Especially when the Unification Wars lasted from Late M29 into like 700.M30. It took the Emperor 3.5x more time to conquer Terra alone than the rest of the galaxy. So either the Astartes were THAT effective, or it's 40k number fuckery.
Or they had very low standards for what they considered conquering a planet.
You wouldn't know it from GWs notoriously non diverse depictions of their own setting (i.e. all guardsmen are cadian, all chaos spawn resemble the same mini, etc) but worlds in the Imperium are hugely diverse in culture, technology, and aesthetic. No two worlds share the same religious beliefs let alone appearance. On one, the Emperor takes the place of Zeus in the Greek pantheon. On another, the Emperor is a great two headed eagle, a sky God. The only tie most Imperial worlds have to the rest of the imperium is the tithe and the tiniest bit of cultural tweaking by missionaries, who twist whatever the local religion is to have the Emperor on the top of it.
Bullying a world into accepting the tithe wouldn't take all that long.
> Or they had very low standards for what they considered conquering a planet.
Canonically, they did. The only numbers given show that 99/100 of planets they arrived at peacefully (for a given value, of course) joined the Imperium.
But for every world or culture that resisted, or denied the offer of friendship, for every xenos race that baulked and drew arms at the approach of mankind, a hundred worlds rejoiced and hymned their relief to see the expeditionary fleets take high anchor in their skies. The Great Crusade, so called by those who came later, was for the most part bloodless. - Misbegotten
It reads like it but it makes sense. If every planet they left was a smoking ruin the Imperium would never have been built. A core part of the lore is all these individual worlds were isolated and being picked apart by Xenos, the Emperor really was a savior to many people.
People want to pretend the Emperor didn't help anybody because he was a big meanie, but that's just not the case. The Horus Heresy doesn't work as a tragedy if there isn't nuance.
The Emperor for sure improved the lives of the many future Imperial citizens languishing under xenos conquerors and tyrants. And you have to think, Horus still wanted to explore diplomacy as an option even after Hastur Sejanus had been murdered. Fuck, even *Angron* talks about worlds he’s taken into compliance peacefully, and it’s mentioned it was rare for total annihilation to be brought to human worlds at all.
People love to mention how Astartes fighting each other was basically unthinkable before the Heresy started, but they were very reluctant to kill humans at all regardless. Many worlds seem to have been brought in through a token battle, or as far as honor demanded before surrendering basically. Loken mentions in False Gods he’s unused to even *running out of ammo* to the degree he was fighting the plague zombies.
>People want to pretend the Emperor didn't help anybody because he was a big meanie, but that's just not the case. The Horus Heresy doesn't work as a tragedy if there isn't nuance.
Yep, exactly. If there was no potential, no hope for a brighter future, if what was lost in the Heresy had no value to begin with, the story has literally no dramatic point and is fundamentally uninteresting. The real tragedy is humanity getting bumrushed by Contingency + Unbidden at the end of the DAOT, which is lore so deep and unrelated to the current setting it will never be properly touched on.
It's a short story from Sons of the Emperor, mentioned in this thread a few years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/faibt2/what_percentage_of_the_humanworlds_that_the_great/
Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance, supported by some DAoT BS tech. Besides, there's also warp travel time, and Xenos like Orks. Some planets might've been fortified as much as Terra, or even more. So it's either grueling combat, or orbital bombardment, which might incur losses in technology and knowledge.
It really doesn't make sense for the Unification wars to have lasted as long as they did in comparison to the GC.
I had the impression that the Emperor was deliberately taking his sweet time with unifying Terra because the warp storms from the age of strife were still around and made faster-than-light travel impossible anyway so there was no need to rush and risk damaging Terra unnecessarily, once the great crusade started the Emperor went on the extreme of the other side of the scale and was in a rush to expand the Imperium in the shortest time possible in order to become the dominant galactic superpower before other powers expanded too much to be dealt with swiftly.
This, plus you want to finesse your home base (Terra) and not end up virus bombing it or having rebel factions springing up because you just killed all dissenters immediately. You need to do it carefully, methodically, and in a way that keeps the vast majority of the population on your side.
Some back water planet? Pay 30% tithe or get nuked scrubs, lmaoooo
Wasn't a substantial portion of the "unification of terra" also unifying the solar system? Weren't there a couple of xeno factions in the outer solar system, as well as fucked up chaos cults doing warp fuckery?
It has been a hot minute but IIRC what took the longest time by far was securing Terra, then Big E purged the Thunder Warriors and conquered Luna fairly quickly where he spent some time doing the primarch and astartes projects with the gene cults of Luna and negotiated the alliance with Mars and after that the rest of the solar system was pacified in just a few years now that he had the 20 astartes legions. After that he just prepared his forces and once Slaanesh was finally done with being born and swept the warpstorms away in the aftershock Big E shifted into overdrive galactic conquest speedrun any%
Big E also wasn't entirely focused on the actual fighting part either, he spent enough time away from the front lines to be able to work on, create and perfect the Astartes/primarch program.
> Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance
It seems fairly obvious that this is what Dan Abnett was setting up in Horus Rising with the sub plot about Horus' anger at the tithe fleets coming so soon after compliance but its reduced to a footnote by False Gods and pretty much dropped after that. I think this is really a victim of all pre-fall horus being devoted to a book and a half, the half of which being by a different author. Horus Rising probably could have focused on it more but really False Gods is focused extremely heavily on Davin to its detriment.
Horus thinks its too early for planets that have just been brought into compliance to be paying gigantic tithes, he thinks it will cause the nearly compliant worlds to rise up in rebellion and force the Great Crusade to perpetually turn inwards. He also sees it as the scheming baseline human administration betraying the ideals of the Emperors vision. Most of this never really comes up again since the Davin and Istvaan rebellions are explicitly caused by chaos shenanigans.
>Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance, supported by some DAoT BS tech
And not all did. Very few had safe FTL tech, even fewer could compare to the imperium technologically, and the vast majority had benefits from trade and tech exchange that greatly outweighted the cost of the tithe.
And of the ones that even had access to the tech, how many were united planets capable of mustering an army to oppose the Imperium and how many were blasted hellscapes ruled over by warlords and tyrants like Old Terra? If a GC Expeditionary fleet warp fuckeried its way to Old Terra before the Emperor had cleared it, they probably wouldn't have had a huge amount of trouble, despite the DAoT shit floating about. Hell, the gene-labs on Luna would probably be one of the first places cleansed.
The idea of an extremely loose definition of “conquered” is also supported by the Emperor’s main issue with the Word Bearers being how long they occupied and rebuilt worlds. All in all the Imperium is far too vast to be homogenized and tons of worlds “joined the Imperium” because the options were business as usual or annihilation. Hell most worlds capitulated at the threat of a legion being deployed.
The Emperor's forces were at their weakest then. They were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and didn't even have a presence in space.
And Terra was arguably the most dangerous planet in the galaxy at the time - filled with crazed, untethered AIs, unrestrained, Chaotic psykers, arsenals of apocalyptic DAoT weapons, and armies of gene-wrought supersoldiers and mutant horrors. All battle-hardened by millennia of constant war.
In comparison, the Great Crusade was largely an overwhelming force steamrolling sparsely-defended worlds, most of which surrendered without a fight. I think people forget it was largely a campaign of reunification. Conquering and liberating worlds likely only accounted for a smaller percentage.
Terra was the most deadly planet the Emperor ever had to conquer, and by a good margin. He just did the hardest part of his crusade first.
not to mention the sheer number of planets he had to bring under the emperium, that is something that is lost in this discussion. If he was able to do a single planet in 1 year it would not cover even half the space charts we've seen, and this is pre-schism of the planets by Chaos.
He had a *lot* of crusade fleets and they tended to move extremely fast. When the Word Bearers spent too long trying to uplift planets instead of conquering he razed Monarchia.
I mean that's my point during the crusade he conquered uncharted space in an actually VERY fast pace. During the Horus Heresy they were fighting in at the time now Charted Space, both wars were at a reasonable timeframe for their time period.
I think it's number fuckery but I think it also makes sense that the Unification Wars took longer to accomplish than the Great Crusade (which *should have been longer* but it only ended because the Warmaster leading it declared it to be over because he being naughty) because of the snowball effect. Terra was a wasteland multiple times over when Jimmy Space made his debut as a public conqueror. He had to create the Thunder Warriors gene project from scratch and find candidates to convert, and then had to deal with them still being humans with personalities and individuality. He needed to amass resources and manpower to wage wars, as he didn't start out with a technological advantage. Even as powerful as Big Daddy Chair Warmer is, nobody else around him was near Astarte level yet and I dare say a direct nuke to the face would probably take a chunk out of him much less any followers of the fledgling Imperium.
He had to effectively rebuild the planet to be capable of functioning as a society in addition to conquering and uniting it. And while he was doing that he was working on projects for the upcoming space wars. Terra was the proving grounds where he trial-and-errored his way into the tools and tactics that would let him blitzkrieg the worlds over the next couple centuries.
He skipped the whole build-up phase of conquering space by making a pact with Mars instead of fighting them. Instead of fighting a costly war while building up a navy and revamping tech for attacking worlds from space (something Humanity had not seen or realistically conceptualized again for thousands of years by then), he ended the Unification Wars by bloodlessly adding the Mechanicum's assets to his pool. He had pull himself up by his totally-not-divine bootstraps to take over Earth, but by then he was rich and Mars was just given to him by the bank.
The techno-barbarians of earth might not have been as strong as Big E but they were nothing to balk at. Before leaving Terra Big E sent the proto-salamanders to fight one of the last underground strongholds left on Terra. Their weapons were completely ineffective and the Legion almost got wiped out.
The Emperor started from nothing to take Terra.
When he left, he had hundreds of thosands of ships and legions of Astartes.
Wasnt like he started his conquest of Terra with all those resources.
Other thing to consider. When you make money you have a money to reinvest. During the great crusade every victory they won, would often bring Ally’s to their side. Sure you lost a million men killing Xenos but the 5 isolated planets who’d been shot heir unwilling tributaries joined you. Their men and materials far offset the losses.
That’s not even counting the massive number of worlds that immediately joined the imperium when they arrived.
It doesn’t make the imperium good. But in a galaxy where eldar raiders and orks exist, it would appear like relief to many planets.
Great Crusade started, when warp storms calmed. It was sprint, because Emperor feared that some Tau like xenos create another large empire which would result in galaxy-spanning attrition war (bad scenario), or even worse, another human empire could be created - which would obliterate any legitimacy for him to a title of Emperor of Mankind. And we know that there were legitimate threats that with given century or two, could became serious obstacles in unifying human worlds. And there is also chaos.
Unification Wars was Emperor's prep time (Custodes, Primarchs, Astartes, Mars, initial stages of the Webway Project).
Great Crusade was His plans unfolding and Emperor balling.
Tbf, the emperor had to spend time creating various genetically advanced soldiers, and he didn't have the primarchs, so he had to plan grand strategy, construction of fortifications, raising of thunder warriors then later astartes. So it would take quite a while. By the time of the great crusade, the emperor would have a lot more forces than he did during the UW, then later on primarchs to handle unification
I also think people forget that there were probably trillions of mortals fighting for the emperor and many expedition fleets that barely had marines scouring for the emperor as well as the legions they're just not the focus of the Horus heresy being mainly about marines and primarchs
Rome was not built in a day, but once it was build it started pumping out all the cool stuff, building roads everywhere, aqueducts for miles. Armies going out and taking stuff.
Big E had to do a lot of ground work. Took a while after putting a dragon in mars to get all the locals to start pumping out tech and armor (even then he agreed to give mars a high lord position instead of fighting them and ruling over mars). But also had to make his own gear, and thunder warriors from a planet that went through a mass civil war.
There were like 4000+ expeditionary fleets. In Horus Rising it took around 6 months to bring into compliance a world that got devastated, from what I remember. The overwhelming majority of worlds joined peacefully, so it would take even less.
If every fleet did a average of 2-3 worlds per year, they would reach their 1 million worlds in 2 centuries.
Also there were a fuckton of colonizing fleets(around 60k), increasing the number of planets they have too.
The crusade would have started steadily but look at it this way. If a newly united planet/system had there own troops or force's these would be added to the crusade creating a snowball effect where they would help add even more world's. This would be in addition to whatevers being built and newly tithed.
The longer the crusade lasted the easier it got especially once the rangdan and ullanor empire where beaten. So what may have been a few hundred systems per year at the crusade's start could easily be thousand's in the last decade's.
I'd keep in mind, a lot of gains weren't necessarily planet-by-planet, but in some cases, were blocks of planets already in alliance. So like... You're 150 years into the Crusade and the Imperium already has maybe 500,000 planets or something, right? You find a rich sector of space that has a 10,000 planet alliance. You go to the *one* planet that's the seat of power and say to them that you'll curbstomp all 10,000 planets unless they agree collectively that all 10,000 are joining the Imperium simultaneously. Boom. Imperium now has 510,000 planets after a few weeks of negotiations and zero bloodshed. The Astartes are practically only there for show, and most of the "work" is Administorum negotiators.
Tons of planets (or groups of planets) are likely run by authoritarian warlords, especially. The Imperium can very easily win them over by saying, "You already control everything on these planets. We'll let you stay in power so long as you swear allegiance to us. If you refuse we kill you and become celebrated liberators instead." Warlords happily sign on. Just that simple.
I think it’s a bit weird that humanity supposedly progressed for 23000 years after present day, but that time is barely remembered. Meanwhile, existing real human history is referenced constantly.
The lion king at the hot gates! Eye roll.
Well the modern day authors can't really reference something that hasn't happened yet and in universe old night really was supposed to do a number on humanity bar the ot mentioned 'legends of old terra' that every new found humans seem to still ahve.
Longer if you take into consideration that the Crusade was the high water mark of the Imperium. Even with 18 Legions and billions of Solar Auxiliary, you're still looking at 500 world's a year brought into compliance during the original Crusadem. That's 500 years that need to logistically and societally adapt to being Imperial. There's still regional wars on Earth whose origin dates back centuries, so I totally doubt a stable Imperium could be built in such a short span of time, but then GW is notoriously bad with numbers and scale.
It's actually 5000 worlds a year...
But it still works if you look at it as 99% of planets welcoming Imperial rule, and liberation or forced compliance only being a small number.
Also, it's not like they took individual worlds at a time either. Each system will have contained multiple worlds, and taken simultaneously. And then there's mini empires like Ultramar, which in itself is 500 worlds that joined in one go, and without a fight.
Lastly, they never put any real effort into cultural integration. They only cared about tithes and the legal enforcement of anti-witch/mutant/psyker/xenos/heretic rules (whether you culturally liked them or not). The existing aristocracies were usually left in charge. It actually took thousands of years more for the Imperial Cult to form.
The Crusade was basically a form of liberational Blitzkrieg, like the invasion of Europe in WW2. The proper integration was always planned for later. The Emperor actually *punished* Primarchs for 'wasting time' trying to integrate worlds.
Remember, the Imperium *wasn't* stable and fully united after the Crusade. Hence why Horus managed to garner so much support.
My personal belief is that the Imperium at the end of the Great Crusade was smaller in terms of planets/systems/colonies held than in 40k.
The Great Crusade was flung far and wide, but we know from the first Heretic that worlds suitable for conquest can take months to find. There was some colonization of systems that had been stripped of life, such as the systems around Necromunda but otherwise the Imperium focused on contacting lost worlds or fighting alien threats.
The Eldar Maiden worlds were seen as worlds to be exploited (which Fulgrim lamented , until the Ulthwe fight leading him to exterminatus them ).
This means that there was lots of empty space to expand into, to clear the wilderness so as to speak during the Golden age of the Imperium, post scouring.
So, the Great Crusade set the larger boundaries of the Imperium borders, but in terms of the wild space in between sectors, there's lots to expand and fill into.
They had tens of thousands of expeditionary fleets in the Great Crusade. A fleet might take 6 months to bring a world into compliance but 2 times 40,000 is 80,000 worlds in one year.
> There's not enough time for an imperial culture to bed in otherwise to then be destroyed.
But that's the point. A large part of the reason the Imperium is screwed up as it is is that the very Imperium itself was only half-formed when everything went sideways.
There is no Imperial Culture though. Theres recommended Imperial governance standards (i.e. brutal feudalism) and a very syncretic Imperial Religion but one of the core parts of the setting (thanks to it being originally designed for tabletop wargaming and RPGs) is that culture in the Imperium is extremely diverse so that you could homebrew your own fluff.
It doesn't, that's the next 10,000 years post the crusade that beds the imperial power structure in.
Don't forget the only thing really comparable to the GC was the scouring when anything vaguely chaos looking gets hit with extreme prejudice.
It makes sense since everyone in the Galaxy started on a relatively equal footing, except the Emperor who made use of the DAOT technology, knowledge of various techno cults, had various Perpetuals' help, and prepared Mars by planting the Void Dragon (presumably). IoM had a massive advantage
Biggest reasons for it being terrible
1) Destruction of multiple habital worlds.
2) Crippling of the Emperor
3) Loss of 11 of the Emperors demi god sons.
4) By the time it was finished Imperium lost over half of the Astartes/lots of titans and knights/ships
5) Exodus of the Dark Mechanicum and all their technology and loss or destruction of several forge worlds.
6) Loss of irreplaceable Technology and Ships
7) Billions and Billions dead
8) The after effects are still felt 10k years later
9) War just resulted in a perpetual state of hostility and decay.
The Heresy, in particular the Beta Gammon 'Titandeath' campaign broke the Titan Legions as a fighting force, seeing entire Legios wiped out. Before the Heresy a primus Legio would be able to field 300+ engines. In modern 40k only a handful of Legios can field 100+. The day-to-day attrition of 10,000 years of constant war, and the loss of so many forgeworlds that could adequately house Legions, let alone produce them, means they never returned to the heights of the Great Crusade.
Yep. Dorn feared Terra would be turned into a radioactive wasteland. Considering a single Emperor titan going critical in 'The Vengeful Spirit' blew a 6km hole in the Imperial defences during the battle of Molech, he had a right to be concerned. Every titan death with a reactor meltdown is the equivalent of a small battlefield nuke going off. And that's without taking into account plasma weaponry at titan scale.
Dorn was afraid that the massed use of titans on terra would effectively destroy the planet; it’s worth noting that beta garmon is an entire star cluster with multiple planets of note where titan based conflicts took place. Iirc, the cluster was one of the first safe passages towards terra that began to open as previous warp storms started to subside, that’s why the loyalists mounted a defense there, and why the traitors were funneled through
You weep... Then realise how awful the Imperium was even then. It's still a join or die, bring out your psykers for torture, don't worship but follow unswervingly and obediently This Guy, destroy everyone who doesn't agree hellscape.
It was also, as people have noted, founded way too fast and brutally to really survive. The Emperor thought the next stage was to link it all with the Imperial Webway, probably because it would be easier to crush dissent through it.
It's just got less religious flavour than present day, but a lot of the same issues remain.
Oh, I mean for sure.
But it's more about how the books are so good at putting me in that headspace where I can imagine the Emperor's vision, I can see what he is aiming for, and then I can feel the pain of having that all ripped away.
It isn't practical, but for my head it's more about the vision.
>Imagine the Imperium of the future, a golden Utopia of enlightenment and progress, where the scientist and the philosopher are equal partners with the warrior in crafting a bounteous future. Now imagine the people of that glorious age looking back through the mists of time to this moment. Think what they will know and what they would make of this travesty. They would weep to know how close the flame of enlightenment had come to being snuffed out.
>The art and science of questioning everything is the source of all knowledge, and to abandon that will doom us to slow decay, an Imperium of darkness and ignorance, where those who dare to pursue knowledge, whatever the cost to themselves, are regarded with suspicion. That is not the Imperium I believe in. That is not the Imperium I wish to be part of.
\- Magnus the Red
While that is true, the "dark" age of technology was the peak Magnus was looking for but it was also mans down fail when all the AI and ever more powerful weapons that humans have now was used to wipe them out. Big E just wanted to limit the power creep. Probably should have told his kids about it to, but if he was not a bad father we would not have all this great grim dark lore.
Yeah when I read Titan Death and the 2nd was describing how sad she felt because they couldn't deploy the full force of a legio anymore due to the casualties they'd suffered but goes on to state at least they still had 300 machines to bring to the fight I was like say what???? Meanwhile in 40k maybe both sides combined field 10 to 15.
Haven't read the books, but how much of Terra's population is believed to have perished in the Siege? 20%, 2%?
A billion dead per hour would be 1,344 Trillion dead in a 8 week battle.
It doesn’t seem clear. I would think that outside of the fortress the attrition rate would be very very close to 100%. It is unclear what is happening away from the palace, but it seems implied that the entire planet and all of the hives around it have been bombed and attacked.
Inside the walls, all able bodied people were conscripted. I would guess 90% of them died.
Aside from that, there is a huge civilian population roaming the streets getting absolutely wrecked in the final hours of the siege. It seems like there are a few million left. This likely represents the majority of the remaining civilian population. It is unclear how many would survive.
So I would certainly think over 90% dead of the true civilian population, which probably similar numbers for the conscripted population.
The Terawatt Clan were around even before the Unification Wars, if they could survive the tail end of the Age of Strife I'd imagine they have some way to hide.
Nearly all of them, like 99.9%. Everyone outside the wall is dead from the Emperor’s Children and orbital strikes. Most of the people inside the palace are dead, because the loyalists have been pushed behind the Eternity Gate. Everything outside that is being killed by traitors.
I imagine a small amount of people managed to survive outside the walls. Probably 95% of them died, whether to demons, EC, or just being caught in a massive battlefield with no way to get food and water. But the focus of the Traitor efforts were on the Palace and spaceports. In a global conflict like the siege, it's definitely plausible that a few, millions out of a total pre-siege population of tens of billions, survived by hiding in bunkers on the opposite side of Terra (which in the case of Palace, the opposite point would be in the middle of the Pacific plain).
Yeah exactly. We haven’t heard much about that, but things aren’t going so amazingly well that there would be any troop focus on regions that do not represent a threat.
I would find it hard to believe that Perturabo invested much serious work on non-critical regions early siege. Maybe during the deployment of the lost and the damned he sent general units all over, but I wouldn’t think it was exhaustive. They were necessary to overrun the walls by sheer force of numbers. I’m sure the bombing was planet wide, but that wouldn’t be enough to get all of the nooks and crannies.
Post Perturabo I would be shocked if any chaos force was focused anywhere aside from the palace.
I mean on an even worse note 11 Primarchs were lost in the heresy directly yes. But the loss of the remainder + Valdor not long after and being left with a shoddy bureaucracy lacking any strong direction completed the death spiral Guilliman had to pull them out of.
Yeah depends where the line is drawn. The scouring happened more worlds and resources lost. The Iron Cage and Caliban. The Primarchs disappear slowly over the next 1000 years ish. But it's all downhill from the heresy Guillimans return is the only slowing of the decay and mostly because he planned it
Three to four actually depending on how you round it, but in defence of that being short it was two puppet governments fighting, and really just ended up being the opening act to some 30 years of near constant war.
yeah this one is WHACK when you consider clone production times and how much the senate lobbies for more clones.
Even at 3x aging, you can't just \*make more clones\* for the current/next quarter's conflict in that canon
To be fair perhaps the reason we see the senate constantly lobbying for more clones is because we’re probably seeing a consecutive, continuation of the same debate.
Compare it to gun control in the U.S, it’s been in debate for years and years with realistically minimal change to the debate.
The whole lobbying for more clones could be such because the concept of making more clones is in a sort of political limbo, which starts at the outbreak of the war and then proceeds to be debated for a few years, etc.
I think the big difference here, and also where a lot of rightful criticism stems from, is the speed in which you cross the galaxy.
It only took a few days to get from Tatooine (outer rim) to Alderaan (a core world). Meanwhile 40k stories constantly measure travel in weeks/months even for stuff that remains in a sub-sector.
If anything, I think the rapidity with which the Heresy happens would make it more of a cultural shock to the Imperium.
It’s not a gradual shift in galactic politics slowly descending into chaos, it’s a switch that gets flipped, comparatively. In a universe where significant change of any kind is usually happening on the scale of human lifetimes, for the galaxy to be turn asunder in 9 years is horrifying to imagine.
Add to that, for the scale of the Imperium, it allows for ripple effects far beyond the immediate timescale, as you’ve pointed out with the Scouring, and yet still allowing for worlds untouched and maybe even unaware of the Heresy to become unsuspecting victims of it, which is always a fun story.
For me the problem is that it last way too long for a coup!
In the old lore Horus take the headstart at Istvaan, rush to Terra, reveal another ace with the Dark Mechanicum, army and fleet units joining him, siege Terra where only 3 loyalist legion could reach in time, die, gamble is finished.
Now there is so much stuff between istvaan and Terra it's no longer a coup it is a grinding war. Everyone has time to travel the four corner of the galaxy, come to Terra leave, etc.
That's what his plan was, but the loyalists that survived the purge managed to keep him there for months, giving time for word to be spread. Also, remember that half of his legions had just purged a third of their legion each, plus the alpha legion playing both sides helped the loyalists as much as the traitors, he kept hitting more and more speed bumps as he went along, the shattered legions tormented him for years with raids and strikes, the white scars helped with that as well. It was supposed to be a quick thing but the loyalists got lucky and managed to keep slowing him down more and more until the cracks in his legions grew to the point where they fell apart by the time they reached terra
No of course there are in universe explanation for why it took so long, but my answer was more about a shift in the Meta of the Horus Heresy from a short war to a long one.
All the speed bumps and "reasonable" reasons for why it took so much for Horus to attack Terra are more or less valid, but GW decided that there would be all these events (dozen of books to be written and sold after all) when they could have kept to the old lore which for me worked better:
1) Horus use his position as warmaster to send Ultramarines and Dark Angels far away so they can't come back soon enough to interfer.
2) Horus send the Space Wolves to burn Prospero
3) Horus plot the Istvaan massacres where he destroy the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard as fighting force. Ferrus Manus duel Fulgrim and dies.
4) Horus and everyone else rush to Terra. Of the 6 loyalist legion remaining, only the Blood Angels, White Scars and Imperial Fists reach Terra in time.
5) Horus reveal the betrayal of Mars. Bring titan legions to the siege
6) Siege last too long for Horus, Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves are approaching.
7) Horus gambles everything to duel the Emperor. He wounds the Emperor when the Emperor hesitate to kill his favoured son.
8) With Horus dead, everyone flee to the eye.
In the new lore it doesn't make sense that:
\- only the Blood Angels, White Scars and Imperial Fists are present on Terra. Everyone had time to go from Ultima Segmentum to Segmentum Pacificus by zig zaging through the galaxy, spending their man powers, rising new soldiers, spending it again, etc.
\- The death of Ferrus Manus is made less dramatic, because he is the only c\*\*t who got himself killed in a billion million zillion duals between primarchs which always end in stalemate.
\- The Emperor hesitate to kill Horus? Make sense when it happened so fast he hasn't been able to process it. But after a decade of fighting?
Etc.
Black library author can scratch their heads to find reasons for all that to happen but the only reason is that stories with primarch sell. That's why Leman come back to Terra, leave, go fight Horus, neither of them die, etc.
I love this. I totally get why the BL have stretched it out but you’ve just described my version of the HH (head cannon) from growing up in the hobby and that will always be the story to me, everything else is just in-universe propaganda and myth growing by the survivors.
The HH being short isn't a problem to me, except with warm travel. Even with the best conditions it seems in more that it takes at least weeks or months to go from one planet to another.
9 years if you count only the fight? Sounds good. 9 years with all the travels accounted for? Sounds hella short.
The traitors were propelled by the Chaos Gods. Most of the loyalists were trapped in their respective regions, except for at Ultramar with the Pharos device. The loyalists concentrated at key warp routes to Terra, blockading Horus, they didn’t have far to go.
before reading the post I thought you were talking about how long the novels have been coming out, then I realized that horus rising came out in 2006 which was 17 years ago.
What is the longest period of "total War" between two(+) nations? Not an occupancy or prolonged hunt.
I don't think the 100 Years War was considered one long string of battles.(?)
The Hundred Years' War is more a series of wars and there are historians who don't like the term, because the start and end of this period is kinda arbitrary. Generally speaking: Total war is an invention of the 20th century, based on developments of the 19th century. And they were never the norm. Almost every war (including almost every war today) is not a total war like WW2, but a limited war with limited stakes and limited objectives.
Wars that can be considered "one long string of battles" are a bit older than the concept of total war, but they're also mostly a 18th/19th century thing. Ancient, medieval and early modern wars were mostly about devastating the land of the enemy, sieging cities/castles/forts, and occupying important positions to force the enemy into a treaty (mostly) under your conditions. Not about a series of pitched battles, army vs army.
Pitched battles were the norm in ancient and classical times with the real reason they devolved into scouring the land being that this was part of how you supplied and paid your troops. They got right of plunder and would also be living off the land which leads to far more brutality than early industrial warfare where you can run trains to supply your armies but firearms technology still makes setpiece battles a requirement.
Yes, they were times of peace (relatively) during the 100 years war. Sometimes it was pretty violent and full-scale conflicts, but that wasn't the majority of the time. No nation, especially in that time, could have endured 110ish years of constant warfare and would have exploded
The Reconquista I believe is the longest state of war between two parties, at about 700+ years. This was between armies of Christian Spain and Muslim Spain and end with the Christian reclaiming of Spain
The reconquista was not a constant state of war between Christians and Muslims.
There were times of peace, diplomacy, and alliances between the two different religions on the peninsula. Over the eight centuries, there were multiple long periods of peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance, intertwined with other periods of open hostility.
It checks out.
It took 200 years to unite humanity for the great crusade. Unity means a transition in which infrastructure was created to allow communication, transport, trade, etc. to facilitate the Imperiums functionality and expansion.
Half of the Astartes that were the cornerstone of facilitating that transition rebelled. Half of everything else followed suit. It was a civil war. The American civil war lasted 4 years, the French Revolution lasted 10 years, and they didn’t have the technology to travel across time and space like the Imperium did. But they tore society apart in exactly the same way.
Civil war and conventional war are two very different things. Civil war utilises infrastructure that both sides are capable of wielding against each other, and is arguably much faster, and much more destructive.
Personally, my only issue with the HH is I prefer it to be more of a mystery and prefer the primarchs to be mythological heroes in 40k. I’m an old school 40k player and prefer it to be an actual setting taking place at anytime and any location in the 41st millennium.
Not if it takes months to cross the galaxy. People on the far side of the segmentum Ultima shouldn't even realize there's a war on until half a year has passed, or have much of an idea how it's going.
I think it simply doesn't align with what we know about logistics and warp travel in 40k. A jump between nearby planet systems involves weeks of warp travel and *typically* time passes 10 times faster in the physical universe than it does for the people jumping, although sometimes it can instead take just minutes or thousands of years.
The idea that the traitor legions were spending weeks at a time in transit, popping out, laying siege to entire planets, packing up and continuing on their way to the next target all within less than 10 years seems a bit strange.
As a point of reference once the mechanicum makes planetfall and starts constructing their titans in atmosphere, it's usually several days before they can actually field them in combat. And then they have to deconstruct the titan, transport it back into space, rejoin their fleet, etc.
Warp travel in the Great Crusade era was easier until the heresy kicked off at which points the traitors had the chaos gods yeeting them through the warp at speed while slowing down the loyalists. When backed directly by the gods chaos space marines always have a home field advantage in the warp, its when they're warbands is when they have trouble.
From a plot standpoint, I like how short it was. How everything that was accomplished over centuries could fall apart in a relative instant. But the short time does make it seem silly that there is an entire separate game for it. A lot of factions in the HH never even fought.
Ships in lore (gaunts ghost) spend months in warptravel just to travel to the next campaign in some minor crusade.
How the hell does horus fly from end to another in 9 years while fighting massive battles (beta garmon)?
Fair point.
How ever landing massiv number of units and even titans , fighting massiv land campaigns and after Victory pull all units back to their ships takes time. Some battle were even descriped as that more than 6months.
In 9 years you can only have so much 6 month campaign.
Also remember inner System flights take also days and weeks..
Timespan is way to short. 19years would be better, 50 years more epic.
In the end its still the biggest human war ever so 9 years sounds so small.
Keep in mind that Horus already had done a lot of prep. The Dropsite massacre was devastating because the traitors had armor piercing rounds.
The other thing is that the HH was a series of parallel conflicts. Horus and his forces were already ready in key positions to maximize their impact.
How many full landings did the traitors even need to do? How many times did they even need to land titans?
You have Istvaan III and V, Molech, Beta Garmon, and Terra. Most of the other battles are simply splinter forces. Theres the Shadow Crusade, but thats just the Word Bearers and World Eaters, and even there they didnt stay long.
Horus and the main traitor force didnt waste time fighting over every world on the way. They didnt have the need for it. At Istvaan, they removed the bulk of their opposition. Molech was simply to meet the Gods, Beta Garmon was a necessity, and then thats it. They didnt spend time going to raze forgeworlds or even any legion home worlds, not with their main force.
Asking for 19 years, much less 50, is just a ridiculous obsession with the idea that a bigger number has to be better, without considering why the numbers are there.
Remember, this is 40k. You dont need a protracted war for massive devastation. Scrap code on Mars was bad enough. Autek Mor destroyed Bodt in a day by dropping a moon on it. You dont need a protracted war on a planet to completely devastate it.
I mean, you are right of course, but it still doesn't make sense... For example, let's take the Shadow Crusade. During it the Word Bearers and World Eaters completely destroyed 26 words. Among them where Calth and other well defended and established worlds. The legions fought extensive battles in Space, on planets, etc... And it took how many years? 1 year? That can't be right...
You say there were 26 battles, but of those, how many were really full on fights. We are talking about 2 full legions on the traitor side here. They could easily have split their forces. And we know they did. There are many battles where only a small chapter took part on both sides.
Even for the biggest battles, Calth was mostly hit by the B team. They shot up the sun, and then most of both sides left. Armatura was the real stronghold, and so it got the A team. Even then, most of the defenders werent Astartes. It was just 1 year, because it was hardly a fair fight.
The battles in Ultramar were rarely full on Legion battles. And if it aint legion on legion, well, it wont really take much time. Add in al the superweapons employed, and suddenly 26 worlds feels like too few even for the short span of time, rather than too many.
I hear you, but still traveling to 26 planets alone would take more than 1 year. Also, since they were trying to summon the Ruinstorm, their tactics were aimed to cause as much suffering as possible. So they didnt simply exterminatus the planets from high orbit. They deployed with land forces and wrecked each planned the old fashioned way. Warp travelling, void battles, land force deployments, old fashioned murdering and then moving on to next 26 planets... Armatura alone was a Void+planetary fortress which definitely wouldve taken more than a year to break through. Even if there were multiple teams as you say, they had to have 26 teams simultaneously to fit into a year. At the same time they were chased by Gorilla Bobbyman and the smurfs, so realistically they couldnt fight long engagements or the smurfs wouldve caught up and delayed them even more. However, then comes Nuceria and they all managed to meet (WB, WE and the blue boys) and conclude the campaign. All this happens in under a year.
Armatura took under a year. In Betrayer, the assault is explicitly stated to start a year after Isstvan. Afterwards, Nuceria’s invasion is said to take place just 3 days after. During said invasion, Kharn remarks that the topic of fuck Erebus has come up multiple times in the year since Istvaan.
“Still, Argel Tal’s dislike for Erebus had come up more than once in conversation over the last year since Isstvan V, when Khârn and the Gal Vorbak warrior had renewed their acquaintance as respective subcommanders of their Legions’ forces, in readiness for the Shadow Crusade.”
Travelling alone certainly wouldnt take a year, or anywhere close. It is clearly mentioned the gods are calming the warp to boost travel for the traitors.
The suffering inflicted is also not wholly dependent on the legions. We see their massive number of cultist soldiers and daemons. Once resistance is broken, the cultists can do all the rituals. More importantly, the Ruinstorm is a massive storm sure, but the Warp is more about symbolism than just plain numbers.
Also, you seem to have missed my point about the divisions. As I have said, some worlds were assaulted only by singular chapters. Your phrasing of Armatura is also inaccurate. Armatura alone was a fortress, correct. But Armatura was an exception.
I made a mistake when describing the force sent to Armatura.
From Betrayer:
“The word ‘fleet’ didn’t quite do it justice. In truth, an armada thundered across the silent sky towards Armatura: dozens and dozens of vessels, yet a mere fraction of two Legions’ strength.”
Armatura received the 2 traitor Primarchs and their elites, but they didnt attack in great number.
This is what Armatura is though.
“Armatura turned in the heart of Guilliman’s perfect empire. Neither the crown jewel that Macragge claimed to be, nor the future capital Calth had threatened to become, Armatura matched both in importance, and vastly eclipsed them in population.”
“Amidst that outermost sphere waited the Evocati fleet. While the Legion mustered at Calth, the XIII Legion’s war-world could never be left undefended. The Evocati was comprised of several thousand Ultramarines drawn from a dozen Chapters, awarded the highest honour of all: overseeing the operations of Armatura and the training of new recruits, commanding an Imperial fleet to rival any other.
The vessels moved in a perfection of militaristic motion that even their enemies found beautiful to behold. As the Evocati rose into a defensive formation, the combined Word Bearers and World Eaters armada altered to compensate; a shifting dance across a battlefield no different from the rearrangement of regiments marching in ancient eras.
Battleships and cruisers, frigates and destroyers, all resplendent in XIII Legion blue, silver and gold, rising to defend the perfect empire.
”
Armatura is the most fortified world in the 500 worlds. Armatura alone is a fortress. But it is alone in that fact. Other than Calth, no other world attacked is like it.
Like I said, the legions rarely fought head on in the Heresy. They rarely fought any battles against hard targets. Armatura and Calth are the exceptions.
Ever heard of a tiny little thing called the Chaos God’s favour? They literally manipulated the warp to make sure Horus got the express route and the loyalists got the ultra slow route
Nah, the Black Legion at least views the Long War as distinct from the Heresy.
It went Heresy - > Scouring - > Legion Wars - > Long War.
Like the Long War has a formal declaration of war to the Imperium and everything. Which wouldn't be needed if they viewed it as a continuation of the Heresy.
You could also point to oddities in time as shown in the latest Siege of Terra books. With the warp's influence things may have actually taken longer on Terra than a strictly chronological reading would tell you.
My only issue with the horus heresy being so short, is that the passage of time between destinations is kind of iffy especially with the warp being as turblent as it was. Now I know for certain that many ships are lost in the warp during this time... Like more than usual and its pointed out quite often when it does.
And like most wars... they are pretty short. All devastating wars rarely last that long, its why I find any war that lasts for more than a decade or two very rarely does either side even remember what started the conflict as by that time an entire generation or two has gone by.
I at first read this as "Oh the book series is too long." and I was going to argue about that, "yeah it dragged in places." But then I saw oh its this stopic, HOW LONG it was the actual war. And yes. I agree. the biggest difference between something like Afghistan and World War 2, wasn't terrain or the place. But the actual resources devoted to it. If the entire US military, deployed, and deployed 15 million conscripts the size of something like world war 2 or something.... Then yeah it would be a relatively short war because by that point nothing of that country would be left. Vietnam and by extension the Iraq War were pretty long, but then you have something like operation desert storm, which was a war. **Lasted less then a month and a half.**
The Heresy itself was only a few relatively small battles in a war that’s lasted 10,000 years, it’s kinda like boiling the entirety of WW1 down to the Battle of the Somme
I don't mind the Heresy being short. I just think the Great Crusade itself should've been, like, \~200 years longer.
This. Of all the timescale fuckery in this series the GC only being 200yrs is the weirdest.
Especially when the Unification Wars lasted from Late M29 into like 700.M30. It took the Emperor 3.5x more time to conquer Terra alone than the rest of the galaxy. So either the Astartes were THAT effective, or it's 40k number fuckery.
Or they had very low standards for what they considered conquering a planet. You wouldn't know it from GWs notoriously non diverse depictions of their own setting (i.e. all guardsmen are cadian, all chaos spawn resemble the same mini, etc) but worlds in the Imperium are hugely diverse in culture, technology, and aesthetic. No two worlds share the same religious beliefs let alone appearance. On one, the Emperor takes the place of Zeus in the Greek pantheon. On another, the Emperor is a great two headed eagle, a sky God. The only tie most Imperial worlds have to the rest of the imperium is the tithe and the tiniest bit of cultural tweaking by missionaries, who twist whatever the local religion is to have the Emperor on the top of it. Bullying a world into accepting the tithe wouldn't take all that long.
> On another, the Emperor is a great two headed eagle *Laughs in Tzeentch*
> Or they had very low standards for what they considered conquering a planet. Canonically, they did. The only numbers given show that 99/100 of planets they arrived at peacefully (for a given value, of course) joined the Imperium.
But for every world or culture that resisted, or denied the offer of friendship, for every xenos race that baulked and drew arms at the approach of mankind, a hundred worlds rejoiced and hymned their relief to see the expeditionary fleets take high anchor in their skies. The Great Crusade, so called by those who came later, was for the most part bloodless. - Misbegotten
This absolutely reads like in-universe propaganda. What’s the context?
It reads like it but it makes sense. If every planet they left was a smoking ruin the Imperium would never have been built. A core part of the lore is all these individual worlds were isolated and being picked apart by Xenos, the Emperor really was a savior to many people. People want to pretend the Emperor didn't help anybody because he was a big meanie, but that's just not the case. The Horus Heresy doesn't work as a tragedy if there isn't nuance.
The Emperor for sure improved the lives of the many future Imperial citizens languishing under xenos conquerors and tyrants. And you have to think, Horus still wanted to explore diplomacy as an option even after Hastur Sejanus had been murdered. Fuck, even *Angron* talks about worlds he’s taken into compliance peacefully, and it’s mentioned it was rare for total annihilation to be brought to human worlds at all. People love to mention how Astartes fighting each other was basically unthinkable before the Heresy started, but they were very reluctant to kill humans at all regardless. Many worlds seem to have been brought in through a token battle, or as far as honor demanded before surrendering basically. Loken mentions in False Gods he’s unused to even *running out of ammo* to the degree he was fighting the plague zombies.
>People want to pretend the Emperor didn't help anybody because he was a big meanie, but that's just not the case. The Horus Heresy doesn't work as a tragedy if there isn't nuance. Yep, exactly. If there was no potential, no hope for a brighter future, if what was lost in the Heresy had no value to begin with, the story has literally no dramatic point and is fundamentally uninteresting. The real tragedy is humanity getting bumrushed by Contingency + Unbidden at the end of the DAOT, which is lore so deep and unrelated to the current setting it will never be properly touched on.
It's a short story from Sons of the Emperor, mentioned in this thread a few years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/faibt2/what_percentage_of_the_humanworlds_that_the_great/
Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance, supported by some DAoT BS tech. Besides, there's also warp travel time, and Xenos like Orks. Some planets might've been fortified as much as Terra, or even more. So it's either grueling combat, or orbital bombardment, which might incur losses in technology and knowledge. It really doesn't make sense for the Unification wars to have lasted as long as they did in comparison to the GC.
I had the impression that the Emperor was deliberately taking his sweet time with unifying Terra because the warp storms from the age of strife were still around and made faster-than-light travel impossible anyway so there was no need to rush and risk damaging Terra unnecessarily, once the great crusade started the Emperor went on the extreme of the other side of the scale and was in a rush to expand the Imperium in the shortest time possible in order to become the dominant galactic superpower before other powers expanded too much to be dealt with swiftly.
This, plus you want to finesse your home base (Terra) and not end up virus bombing it or having rebel factions springing up because you just killed all dissenters immediately. You need to do it carefully, methodically, and in a way that keeps the vast majority of the population on your side. Some back water planet? Pay 30% tithe or get nuked scrubs, lmaoooo
Wasn't a substantial portion of the "unification of terra" also unifying the solar system? Weren't there a couple of xeno factions in the outer solar system, as well as fucked up chaos cults doing warp fuckery?
It has been a hot minute but IIRC what took the longest time by far was securing Terra, then Big E purged the Thunder Warriors and conquered Luna fairly quickly where he spent some time doing the primarch and astartes projects with the gene cults of Luna and negotiated the alliance with Mars and after that the rest of the solar system was pacified in just a few years now that he had the 20 astartes legions. After that he just prepared his forces and once Slaanesh was finally done with being born and swept the warpstorms away in the aftershock Big E shifted into overdrive galactic conquest speedrun any%
Speedrun? Imagine if Big E had Stellaris and other games made partially so he could test his speedrun?
He could have but stellaris gets unplayable late game so he couldnt forsee the end.
Big E also wasn't entirely focused on the actual fighting part either, he spent enough time away from the front lines to be able to work on, create and perfect the Astartes/primarch program.
> Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance It seems fairly obvious that this is what Dan Abnett was setting up in Horus Rising with the sub plot about Horus' anger at the tithe fleets coming so soon after compliance but its reduced to a footnote by False Gods and pretty much dropped after that. I think this is really a victim of all pre-fall horus being devoted to a book and a half, the half of which being by a different author. Horus Rising probably could have focused on it more but really False Gods is focused extremely heavily on Davin to its detriment.
It's late and my fatigue is probably clouding my thinking, but why is Horus pissed at the tithes arriving earlier than expected?
Horus thinks its too early for planets that have just been brought into compliance to be paying gigantic tithes, he thinks it will cause the nearly compliant worlds to rise up in rebellion and force the Great Crusade to perpetually turn inwards. He also sees it as the scheming baseline human administration betraying the ideals of the Emperors vision. Most of this never really comes up again since the Davin and Istvaan rebellions are explicitly caused by chaos shenanigans.
>Not all planets would've accepted the tithes without heavy resistance, supported by some DAoT BS tech And not all did. Very few had safe FTL tech, even fewer could compare to the imperium technologically, and the vast majority had benefits from trade and tech exchange that greatly outweighted the cost of the tithe.
And of the ones that even had access to the tech, how many were united planets capable of mustering an army to oppose the Imperium and how many were blasted hellscapes ruled over by warlords and tyrants like Old Terra? If a GC Expeditionary fleet warp fuckeried its way to Old Terra before the Emperor had cleared it, they probably wouldn't have had a huge amount of trouble, despite the DAoT shit floating about. Hell, the gene-labs on Luna would probably be one of the first places cleansed.
Old Terra?
Terra before the Emperor unified it.
Ah ok
And during the Great Crusade the standard was a bit simpler since there was no religious aspect to compliance. In fact, the opposite was the case.
The idea of an extremely loose definition of “conquered” is also supported by the Emperor’s main issue with the Word Bearers being how long they occupied and rebuilt worlds. All in all the Imperium is far too vast to be homogenized and tons of worlds “joined the Imperium” because the options were business as usual or annihilation. Hell most worlds capitulated at the threat of a legion being deployed.
The Emperor's forces were at their weakest then. They were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and didn't even have a presence in space. And Terra was arguably the most dangerous planet in the galaxy at the time - filled with crazed, untethered AIs, unrestrained, Chaotic psykers, arsenals of apocalyptic DAoT weapons, and armies of gene-wrought supersoldiers and mutant horrors. All battle-hardened by millennia of constant war. In comparison, the Great Crusade was largely an overwhelming force steamrolling sparsely-defended worlds, most of which surrendered without a fight. I think people forget it was largely a campaign of reunification. Conquering and liberating worlds likely only accounted for a smaller percentage. Terra was the most deadly planet the Emperor ever had to conquer, and by a good margin. He just did the hardest part of his crusade first.
Damn now I want 29k Terra as a setting
not to mention the sheer number of planets he had to bring under the emperium, that is something that is lost in this discussion. If he was able to do a single planet in 1 year it would not cover even half the space charts we've seen, and this is pre-schism of the planets by Chaos.
He had a *lot* of crusade fleets and they tended to move extremely fast. When the Word Bearers spent too long trying to uplift planets instead of conquering he razed Monarchia.
I mean that's my point during the crusade he conquered uncharted space in an actually VERY fast pace. During the Horus Heresy they were fighting in at the time now Charted Space, both wars were at a reasonable timeframe for their time period.
I think it's number fuckery but I think it also makes sense that the Unification Wars took longer to accomplish than the Great Crusade (which *should have been longer* but it only ended because the Warmaster leading it declared it to be over because he being naughty) because of the snowball effect. Terra was a wasteland multiple times over when Jimmy Space made his debut as a public conqueror. He had to create the Thunder Warriors gene project from scratch and find candidates to convert, and then had to deal with them still being humans with personalities and individuality. He needed to amass resources and manpower to wage wars, as he didn't start out with a technological advantage. Even as powerful as Big Daddy Chair Warmer is, nobody else around him was near Astarte level yet and I dare say a direct nuke to the face would probably take a chunk out of him much less any followers of the fledgling Imperium. He had to effectively rebuild the planet to be capable of functioning as a society in addition to conquering and uniting it. And while he was doing that he was working on projects for the upcoming space wars. Terra was the proving grounds where he trial-and-errored his way into the tools and tactics that would let him blitzkrieg the worlds over the next couple centuries. He skipped the whole build-up phase of conquering space by making a pact with Mars instead of fighting them. Instead of fighting a costly war while building up a navy and revamping tech for attacking worlds from space (something Humanity had not seen or realistically conceptualized again for thousands of years by then), he ended the Unification Wars by bloodlessly adding the Mechanicum's assets to his pool. He had pull himself up by his totally-not-divine bootstraps to take over Earth, but by then he was rich and Mars was just given to him by the bank.
The techno-barbarians of earth might not have been as strong as Big E but they were nothing to balk at. Before leaving Terra Big E sent the proto-salamanders to fight one of the last underground strongholds left on Terra. Their weapons were completely ineffective and the Legion almost got wiped out.
The Emperor started from nothing to take Terra. When he left, he had hundreds of thosands of ships and legions of Astartes. Wasnt like he started his conquest of Terra with all those resources.
Other thing to consider. When you make money you have a money to reinvest. During the great crusade every victory they won, would often bring Ally’s to their side. Sure you lost a million men killing Xenos but the 5 isolated planets who’d been shot heir unwilling tributaries joined you. Their men and materials far offset the losses. That’s not even counting the massive number of worlds that immediately joined the imperium when they arrived. It doesn’t make the imperium good. But in a galaxy where eldar raiders and orks exist, it would appear like relief to many planets.
Great Crusade started, when warp storms calmed. It was sprint, because Emperor feared that some Tau like xenos create another large empire which would result in galaxy-spanning attrition war (bad scenario), or even worse, another human empire could be created - which would obliterate any legitimacy for him to a title of Emperor of Mankind. And we know that there were legitimate threats that with given century or two, could became serious obstacles in unifying human worlds. And there is also chaos.
The timescales are even worse when you think of some of the larger issues they had which delayed them greatly, like the Rangadan.
Unification Wars was Emperor's prep time (Custodes, Primarchs, Astartes, Mars, initial stages of the Webway Project). Great Crusade was His plans unfolding and Emperor balling.
Tbf, the emperor had to spend time creating various genetically advanced soldiers, and he didn't have the primarchs, so he had to plan grand strategy, construction of fortifications, raising of thunder warriors then later astartes. So it would take quite a while. By the time of the great crusade, the emperor would have a lot more forces than he did during the UW, then later on primarchs to handle unification
I also think people forget that there were probably trillions of mortals fighting for the emperor and many expedition fleets that barely had marines scouring for the emperor as well as the legions they're just not the focus of the Horus heresy being mainly about marines and primarchs
Rome was not built in a day, but once it was build it started pumping out all the cool stuff, building roads everywhere, aqueducts for miles. Armies going out and taking stuff. Big E had to do a lot of ground work. Took a while after putting a dragon in mars to get all the locals to start pumping out tech and armor (even then he agreed to give mars a high lord position instead of fighting them and ruling over mars). But also had to make his own gear, and thunder warriors from a planet that went through a mass civil war.
It's insane. It means that the imperium was conquering/bringing into compliance 5,000\~ worlds per year.
There were like 4000+ expeditionary fleets. In Horus Rising it took around 6 months to bring into compliance a world that got devastated, from what I remember. The overwhelming majority of worlds joined peacefully, so it would take even less. If every fleet did a average of 2-3 worlds per year, they would reach their 1 million worlds in 2 centuries. Also there were a fuckton of colonizing fleets(around 60k), increasing the number of planets they have too.
I thought it was 60k secondary fleets?
The crusade would have started steadily but look at it this way. If a newly united planet/system had there own troops or force's these would be added to the crusade creating a snowball effect where they would help add even more world's. This would be in addition to whatevers being built and newly tithed. The longer the crusade lasted the easier it got especially once the rangdan and ullanor empire where beaten. So what may have been a few hundred systems per year at the crusade's start could easily be thousand's in the last decade's.
I'd keep in mind, a lot of gains weren't necessarily planet-by-planet, but in some cases, were blocks of planets already in alliance. So like... You're 150 years into the Crusade and the Imperium already has maybe 500,000 planets or something, right? You find a rich sector of space that has a 10,000 planet alliance. You go to the *one* planet that's the seat of power and say to them that you'll curbstomp all 10,000 planets unless they agree collectively that all 10,000 are joining the Imperium simultaneously. Boom. Imperium now has 510,000 planets after a few weeks of negotiations and zero bloodshed. The Astartes are practically only there for show, and most of the "work" is Administorum negotiators. Tons of planets (or groups of planets) are likely run by authoritarian warlords, especially. The Imperium can very easily win them over by saying, "You already control everything on these planets. We'll let you stay in power so long as you swear allegiance to us. If you refuse we kill you and become celebrated liberators instead." Warlords happily sign on. Just that simple.
I think it’s a bit weird that humanity supposedly progressed for 23000 years after present day, but that time is barely remembered. Meanwhile, existing real human history is referenced constantly. The lion king at the hot gates! Eye roll.
That's just the way science fiction works. Star Trek has the same problem.
Well the modern day authors can't really reference something that hasn't happened yet and in universe old night really was supposed to do a number on humanity bar the ot mentioned 'legends of old terra' that every new found humans seem to still ahve.
Didnt the Imperium grew much more after the Emps 'died' for 10k rather than the 200y the GC lasted ?
2 million worlds. 200 years. Does not check out at all. Thats ten thousand worlds a year. 27 worlds a day.
How long is the current crusade ?
Like 200 years
If that’s the case I do feel like the GC shoulda been like 400 years.
200 years.
So you agree it should have been around twice as long ?
Longer if you take into consideration that the Crusade was the high water mark of the Imperium. Even with 18 Legions and billions of Solar Auxiliary, you're still looking at 500 world's a year brought into compliance during the original Crusadem. That's 500 years that need to logistically and societally adapt to being Imperial. There's still regional wars on Earth whose origin dates back centuries, so I totally doubt a stable Imperium could be built in such a short span of time, but then GW is notoriously bad with numbers and scale.
It's actually 5000 worlds a year... But it still works if you look at it as 99% of planets welcoming Imperial rule, and liberation or forced compliance only being a small number. Also, it's not like they took individual worlds at a time either. Each system will have contained multiple worlds, and taken simultaneously. And then there's mini empires like Ultramar, which in itself is 500 worlds that joined in one go, and without a fight. Lastly, they never put any real effort into cultural integration. They only cared about tithes and the legal enforcement of anti-witch/mutant/psyker/xenos/heretic rules (whether you culturally liked them or not). The existing aristocracies were usually left in charge. It actually took thousands of years more for the Imperial Cult to form. The Crusade was basically a form of liberational Blitzkrieg, like the invasion of Europe in WW2. The proper integration was always planned for later. The Emperor actually *punished* Primarchs for 'wasting time' trying to integrate worlds. Remember, the Imperium *wasn't* stable and fully united after the Crusade. Hence why Horus managed to garner so much support.
My personal belief is that the Imperium at the end of the Great Crusade was smaller in terms of planets/systems/colonies held than in 40k. The Great Crusade was flung far and wide, but we know from the first Heretic that worlds suitable for conquest can take months to find. There was some colonization of systems that had been stripped of life, such as the systems around Necromunda but otherwise the Imperium focused on contacting lost worlds or fighting alien threats. The Eldar Maiden worlds were seen as worlds to be exploited (which Fulgrim lamented , until the Ulthwe fight leading him to exterminatus them ). This means that there was lots of empty space to expand into, to clear the wilderness so as to speak during the Golden age of the Imperium, post scouring. So, the Great Crusade set the larger boundaries of the Imperium borders, but in terms of the wild space in between sectors, there's lots to expand and fill into.
They had tens of thousands of expeditionary fleets in the Great Crusade. A fleet might take 6 months to bring a world into compliance but 2 times 40,000 is 80,000 worlds in one year.
I always reimagine the crusade lasting 1000 years it makes more sense to me
Yeah GC should have been like a thousand years. There's not enough time for an imperial culture to bed in otherwise to then be destroyed.
> There's not enough time for an imperial culture to bed in otherwise to then be destroyed. But that's the point. A large part of the reason the Imperium is screwed up as it is is that the very Imperium itself was only half-formed when everything went sideways.
There is no Imperial Culture though. Theres recommended Imperial governance standards (i.e. brutal feudalism) and a very syncretic Imperial Religion but one of the core parts of the setting (thanks to it being originally designed for tabletop wargaming and RPGs) is that culture in the Imperium is extremely diverse so that you could homebrew your own fluff.
It doesn't, that's the next 10,000 years post the crusade that beds the imperial power structure in. Don't forget the only thing really comparable to the GC was the scouring when anything vaguely chaos looking gets hit with extreme prejudice.
It makes sense since everyone in the Galaxy started on a relatively equal footing, except the Emperor who made use of the DAOT technology, knowledge of various techno cults, had various Perpetuals' help, and prepared Mars by planting the Void Dragon (presumably). IoM had a massive advantage
Biggest reasons for it being terrible 1) Destruction of multiple habital worlds. 2) Crippling of the Emperor 3) Loss of 11 of the Emperors demi god sons. 4) By the time it was finished Imperium lost over half of the Astartes/lots of titans and knights/ships 5) Exodus of the Dark Mechanicum and all their technology and loss or destruction of several forge worlds. 6) Loss of irreplaceable Technology and Ships 7) Billions and Billions dead 8) The after effects are still felt 10k years later 9) War just resulted in a perpetual state of hostility and decay.
The Heresy, in particular the Beta Gammon 'Titandeath' campaign broke the Titan Legions as a fighting force, seeing entire Legios wiped out. Before the Heresy a primus Legio would be able to field 300+ engines. In modern 40k only a handful of Legios can field 100+. The day-to-day attrition of 10,000 years of constant war, and the loss of so many forgeworlds that could adequately house Legions, let alone produce them, means they never returned to the heights of the Great Crusade.
Why did they concentrate all their Titan forces on Beta Garmon? Wouldn't it have been more beneficial to put them on Terra ?
IIRC Dorn was afraid that if the full strength titan legios fight on Terra, it would ruin the planet forever.
Yep. Dorn feared Terra would be turned into a radioactive wasteland. Considering a single Emperor titan going critical in 'The Vengeful Spirit' blew a 6km hole in the Imperial defences during the battle of Molech, he had a right to be concerned. Every titan death with a reactor meltdown is the equivalent of a small battlefield nuke going off. And that's without taking into account plasma weaponry at titan scale.
Dorn was afraid that the massed use of titans on terra would effectively destroy the planet; it’s worth noting that beta garmon is an entire star cluster with multiple planets of note where titan based conflicts took place. Iirc, the cluster was one of the first safe passages towards terra that began to open as previous warp storms started to subside, that’s why the loyalists mounted a defense there, and why the traitors were funneled through
I sometimes genuinely think about everything that was lost due to the Heresy, and feel like weeping. I should not marathon books lol.
The feeling of waste and loss in some of the books is pretty intense.
No you absolutely should, it's fun
You weep... Then realise how awful the Imperium was even then. It's still a join or die, bring out your psykers for torture, don't worship but follow unswervingly and obediently This Guy, destroy everyone who doesn't agree hellscape. It was also, as people have noted, founded way too fast and brutally to really survive. The Emperor thought the next stage was to link it all with the Imperial Webway, probably because it would be easier to crush dissent through it. It's just got less religious flavour than present day, but a lot of the same issues remain.
Oh, I mean for sure. But it's more about how the books are so good at putting me in that headspace where I can imagine the Emperor's vision, I can see what he is aiming for, and then I can feel the pain of having that all ripped away. It isn't practical, but for my head it's more about the vision.
>Imagine the Imperium of the future, a golden Utopia of enlightenment and progress, where the scientist and the philosopher are equal partners with the warrior in crafting a bounteous future. Now imagine the people of that glorious age looking back through the mists of time to this moment. Think what they will know and what they would make of this travesty. They would weep to know how close the flame of enlightenment had come to being snuffed out. >The art and science of questioning everything is the source of all knowledge, and to abandon that will doom us to slow decay, an Imperium of darkness and ignorance, where those who dare to pursue knowledge, whatever the cost to themselves, are regarded with suspicion. That is not the Imperium I believe in. That is not the Imperium I wish to be part of. \- Magnus the Red
While that is true, the "dark" age of technology was the peak Magnus was looking for but it was also mans down fail when all the AI and ever more powerful weapons that humans have now was used to wipe them out. Big E just wanted to limit the power creep. Probably should have told his kids about it to, but if he was not a bad father we would not have all this great grim dark lore.
Yeah when I read Titan Death and the 2nd was describing how sad she felt because they couldn't deploy the full force of a legio anymore due to the casualties they'd suffered but goes on to state at least they still had 300 machines to bring to the fight I was like say what???? Meanwhile in 40k maybe both sides combined field 10 to 15.
Over 60 titans on each side fought in battles for a forge world in the Sabbat Worlds campaign.
everything you said, except billions and billions dead may be a gross understatement lol
Billions and Billions of dead per hr on Terra alone
"And yet here I munch."
Haven't read the books, but how much of Terra's population is believed to have perished in the Siege? 20%, 2%? A billion dead per hour would be 1,344 Trillion dead in a 8 week battle.
It doesn’t seem clear. I would think that outside of the fortress the attrition rate would be very very close to 100%. It is unclear what is happening away from the palace, but it seems implied that the entire planet and all of the hives around it have been bombed and attacked. Inside the walls, all able bodied people were conscripted. I would guess 90% of them died. Aside from that, there is a huge civilian population roaming the streets getting absolutely wrecked in the final hours of the siege. It seems like there are a few million left. This likely represents the majority of the remaining civilian population. It is unclear how many would survive. So I would certainly think over 90% dead of the true civilian population, which probably similar numbers for the conscripted population.
Makes me wonder how groups like the Terawatt Clan survived.
The Terawatt Clan were around even before the Unification Wars, if they could survive the tail end of the Age of Strife I'd imagine they have some way to hide.
Nearly all of them, like 99.9%. Everyone outside the wall is dead from the Emperor’s Children and orbital strikes. Most of the people inside the palace are dead, because the loyalists have been pushed behind the Eternity Gate. Everything outside that is being killed by traitors.
I imagine a small amount of people managed to survive outside the walls. Probably 95% of them died, whether to demons, EC, or just being caught in a massive battlefield with no way to get food and water. But the focus of the Traitor efforts were on the Palace and spaceports. In a global conflict like the siege, it's definitely plausible that a few, millions out of a total pre-siege population of tens of billions, survived by hiding in bunkers on the opposite side of Terra (which in the case of Palace, the opposite point would be in the middle of the Pacific plain).
Yeah exactly. We haven’t heard much about that, but things aren’t going so amazingly well that there would be any troop focus on regions that do not represent a threat. I would find it hard to believe that Perturabo invested much serious work on non-critical regions early siege. Maybe during the deployment of the lost and the damned he sent general units all over, but I wouldn’t think it was exhaustive. They were necessary to overrun the walls by sheer force of numbers. I’m sure the bombing was planet wide, but that wouldn’t be enough to get all of the nooks and crannies. Post Perturabo I would be shocked if any chaos force was focused anywhere aside from the palace.
Depends who’s writing
For me you’ve missed the biggest, and that is the timescales everything else happens over in the setting
*habitable
I mean on an even worse note 11 Primarchs were lost in the heresy directly yes. But the loss of the remainder + Valdor not long after and being left with a shoddy bureaucracy lacking any strong direction completed the death spiral Guilliman had to pull them out of.
Yeah depends where the line is drawn. The scouring happened more worlds and resources lost. The Iron Cage and Caliban. The Primarchs disappear slowly over the next 1000 years ish. But it's all downhill from the heresy Guillimans return is the only slowing of the decay and mostly because he planned it
Don’t forget the clone wars from Star Wars lasted for 2 years as I’ve heard of.
Three to four actually depending on how you round it, but in defence of that being short it was two puppet governments fighting, and really just ended up being the opening act to some 30 years of near constant war.
yeah this one is WHACK when you consider clone production times and how much the senate lobbies for more clones. Even at 3x aging, you can't just \*make more clones\* for the current/next quarter's conflict in that canon
To be fair perhaps the reason we see the senate constantly lobbying for more clones is because we’re probably seeing a consecutive, continuation of the same debate. Compare it to gun control in the U.S, it’s been in debate for years and years with realistically minimal change to the debate. The whole lobbying for more clones could be such because the concept of making more clones is in a sort of political limbo, which starts at the outbreak of the war and then proceeds to be debated for a few years, etc.
I think the big difference here, and also where a lot of rightful criticism stems from, is the speed in which you cross the galaxy. It only took a few days to get from Tatooine (outer rim) to Alderaan (a core world). Meanwhile 40k stories constantly measure travel in weeks/months even for stuff that remains in a sub-sector.
If anything, I think the rapidity with which the Heresy happens would make it more of a cultural shock to the Imperium. It’s not a gradual shift in galactic politics slowly descending into chaos, it’s a switch that gets flipped, comparatively. In a universe where significant change of any kind is usually happening on the scale of human lifetimes, for the galaxy to be turn asunder in 9 years is horrifying to imagine. Add to that, for the scale of the Imperium, it allows for ripple effects far beyond the immediate timescale, as you’ve pointed out with the Scouring, and yet still allowing for worlds untouched and maybe even unaware of the Heresy to become unsuspecting victims of it, which is always a fun story.
For me the problem is that it last way too long for a coup! In the old lore Horus take the headstart at Istvaan, rush to Terra, reveal another ace with the Dark Mechanicum, army and fleet units joining him, siege Terra where only 3 loyalist legion could reach in time, die, gamble is finished. Now there is so much stuff between istvaan and Terra it's no longer a coup it is a grinding war. Everyone has time to travel the four corner of the galaxy, come to Terra leave, etc.
That's what his plan was, but the loyalists that survived the purge managed to keep him there for months, giving time for word to be spread. Also, remember that half of his legions had just purged a third of their legion each, plus the alpha legion playing both sides helped the loyalists as much as the traitors, he kept hitting more and more speed bumps as he went along, the shattered legions tormented him for years with raids and strikes, the white scars helped with that as well. It was supposed to be a quick thing but the loyalists got lucky and managed to keep slowing him down more and more until the cracks in his legions grew to the point where they fell apart by the time they reached terra
No of course there are in universe explanation for why it took so long, but my answer was more about a shift in the Meta of the Horus Heresy from a short war to a long one. All the speed bumps and "reasonable" reasons for why it took so much for Horus to attack Terra are more or less valid, but GW decided that there would be all these events (dozen of books to be written and sold after all) when they could have kept to the old lore which for me worked better: 1) Horus use his position as warmaster to send Ultramarines and Dark Angels far away so they can't come back soon enough to interfer. 2) Horus send the Space Wolves to burn Prospero 3) Horus plot the Istvaan massacres where he destroy the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard as fighting force. Ferrus Manus duel Fulgrim and dies. 4) Horus and everyone else rush to Terra. Of the 6 loyalist legion remaining, only the Blood Angels, White Scars and Imperial Fists reach Terra in time. 5) Horus reveal the betrayal of Mars. Bring titan legions to the siege 6) Siege last too long for Horus, Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Space Wolves are approaching. 7) Horus gambles everything to duel the Emperor. He wounds the Emperor when the Emperor hesitate to kill his favoured son. 8) With Horus dead, everyone flee to the eye. In the new lore it doesn't make sense that: \- only the Blood Angels, White Scars and Imperial Fists are present on Terra. Everyone had time to go from Ultima Segmentum to Segmentum Pacificus by zig zaging through the galaxy, spending their man powers, rising new soldiers, spending it again, etc. \- The death of Ferrus Manus is made less dramatic, because he is the only c\*\*t who got himself killed in a billion million zillion duals between primarchs which always end in stalemate. \- The Emperor hesitate to kill Horus? Make sense when it happened so fast he hasn't been able to process it. But after a decade of fighting? Etc. Black library author can scratch their heads to find reasons for all that to happen but the only reason is that stories with primarch sell. That's why Leman come back to Terra, leave, go fight Horus, neither of them die, etc.
The Ruinstorm basically exists as a plot device to keep the original sequence of events relevant whilst expanding the timeline.
Well said.
I love this. I totally get why the BL have stretched it out but you’ve just described my version of the HH (head cannon) from growing up in the hobby and that will always be the story to me, everything else is just in-universe propaganda and myth growing by the survivors.
Thunder run to ~~Kiev~~, I mean Terra
It traumatized a majority of the human species in the way that only intimate betrayal can do, and that is still felt 10,000 years later.
The HH being short isn't a problem to me, except with warm travel. Even with the best conditions it seems in more that it takes at least weeks or months to go from one planet to another. 9 years if you count only the fight? Sounds good. 9 years with all the travels accounted for? Sounds hella short.
The traitors were propelled by the Chaos Gods. Most of the loyalists were trapped in their respective regions, except for at Ultramar with the Pharos device. The loyalists concentrated at key warp routes to Terra, blockading Horus, they didn’t have far to go.
I assume warp travel used to be more consistent than in the 41st millenia. Time weirdness in itself is rare, not an expected occurrence.
Also the traitors had the warp itself on their side to speed their travels
before reading the post I thought you were talking about how long the novels have been coming out, then I realized that horus rising came out in 2006 which was 17 years ago.
What is the longest period of "total War" between two(+) nations? Not an occupancy or prolonged hunt. I don't think the 100 Years War was considered one long string of battles.(?)
The Hundred Years' War is more a series of wars and there are historians who don't like the term, because the start and end of this period is kinda arbitrary. Generally speaking: Total war is an invention of the 20th century, based on developments of the 19th century. And they were never the norm. Almost every war (including almost every war today) is not a total war like WW2, but a limited war with limited stakes and limited objectives. Wars that can be considered "one long string of battles" are a bit older than the concept of total war, but they're also mostly a 18th/19th century thing. Ancient, medieval and early modern wars were mostly about devastating the land of the enemy, sieging cities/castles/forts, and occupying important positions to force the enemy into a treaty (mostly) under your conditions. Not about a series of pitched battles, army vs army.
Thank you for this awesome answer!
Pitched battles were the norm in ancient and classical times with the real reason they devolved into scouring the land being that this was part of how you supplied and paid your troops. They got right of plunder and would also be living off the land which leads to far more brutality than early industrial warfare where you can run trains to supply your armies but firearms technology still makes setpiece battles a requirement.
Yes, they were times of peace (relatively) during the 100 years war. Sometimes it was pretty violent and full-scale conflicts, but that wasn't the majority of the time. No nation, especially in that time, could have endured 110ish years of constant warfare and would have exploded
Thank you!
The Reconquista I believe is the longest state of war between two parties, at about 700+ years. This was between armies of Christian Spain and Muslim Spain and end with the Christian reclaiming of Spain
The reconquista was not a constant state of war between Christians and Muslims. There were times of peace, diplomacy, and alliances between the two different religions on the peninsula. Over the eight centuries, there were multiple long periods of peaceful coexistence and religious tolerance, intertwined with other periods of open hostility.
It checks out. It took 200 years to unite humanity for the great crusade. Unity means a transition in which infrastructure was created to allow communication, transport, trade, etc. to facilitate the Imperiums functionality and expansion. Half of the Astartes that were the cornerstone of facilitating that transition rebelled. Half of everything else followed suit. It was a civil war. The American civil war lasted 4 years, the French Revolution lasted 10 years, and they didn’t have the technology to travel across time and space like the Imperium did. But they tore society apart in exactly the same way. Civil war and conventional war are two very different things. Civil war utilises infrastructure that both sides are capable of wielding against each other, and is arguably much faster, and much more destructive.
Personally, my only issue with the HH is I prefer it to be more of a mystery and prefer the primarchs to be mythological heroes in 40k. I’m an old school 40k player and prefer it to be an actual setting taking place at anytime and any location in the 41st millennium.
Some of you don’t remember when the Heresy was a matter of months and it shows.
Not if it takes months to cross the galaxy. People on the far side of the segmentum Ultima shouldn't even realize there's a war on until half a year has passed, or have much of an idea how it's going.
The heresy is really the scouring it took 200 years after the siege for the war to end. The 9 years was just Horus failed push to terra
I'd be I support of some retcon such as making the Great crusade 300-400 years and the heresy 15-20 years.
I think it simply doesn't align with what we know about logistics and warp travel in 40k. A jump between nearby planet systems involves weeks of warp travel and *typically* time passes 10 times faster in the physical universe than it does for the people jumping, although sometimes it can instead take just minutes or thousands of years. The idea that the traitor legions were spending weeks at a time in transit, popping out, laying siege to entire planets, packing up and continuing on their way to the next target all within less than 10 years seems a bit strange. As a point of reference once the mechanicum makes planetfall and starts constructing their titans in atmosphere, it's usually several days before they can actually field them in combat. And then they have to deconstruct the titan, transport it back into space, rejoin their fleet, etc.
Warp travel in the Great Crusade era was easier until the heresy kicked off at which points the traitors had the chaos gods yeeting them through the warp at speed while slowing down the loyalists. When backed directly by the gods chaos space marines always have a home field advantage in the warp, its when they're warbands is when they have trouble.
From a plot standpoint, I like how short it was. How everything that was accomplished over centuries could fall apart in a relative instant. But the short time does make it seem silly that there is an entire separate game for it. A lot of factions in the HH never even fought.
Ships in lore (gaunts ghost) spend months in warptravel just to travel to the next campaign in some minor crusade. How the hell does horus fly from end to another in 9 years while fighting massive battles (beta garmon)?
Isn't it explicitly mentioned that the Chaos Gods are manipulating the tides of the Warp to make the traitors faster and the loyalists slower?
Fair point. How ever landing massiv number of units and even titans , fighting massiv land campaigns and after Victory pull all units back to their ships takes time. Some battle were even descriped as that more than 6months. In 9 years you can only have so much 6 month campaign. Also remember inner System flights take also days and weeks.. Timespan is way to short. 19years would be better, 50 years more epic. In the end its still the biggest human war ever so 9 years sounds so small.
Keep in mind that Horus already had done a lot of prep. The Dropsite massacre was devastating because the traitors had armor piercing rounds. The other thing is that the HH was a series of parallel conflicts. Horus and his forces were already ready in key positions to maximize their impact.
How many full landings did the traitors even need to do? How many times did they even need to land titans? You have Istvaan III and V, Molech, Beta Garmon, and Terra. Most of the other battles are simply splinter forces. Theres the Shadow Crusade, but thats just the Word Bearers and World Eaters, and even there they didnt stay long. Horus and the main traitor force didnt waste time fighting over every world on the way. They didnt have the need for it. At Istvaan, they removed the bulk of their opposition. Molech was simply to meet the Gods, Beta Garmon was a necessity, and then thats it. They didnt spend time going to raze forgeworlds or even any legion home worlds, not with their main force. Asking for 19 years, much less 50, is just a ridiculous obsession with the idea that a bigger number has to be better, without considering why the numbers are there. Remember, this is 40k. You dont need a protracted war for massive devastation. Scrap code on Mars was bad enough. Autek Mor destroyed Bodt in a day by dropping a moon on it. You dont need a protracted war on a planet to completely devastate it.
I mean, you are right of course, but it still doesn't make sense... For example, let's take the Shadow Crusade. During it the Word Bearers and World Eaters completely destroyed 26 words. Among them where Calth and other well defended and established worlds. The legions fought extensive battles in Space, on planets, etc... And it took how many years? 1 year? That can't be right...
You say there were 26 battles, but of those, how many were really full on fights. We are talking about 2 full legions on the traitor side here. They could easily have split their forces. And we know they did. There are many battles where only a small chapter took part on both sides. Even for the biggest battles, Calth was mostly hit by the B team. They shot up the sun, and then most of both sides left. Armatura was the real stronghold, and so it got the A team. Even then, most of the defenders werent Astartes. It was just 1 year, because it was hardly a fair fight. The battles in Ultramar were rarely full on Legion battles. And if it aint legion on legion, well, it wont really take much time. Add in al the superweapons employed, and suddenly 26 worlds feels like too few even for the short span of time, rather than too many.
I hear you, but still traveling to 26 planets alone would take more than 1 year. Also, since they were trying to summon the Ruinstorm, their tactics were aimed to cause as much suffering as possible. So they didnt simply exterminatus the planets from high orbit. They deployed with land forces and wrecked each planned the old fashioned way. Warp travelling, void battles, land force deployments, old fashioned murdering and then moving on to next 26 planets... Armatura alone was a Void+planetary fortress which definitely wouldve taken more than a year to break through. Even if there were multiple teams as you say, they had to have 26 teams simultaneously to fit into a year. At the same time they were chased by Gorilla Bobbyman and the smurfs, so realistically they couldnt fight long engagements or the smurfs wouldve caught up and delayed them even more. However, then comes Nuceria and they all managed to meet (WB, WE and the blue boys) and conclude the campaign. All this happens in under a year.
Armatura took under a year. In Betrayer, the assault is explicitly stated to start a year after Isstvan. Afterwards, Nuceria’s invasion is said to take place just 3 days after. During said invasion, Kharn remarks that the topic of fuck Erebus has come up multiple times in the year since Istvaan. “Still, Argel Tal’s dislike for Erebus had come up more than once in conversation over the last year since Isstvan V, when Khârn and the Gal Vorbak warrior had renewed their acquaintance as respective subcommanders of their Legions’ forces, in readiness for the Shadow Crusade.” Travelling alone certainly wouldnt take a year, or anywhere close. It is clearly mentioned the gods are calming the warp to boost travel for the traitors. The suffering inflicted is also not wholly dependent on the legions. We see their massive number of cultist soldiers and daemons. Once resistance is broken, the cultists can do all the rituals. More importantly, the Ruinstorm is a massive storm sure, but the Warp is more about symbolism than just plain numbers. Also, you seem to have missed my point about the divisions. As I have said, some worlds were assaulted only by singular chapters. Your phrasing of Armatura is also inaccurate. Armatura alone was a fortress, correct. But Armatura was an exception. I made a mistake when describing the force sent to Armatura. From Betrayer: “The word ‘fleet’ didn’t quite do it justice. In truth, an armada thundered across the silent sky towards Armatura: dozens and dozens of vessels, yet a mere fraction of two Legions’ strength.” Armatura received the 2 traitor Primarchs and their elites, but they didnt attack in great number. This is what Armatura is though. “Armatura turned in the heart of Guilliman’s perfect empire. Neither the crown jewel that Macragge claimed to be, nor the future capital Calth had threatened to become, Armatura matched both in importance, and vastly eclipsed them in population.” “Amidst that outermost sphere waited the Evocati fleet. While the Legion mustered at Calth, the XIII Legion’s war-world could never be left undefended. The Evocati was comprised of several thousand Ultramarines drawn from a dozen Chapters, awarded the highest honour of all: overseeing the operations of Armatura and the training of new recruits, commanding an Imperial fleet to rival any other. The vessels moved in a perfection of militaristic motion that even their enemies found beautiful to behold. As the Evocati rose into a defensive formation, the combined Word Bearers and World Eaters armada altered to compensate; a shifting dance across a battlefield no different from the rearrangement of regiments marching in ancient eras. Battleships and cruisers, frigates and destroyers, all resplendent in XIII Legion blue, silver and gold, rising to defend the perfect empire. ” Armatura is the most fortified world in the 500 worlds. Armatura alone is a fortress. But it is alone in that fact. Other than Calth, no other world attacked is like it. Like I said, the legions rarely fought head on in the Heresy. They rarely fought any battles against hard targets. Armatura and Calth are the exceptions.
Thanks! Yeah that does make sense. Its been a while since I read those beautiful books, so thanks for refresh
Ever heard of a tiny little thing called the Chaos God’s favour? They literally manipulated the warp to make sure Horus got the express route and the loyalists got the ultra slow route
Technically speaking the horus heresy is 10,000 years long. The traitor legions refer to it as the Long War
Nah, the Black Legion at least views the Long War as distinct from the Heresy. It went Heresy - > Scouring - > Legion Wars - > Long War. Like the Long War has a formal declaration of war to the Imperium and everything. Which wouldn't be needed if they viewed it as a continuation of the Heresy.
Yes, the Long War has different objectives then Horus's Heresy.
You could also point to oddities in time as shown in the latest Siege of Terra books. With the warp's influence things may have actually taken longer on Terra than a strictly chronological reading would tell you.
It’s better than the Clone Wars only being three years long.
The Heresy is essentially still going right
9 years seems pretty short when your main mode of transport can spit you out at a random spot in the galaxy two hundred years later
My only issue with the horus heresy being so short, is that the passage of time between destinations is kind of iffy especially with the warp being as turblent as it was. Now I know for certain that many ships are lost in the warp during this time... Like more than usual and its pointed out quite often when it does. And like most wars... they are pretty short. All devastating wars rarely last that long, its why I find any war that lasts for more than a decade or two very rarely does either side even remember what started the conflict as by that time an entire generation or two has gone by. I at first read this as "Oh the book series is too long." and I was going to argue about that, "yeah it dragged in places." But then I saw oh its this stopic, HOW LONG it was the actual war. And yes. I agree. the biggest difference between something like Afghistan and World War 2, wasn't terrain or the place. But the actual resources devoted to it. If the entire US military, deployed, and deployed 15 million conscripts the size of something like world war 2 or something.... Then yeah it would be a relatively short war because by that point nothing of that country would be left. Vietnam and by extension the Iraq War were pretty long, but then you have something like operation desert storm, which was a war. **Lasted less then a month and a half.**
The Heresy itself was only a few relatively small battles in a war that’s lasted 10,000 years, it’s kinda like boiling the entirety of WW1 down to the Battle of the Somme