THE HORUS HERESY
AGE OF DARKNESS
Edited by Christian Dunn
original release by kilkrazy
edited by fractalnoise
v1.1 (2012.01)
The Horus Heresy
It is a time of legend.
Mighty heroes battle for the right to rule the galaxy. The vast armies of the Emperor of Earth have conquered the galaxy in a Great Crusade – the myriad alien races have been smashed by the Emperor’s elite warriors and wiped from the face of history.
The dawn of a new age of supremacy for humanity beckons.
Gleaming citadels of marble and gold celebrate the many victories of the Emperor. Triumphs are raised on a million worlds to record the epic deeds of his most powerful and deadly warriors.
First and foremost amongst these are the primarchs, superheroic beings who have led the Emperor’s armies of Space Marines in victory after victory. They are unstoppable and magnificent, the pinnacle of the Emperor’s genetic experimentation. The Space Marines are the mightiest human warriors the galaxy has ever known, each capable of besting a hundred normal men or more in combat.
Organised into vast armies of tens of thousands called Legions, the Space Marines and their primarch leaders conquer the galaxy in the name of the Emperor.
Chief amongst the primarchs is Horus, called the Glorious, the Brightest Star, favourite of the Emperor, and like a son unto him. He is the Warmaster, the commander-in-chief of the Emperor’s military might, subjugator of a thousand thousand worlds and conqueror of the galaxy. He is a warrior without peer, a diplomat supreme.
As the flames of war spread through the Imperium, mankind’s champions will all be put to the ultimate test.
CONTENTS
AGE OF DARKNESS
The Horus Heresy
CONTENTS
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
by Graham McNeill
LIAR’S DUE
by James Swallow
FORGOTTEN SONS
by Nick Kyme
THE LAST REMEMBRANCER
by John French
REBIRTH
by Chris Wraight
THE FACE OF TREACHERY
by Gav Thorpe
LITTLE HORUS
by Dan Abnett
THE IRON WITHIN
by Rob Sanders
SAVAGE WEAPONS
by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Graham McNeill
HE WANTED TO weep, but the last two years had turned his heart to stone. Too much had been asked of him, too much had been lost, and he had no more sorrow left. Brothers forsaken, a world of Ultramar burned and the golden dream of galactic unity reduced to ashes. Such a singular moment in history should be mourned. It demanded tears, a rending of clothes, a tearing of hair, or, at the very least, an outburst of primal rage.
He indulged none of these cathartic releases.
If he allowed tears of sorrow to fall, they might never stop.
The interior of the Arcanium was a twenty metre square cube with an arched doorway in each wall, softly lit by thick candles held aloft in iron sconces worked in the form of eagles and lions rampant. The floor was of a dark slate, and its walls were formed from bare timbers, polished and worked smooth by a plane wielded by his own hands. He remembered finding refuge here many years ago, when the incessant bickering between the senators of Macragge had become too unbearable for a boy who thrived on action and excitement.
That boy was gone now, drowned in the blood of Konor’s murder and the greater tide of slaughter he had unleashed in the wake of that treachery. Once he had called it justice, but the passage of time gave him the perspective to recognise the truth of his motivation. Revenge was never a worthy reason to send men to war, and he had resolved to never again fall prey to its seductions. Having identified the flaw, he had taken steps to purge himself of that weakness, and the execution of Gallan had been the last time emotion guided his hand.
He returned his attention to the book before him, hearing the bustle of the fortress beyond the lovingly crafted walls of his private sanctum. Once this place had been remote from any petitioners, built hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, but its isolation was now a thing of the past. Acres of marbled walls, glittering geodesic domes, soaring towers and perfectly proportioned structures surrounded it. An entire library had been raised up around the chamber, and though the architects and mathematicians had begged him to consider the harmonious geometry of the golden mean inherent within their plans, he had refused to allow the Arcanium to be demolished.
He wanted to smile, recognising that perhaps Gallan’s execution hadn’t quite been the last time emotion had played a part in his decision-making process after all. But the smile refused to come, and in the face of all that occupied his thoughts now, his determination to hang on to this fragment of his youth seemed a wilfully petty thing.
Seated at a heavy table of dark wood that filled the centre of the chamber, he read the words he had just written in the enormous tome before him. Its spine was a metre long and thick enough to enclose a book fully thirty centimetres deep. Brilliant gold leaf edged the warm leather binding, and the pages were pale vellum that still carried the scent of the beast from which it had been cut. Tightly wound script filled the leftmost page, each letter precisely formed and arranged in perfectly even lines of text.
The work was progressing, and every day brought him closer to completion.
It was to be his greatest work, his Magnum Opus, the undertaking for which he would be forever remembered. Some might consider such sentiment to be vanity on his part, but he knew better. This was a work that would save everything his gene-father had tried to build. Its teachings would form the foundation of what was needed to weather the coming storm. Selflessness, not pride, guided his hand as he set down decades of accumulated wisdom, each chapter and verse a fragment of his biologically encoded genius, each morsel of imparted knowledge a building block that would combine to form a work immeasurably greater than the sum of its parts.
In the wake of the devastation unleashed on Calth, the Legion was looking to him for leadership more than ever. His warriors had suffered a grievous blow to their pride, and desperately needed to see their primogenitor. Helots brought petitions for audiences from his Chapter captains every day, but this endeavour was too important to grant such requests.
They did not understand why he sequestered himself away from his sons, but they did not need to understand. All that was required of them was obedience, even when his orders made no sense and seemed as heretical as those that had set the galaxy ablaze.
In all his years of service to his gene-father, he had never faced so terrible a choice.
The Imperium was lost. Everything he knew told him so, and this betrayal was the one thing that would save the dream at its heart from extinction.
The body of the Imperium was dying, but the ideals of its foundation could live on.
His father would understand that, even if others would not.