reid apparently is a surgeon, and it shows - her description of anatomy and surgical procedures are accurate and detailed, and I think Ossian is an amazing character - the best character in this book, in fact. Everyone else sort of falls flat. The Catachan is a bit too...uh, Mary Sue-ish or Sly Marbo-ish (as much as he's beloved, there's a reason why he's pretty much a meme). The whiteshield sniper is okay. The highborn colonel is an asshole for much of the book. The aide is...dumb, and feels like he's put there for the obligatory twist. Ursula herself is not very likable. She's a bit boring as a character, but gosh, she's arrogant and condescending. She looks down on her subordinates, thinks they are incompetent, and I remember thinking to myself that she has to chill, especially in the beginning. She's just...unpleasant to read. She gets better as the book progresses, thankfully, being humbled in a terrible situation (if I were to be honest, though, there was absolutely no reason for her to be put in such a situation in the first place, but I suppose plot?), she mellows and even comes to trust Ossian. She still comes across as flat, and the weird Harlequin romance moments didn't help. Like, finally there's one subordinate she learns to trust, and it's because she's having a crush on him? What?
There's a bit of LGBT representation, but before you start shouting woke, it's neither overbearing nor intrusive. The highborn colonel has a husband, and Ossian has two mothers, and that's about it. Brief, one-sentence mentions. Okay, the husband gets more because he committed suicide after killing all the Cadians when they were trapped inside the family fortress and realized they have no hope of surviving, with the daemons surrounding the fortress and Cadia being broken apart, but seriously, his gender doesn't matter overall, and there's no agenda being pushed. I mean, we have a callous commander who is condescending toward her subordinates, moronic political agendas that put the Lord Castellan - of all people - in mortal danger because...propaganda or some dumb nonsense, a Death Guard dude turning Cadians into Poxwalker zombies, an evil aide who backstabbed his longtime friend just because he's sick of being in her shadow (quite literally, he tried to murder her and steal credit for the mission), a good guy being sentenced to the penal legions when his commanding officer was the real bastard, and a lady who decides to throw her lot with the Death Guard dude because she's delusional about her chances of survival (not that the Imperium is much better, given that she effectively has a collar on her neck that's rigged to blow off her head if she does anything remotely untoward), and you have an issue with a male highborn colonel being married to another man? I think that's the least of our problems here.
I do like the revelation of unexplored systems because this opens up possibilities in both the narrative sandbox and Crusade. If you have an Imperial Guard army, for example, and want to do Crusade - we can do that. In fact, the Crusade my friends and I are doing are pretty much something similar! The colonization of an unexplored system (or systems). Whoa. Founding of Cadia. You can say that even with Guilliman's hands tied, Ursula is able to call upon favors from other Guard regiments, from forge worlds and even Knight Houses to help found new Cadias in these systems. And I think I might go with that narrative for Crusade. Yay!
Anyway, that's about it, and I hope you enjoyed the spoilers!
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