Graham McNeill - False Gods

To Dan. Thanks for the illumination.

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.

Eirst 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.

Horus is a star ascendant, but how much further can a star rise before it falls?

The Warmaster Horus Commander of the Sons of Horus Legion

Ezekyle AbaddonFirst Captain of the Sons of Horus

Tarik Torgaddon Captain, 2nd Company, Sons of Horus

Iacton Qruze, ''The Half-Heard''Captain, 3rd Company, Sons of Horus

Hastur Sejanus Captain, 4th Company, Sons of Horus (Deceased)

Horus Aximand, ''Little Horus''Captain, 5th Company, Sons of Horus

Serghar TargostCaptain, 7th Company, Sons of Horus, Lodge Master

Garviel LokenCaptain, 10th Company, Sons of Horus

Luc SediraeCaptain, 13th Company, Sons of Horus

Tybalt Marr, ''The Either'' Captain, 18th Company, Sons of Horus

Verulam Moy, ''The Or'' Captain, 19th Company, Sons of Horus

Kalus Ekaddon Captain Catulan Reaver Squad, Sons of Horus

Falkus Kibre, ''Widowmaker''Captain, Justaerin Terminator Squad, Sons of Horus

Nero Vipus Sergeant, Locasta Tactical Squad, Sons of Horus

Maloghurst ''The Twisted'' Equerry to the Warmaster

AngronPrimarch of the World Eaters

FulgrimPrimarch of the Emperor's Children

ErebusFirst Chaplain of the Word Bearers

KharnCaptain, 8th Assault Company of the World Eaters

Princeps EsauTurnet Commander of the Dies Irae, an Imperator-Class Titan

Moderati Primus CassarOne of the Senior Crew of the Dies Irae

Moderati Primus ArukenAnother of the Dies Irae's Crew

Lodge Priestess AkshubLeader of the Lodge of the Serpent

Tsi RekhDavinite Liaison

TsephaA Cultist of Davin and Facilitator for Akshub

Petroneixa Vivar Palatina Majoria Of House CarpinusOne of the Scions of a Wealthy Noble

Family of Terra

MaggardBodyguard to Petronella

Lord Commander VarvarasCommander of Imperial Army Forces Attached to Horus's Legion Mechanicum Adept RegulusMechanicum Representative to Horus, He Commands the Legion's Robots and

Maintains Its Fighting Machines

I was there the day that Horus fell

'It is the folly of men to believe that they are great players on the stage of history, that their actions might affect the grand procession that is the passage of time. It is an insulating conceit a powerful man might clasp tight to his bosom that he might sleep away the night, safe in the knowledge that, but for his presence, the world would not turn, the mountains would crumble and the seas dry up. But if the remembrance of history has taught us anything, it is that, in time, all things will pass. Unnumbered civilisations before ours are naught but dust and bones, and the greatest heroes of their age are forgotten legends. No man lives forever and even as memory fades, so too will any remembrance of him.

It is a universal truth and an unavoidable law that cannot be denied, despite the protestations of the vain, the arrogant and the tyrannical.

Horus was the exception.'

- Kyril Sindermann, Preface to the Remembrancers

'It would take a thousand cliches to describe the Warmaster, each one truer than the last.'

- Petronella Vivar, Palatina Majoria of House Carpinus

'Everything degenerates in the hands of men.'

- Ignace Karkasy, Meditations on the Elegiac Hero

Cyclopean Magnus, Rogal Dorn, Leman Russ: names that rang with history, names that shaped history. Her eyes roamed further up the list: Corax, Night Haunter, Angron and so on through a legacy of heroism and conquest, of worlds reclaimed in the name of the Emperor as part of the ever-expanding Imperium of Man.

It thrilled her just to hear the names in her head.

But greater than any of them was the name at the top of the list.

Horus: the Warmaster.

Lupercal, she heard his soldiers now called him - an affectionate nickname for their beloved commander. It was a name earned in the fires of battle: on Ullanor, on Murder, on Sixty-Three Nineteen, - a world the deluded inhabitants had, in their ignorance, known as Terra - and a thousand other batdes she had not yet committed to her mnemonic implants.

The thought that she was so very far from the sprawling family estates of Kairos and would soon set foot on the Vengeful Spirit to record living history took her breath away. But she was here to do more than simply record history unfolding; she knew, deep in her soul, that Horus was history.

She ran a hand through her long, midnight black hair, swept up in a style considered chic in the Terran court - not that anyone this far out in space would know, allowing her fingernails to trace a path down her smooth, unblemished skin. Her olive skinned features had been carefully moulded by a life of wealth and facial sculpting to be regal and distinguished, with just the fashionable amount of aloofness crafted into the proud sweep of her jawline.

Tall and striking, she sat at her maplewood escritoire, a family heirloom her father proudly boasted had been a gift from the Emperor to his great, great grandmother after the great oath-taking in the Urals. She tapped on her dataslate with a gold tipped mnemo-quill, its reactive nib twitching in response to her excitement. Random words crawled across the softly glowing surface, the quill's organic stem-crystals picking up the surface thoughts from her frontal lobes.

Crusade Hero Saviour Destroyer.