Hey Warhammer fans. Warboss Scott here with the long promised post on Horus. I've done my best to piece together a explanation of why Horus betrayed the Emperor by relating important events that guided his choice. A fair share of the content comes from excerpts from the books
Horus Rising by Dan Abnett
and
False Gods by Graham McNeil. I seriously suggest reading them and the third book,
Galaxy in Flames. In the end, I believe Horus turned against his Father to satisfy his own ambitions. If you have any comments please leave them. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have as well. Though enough of me. Lets dive in.
The 63rd expedition fleet, commanded by The Warmaster Horus had just finished prosecuting a war along side Sanguinius and the Blood Angels and Lord Commander Eidolon leading a company of Emperor's Children against the Mega Arachnids on the World dubbed Murder (140-20) when they were contacted by the human civilization known as the Interex. The Interex had integrated the xenos Kinebrach into their culture, which according to the doctrines of the Imperium and by default the Emperor, was justified cause to make war against them. However, despite objections from many of his senior officers, Horus waited to make war against the Interex. He wanted to learn more about them first. During a conversation with two members of his Mournival, Garviel Loken and Horus Aximad, he explained why he delayed. He related to them a story about an experience he had with his father, The Emperor, early in The Great Crusade. While discussing the ancient zodiac and Horus' future role in the Crusade the Emperor gestured towards the stars and said, "make no mistake and they will be ours." This haunted the Warmaster ever since his coronation at the triumph of Ullanor. He felt the war against the false Imperium at the world known as 63-19 and the war at Murder were due to mistakes and misunderstandings. Horus did not want to make any more mistakes that would lead to needless bloodshed. Horus felt enormous pressure as Warmaster. This pressure and subsequent insecurity led to him feeling betrayed, unthanked, and abandoned by The Emperor. It was this crack in his character that the Word Bearer's First Chaplain, Erebus would exploit in order to lead him towards Heresy (Abnett, 2006).
Hostilities broke out unexpectedly between the Imperium and the Interex. In the middle of peaceful negotiations on the planet of Xenobia, the Interex unexpectedly turned upon Horus and his guard of Luna Wolves. Horus, utterly distraught and confused as to why desperately tried to persuade the Interex soldiers to stop their attack. "A mistake, Horus roared, his voice cracking with despair. This is wrong! Wrong!" In his despair Horus threw back his head, "and screamed a curse to the night sky." Then, in a whisper only captain Loken heard, he said, "Why have you tasked me with this, father? Why have you forsaken me? Why? It is too hard. It is too much. Why did you leave me to do this on my own? Horus tried once more to halt the Interex attack by demanding to speak with their leader. The only response he received was a hail of Interex arrows: arrows dangerous enough to easily pierce through Astartes plate. At this, Horus gave up trying to stop the conflict and led his warriors in a furious battle cry and charged headlong into the Interex warriors (Abnett, 2006).
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It was First Chaplain Erebus who engineered the war with the Interex. During the negotiations he covertly broke into the Interex hall of devises, stole the Chaos tainted Kinebrach weapon known as the Anathame, and murdered those who stood in his way. Erebus' actions were not revealed until much later. Erebus took advantage of Horus' feelings of failure and abandonment. He gently stoked the fires of Horus' damaged ego to inflate his wounded pride and sense of loss in order to plant seeds of bitterness in his heart against The Emperor. At the conclusion of the war against the Interex, Horus and the 63rd expedition fleet, at the behest of Erebus, traveled to the planet Davin (Abnett, 2006).
Davin had been brought into compliance by the 63rd expedition some years ago. Horus placed an Imperial Army officer by the name of Eugen Temba in command of the Imperial Garrison left behind. Temba was full of bitterness towards Horus for leaving him. He had begged not to be left on Davin while the Great Crusade moved on. Horus did not listen to his pleas and charged him with maintaining Davin's compliance. After the 63rd expeditionary fleet departed, Temba led his men against noncompliant Tribespeople on Davin's Moon. During a parley, the tribespeople, in reality chaos cultists, used a sorcerous attack to twist the perceptions of Temba and his men. Ultimately, Temba's valiant military forces were reduced to undead plague zombies. Temba himself spat on his oaths of loyalty to the Imperium and swore allegiance to Nurgle, the Lord of Decay (McNeil, 2006).
When the 63rd expedition returned to Davin, the Warmaster, his mournival advisors, and many senior Imperial Army Commanders traveled to the surface to hold a council of war. With devilish skill, Erebus manipulated the proceedings of the council. He, seemingly reluctantly, told the Warmaster of Temba's betray: emphasizing his denunciation of Horus as, "the lackey of a fallen God." Erebus intentionally awoke the Warmaster's anger and pride and skillfully directed it towards Temba. "My Lord, said Erebus, I am sorry to be the bearer of such ill news, but surely this is a matter best left to those appointed beneath you.” Erebus knew his craft well. Horus responded “you would have me despatch others to avenge this stain upon my honour, Erebus? What sort of a warrior do you take me for?” Horus immediately gave the order to prepare an assault against the moon of Davin that he would personally lead. This had been Erebus' desire all along (McNeil, 2006).
On Davin's moon the assault force of Luna Wolves led by their Primarch, Horus, found Temba's flagship,
Glory of Terra, crashed in the midst of a decaying swamp. As they marched through the foul mists they were attacked by the hordes of plague zombies that had once been Temba's Imperial Army regiments. Eventually, the Warmaster gained entry to the wrecked starship. He went in with poor support, no intelligence as to what terrors dwelt within, and against the advise of mournival members Garviel Loken and Tarhost Torrgadden. Once inside he was separated from the Luna Wolves (McNeil, 2006).
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Although alone, he foolishly pushed onward towards where the bridge of the ship should be. "Ahead he could hear a low moaning and the shuffling of callused feet...The sensation of fear was utterly alien to Horus, but when the horrifying source of the sounds was revealed, he was suddenly seized with the conviction that perhaps his captains had been right after all. A shambling mob of rotten–fleshed famine victims appeared, their shuffling gaits carrying them forwards in a droning phalanx of corruption. A creeping sensation of hidden power pulsed from their hunger-wasted bodies and swollen bellies, and buzzing clouds of flies surrounded their cyclopean, horned heads. Sonorous doggerel spilled from bloated and split lips, though Horus could make no sense of the words. Green flesh hung from exposed bones, and although they moved with the leaden monotony of the dead things, Horus could see coiled strength in their limbs and a terrible hunger in each monster’s cataracted eyeball." Not knowing exactly what these foul apparitions were, Horus threw himself at them. "His golden sword clove into the monsters like a fiery comet, each blow hacking down a dozen or more without effort. Spatters of diseased meat caked the walls, and the air was thick with the stench of faecal matter, as each monster exploded with rotten bangs of flesh at his every blow. Filthy claws tore at Horus, but his every limb was a weapon. His elbow smashed skulls from shoulders, his knees and feet shattered spines, and his sword struck his foes down as if they were the mindless automatons in the training cages...He lost track of time, the primal brutality of the fight capturing the entirety of his attention, his sword strikes mechanical and bludgeoning...His sword chopped through a distended belly, ripping it wide open in a gush of stinking fluids, but instead of bursting open, the meat of the creature simply vanished like greasy smoke in the wind. Horus took another step forwards, but instead of meeting his foes head on with brutal ferocity, the corridor was suddenly and inexplicably empty. He looked around, and where once there had been a host of diseased creatures bent on his death, now there were only the reeking remains of hacked up corpses” (McNeil, 2006).
Horus made his way forward to the bridge of the
Glory of Terra. Inside he heard a foul word hissed over and over again,
Nurgh-leth. His lip, "curled in revulsion as he saw the massively swollen figure of a man standing before the captain’s throne. Little more than a heaving mass of corpulent flesh, a terrific stench of rank meat rose from his fleshy immensity.” It was the betrayer, Eugan Temba (McNeil, 2006).
"I am Temba" it said. "The so-called friend you left behind. I am Temba, the loyal follower of Horus you left to rot on this backwater world while you went on to glory.” Temba taunted Horus and accused him of abandoning him. He then tried to persuade him to join him in embracing the power of the warp and told him of Chaos. “We don’t have to be enemies, Horus,’ said Temba. You have no idea of the power of the warp, old friend. It is like nothing we ever saw before. It’s beautiful really. It is power, agreed Horus...elemental and uncontrollable and therefore not to be trusted. Elemental? Perhaps, but it is far more than that,’ said Temba. It seethes with life, with ambition and desire. You think it’s a wasteland of raging energy that you bend to your will, but you have no idea of the power that lies there: the power to dominate, to control and to rule. I have no desire for such things,’ said Horus. You lie, giggled Temba. I can see it in your eyes, old friend. Your ambition is a potent thing, Horus. Do not be afraid of it. Embrace it and we will not be enemies, we will be allies, embarking upon a course that will see us masters of the galaxy...You have to die,’ said Horus." With that, Temba chuckled and brought a strange blade to his lips and whispered, "The Warmaster Horus" (McNeil, 2006).
“Horus fought like never before, his every move to parry and defend. Eugan Temba had never been a swordsman, so where this sudden, horrifying skill came from Horus had no idea. The two men traded blows back and forth across the command deck, the bloated form of Eugan Temba moving with a speed and dexterity quite beyond anything that should have been possible for someone of such vast bulk. Indeed, Horus had the distinct impression that it was not Temba’s skill with a blade that he was up against, but the blade itself. He ducked beneath a decapitating strike and spun inside Temba’s guard, slashing his sword through his opponent’s belly, a thick gruel of infected blood and fat spilling onto the deck. The dark blade darted out and struck his shoulder guard, ripping it from his armour in a flash of purple sparks. Horus danced back from the blow as the return stroke arced towards his head. He dropped and rolled away as Temba turned his bloody, carven body back towards him. Any normal man would have died a dozen times or more, but Temba seemed untroubled by such killing wounds...Horus backed away from Temba, hearing twin cracks as the monstrously bloated traitor’s anklebones finally snapped under his weight. Horus watched as Temba dragged himself forwards unsteadily, the splintered ends of bone jutting from the bloody flesh of his ankles...He looped his own blade around the quillons of Temba’s sword and swept his arm out in a disarming move, before closing to deliver the deathblow. Instead of releasing the blade for fear of a shattered wrist, however, Temba retained his grip on the sword, its tip twisting in the air and plunging towards Horus’s shoulder. Both blades pierced flesh at the same instant, Horus’s tearing through his foe’s chest and into his heart and lungs, as Temba’s stabbed into the muscle of Horus’s shoulder where his armour had been torn away" (McNeil, 2006).
Temba was dead. Finally and truly dead. However, the sword that had pierced The Warmasters shoulder was the Kinebrach Anathame, stolen by Erebus and given to Temba. The Anathame was a horribly potent weapon. Once a name was spoken to it, it became utterly lethal to its intended victim. The slightest scratch from its dark surface was enough to infect the wounded with daemonic pathologies designed to specifically to destroy them. Not even the god-like physiology of a primarch could withstand it. Horus was swiftly dying and there was nothing any of his sons, the grief-striken Luna Wolves, could do to save him (McNeil, 2006).
On his death bed in the apothecarion of his flagship,
The Vengeful Spirit, Horus regained consciousness one last time. He summoned his personal remembrancer, Petronella Vivar to his side to record his valediction. He shared with her the true feelings of his heart before he slipped back into unconsciousness. “It was too much, began Horus. I promised my father I would make no mistakes, and now we have come to this...Temba, giving him lordship over Davin. He begged me not to leave him behind, claimed it was too much for him. I should have listened, but I was too eager to be away on some fresh conquest...The responsibility lies with me. Throne! Guilliman will laugh when he hears of this: him and the Lion both. They will say that I was not fit to be Warmaster since I could not read the hearts of men...We are brothers, yes, but like all brothers we squabble and seek to outdo one another..." (McNeil, 2006).
"They were jealous, all of them. When the Emperor named me Warmaster, it was all some could do to congratulate me. Angron especially, he was a wild one, and even now I can barely keep him in check. Guilliman wasn’t much better. I could tell he thought it should have been him...Only a few of my brothers were gracious enough to bow their heads and mean it. Lorgar, Mortarion, Sanguinius, Fulgrim and Dorn – they are true brothers. I remember watching the Emperor’s Stormbird leaving Ullanor and weeping to see him go, but most of all I remember the knives I felt in my back as he went. I could hear their thoughts as clearly as though they spoke them aloud: why should I, Horus, be named Warmaster when there were others more worthy of the honor? I was not. I was simply the one who most embodied the Emperor’s need at that time" (McNeil, 2006).
"You see, for the first three decades of the Great Crusade I fought alongside the Emperor, and I alone felt the full weight of his ambition to rule the galaxy. He passed that vision to me and I carried it with me in my heart as we forged our path across the stars. It was a grand adventure we were on, system after system reunited with the Master of Mankind...but it couldn't last. Soon we were being drawn to other worlds where we discovered my brother primarchs. We had been scattered throughout the galaxy not long after our birth and, one by one, the Emperor recovered us all...As soon as I met each one, I had an immediate kinship with him, a bond that not even time or distance had broken. I won’t deny that some were harder to like than others. If you ever meet Night Haunter you’ll understand what I mean. Moody bastard, but handy in a tight spot when you need some alien empire shitting in its breeches before you attack. Angron’s not much better, mind; he’s got a temper on him like you’ve never seen. You think you know anger, I tell you now that you don’t know anything until you’ve seen Angron lose his temper. And don’t get me started on the Lion...I could see in his eyes that he thought he should have been Warmaster because his Legion was the first. Did you know he’d grown up living like an animal in the wilds, little better than a feral savage? I ask you, is that the sort of man you want as your Warmaster? No it’s not" (McNeil, 2006).
"Sanguinius. It should have been him. He has the vision and strength to carry us to victory, and the wisdom to rule once that victory is won. For all his aloof coolness, he alone has the Emperor’s soul in his blood. Each of us carries part of our father within us, whether it is his hunger for battle, his psychic talent or his determination to succeed. Sanguinius holds it all. It should have been his…I carry his ambition to rule. While the conquest of the galaxy lay before us that was enough, but now we are nearing the end. There is a Kretan proverb that says that peace is always “over there”, but that is no longer true: it is within our grasp. The job is almost done and what is left for a man of ambition when the work is over?"(McNeil, 2006)
"Petty functionaries and administrators have supplanted me. The War Council is no more and I receive my orders from the Council of Terra now. Once everything in the Imperium was geared for war and conquest, but now we are burdened with eaxectors, scribes and scriveners who demand to know the cost of everything. The Imperium is changing and I’m not sure I know how to change with it...Bureaucracy and officialdom are taking over...Red tape, administrators and clerks are replacing the heroes of the age and unless we change our ways and our direction, our greatness as an empire will soon be a footnote in the history books. Everything I have achieved will be a distant memory of former glory, lost in the mists of time like the civilisations of ancient Terra, remembered kindly for their noble past...And what of the warriors who conquered it for you?’ snarled Horus. What becomes of us? Are we to become gaolers and peacekeepers? We were bred for war and we were bred to kill. That is what we were created for, but we have become so much more than that. I am more than that...I was bred with wondrous powers encoded into my very flesh, but I did not dream myself into the man I am today; I hammered and forged myself upon the anvil of battle and conquest. All that I have achieved in the last two centuries will be given away to weak men and women who were not here to shed their blood with us in the dark places of the galaxy. Where is the justice in that? Lesser men will rule what I have conquered, but what will be my reward once the fighting is done?” (McNeil, 2006).
While Horus hovered on death's door, Erebus approached Ezekyle Abbadon and Horus Aximad, senior members of the mournival. He told them that the Davinite priests were skilled healers and that they could save The Warmaster's life. With the backing of most of the legion's senior officers, and without counseling with fellow mournival members Garviel Loken Tarik Torgaddon, Abbadon and Aximad took Horus to the Temple of the Serpent Lodge on Davin. Horus' body was sealed within a stone chamber while his soul was cast into the Warp by a dark ritual. Erebus followed his spirit in the guise of the deceased Hastur Sejanus, a mournival member whom Horus had trusted and loved dearly (McNeil, 2006).
Erebus, disguised as Hastur, guided Horus through a series of visions in the Warp. He took him to a shrine world in a grim dark future. There, Horus bore witness to the oppressive and stagnant society that would be the Imperium. He saw endless masses of pitiful wretches come to pay homage and worshipping beneath nine mighty statues that surrounded a tenth, golden statue. They were of his brothers. Rogal Dorn, Sanguinius, Roboute Guilliman, Corax, Lion El Johnson, Ferrus Mannus, Vulkan, and Jaghatai Khan all stood sentinel around a gleaming statue of the Emperor. “But why? The Emperor is no god. He spent centuries freeing humanity from the shackles of religion. This makes no sense" said Horus. "Not from where you stand in time, but this is the Imperium that will come to pass if events continue on their present course,’ said Sejanus. ‘The Emperor has the gift of foresight and he has seen this future time...No, said Horus, I won’t believe that...Yet this entire world is his temple, Sejanus said, and it is not the only one. There are more worlds like this? Hundreds, nodded Sejanus, probably even thousands...But the Emperor shamed Lorgar for behaviour such as this,’ protested Horus...That’s why he needed you. Horus turned away from Sejanus and looked up into the golden face of his father, desperate to refute the words he was hearing. At any other time, he would have struck Sejanus down for such a suggestion, but the evidence was here before him. He turned to face Sejanus. These are some of my brothers, but where are the others? Where am I?’ I do not know,’ replied Sejanus. ‘I have walked this place many times, but have never yet seen your likeness" (McNeil, 2006).
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Eventually Horus was confronted by his Brother, Magnus the Red. Magnus knew of Horus' temptation and the horror his betrayal would unleash upon the Imperium. In order to try and save his brother from corruption, Magnus projected himself far into the warp. Magnus tore asunder Erebus' disguise and exposed him for the manipulator he was. He desperately explained that the future he had been shown was only one of many possible futures and begged him not to betray their father. Horus silenced both Magnus and Erebus crying out, “I can trust neither of you...I am Horus and I make my own fate. Erebus stepped towards him with his hands outstretched in supplication. You should know that I came to you at the behest of my lord and master, Lorgar. He already has knowledge of the Emperor’s quest to ascend to godhood, and has sworn himself to the powers of the warp. When the Emperor rejected Lorgar’s worship, he found other gods all too willing to accept his devotion. My primarch’s power has grown tenfold and it is but a fraction of the power that could be yours were you to pledge yourself to their cause. He lies!’ cried Magnus. Lorgar is loyal. He would never turn against the Emperor. Horus listened to Erebus’s words and knew with utter certainty that he spoke the truth. Horus, please!’ cried Magnus, his voice taking on a ghostly quality as his image began to fade. ‘You must not do this or all we have fought for will be cast to ruin forever! You cannot do this terrible thing! Is it so terrible?’ asked Erebus. It is but a small thing really. Deliver the Emperor to the gods of the warp, and unlimited power can be yours. I told you before that they have no interest in the realms of men, and that promise still holds true. The galaxy will be yours to rule over as the new Master of Mankind" (McNeil, 2006).
“Enough! roared Horus and the world was silence. ‘I have made my choice" (McNeil, 2006).
Sources:
Abnett, Dan. Horus Rising: The Seeds of Heresy Are Sown. Nottingham: Black Library, 2006. Print.
McNeill, Graham. False Gods: The Heresy Takes Root. Nottingham: Black Library, 2006. Print.
