LEGENDS OF THE FALL
“ I WAS THERE THE DAY HORUS slew the Emperor…” So begins Horus Rising by Dan Abnett, the first volume in a bestselling series of future-war novels that’s run uninterrupted since 2006. Across more than 60 volumes, The Horus Heresy (published by Black Library) tells the story of what happens when the genetically engineered super-soldiers of the Adeptus Astartes – aka the Space Marines – fall out on a truly galactic scale. The resulting conflict lays the foundations for the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and has inspired a range of audio dramas plus its own tabletop game, which is relaunched this month. Not bad for something that started with a single paragraph in an obscure book back in 1988.
FUTURE HISTORY
“The Horus Heresy is reckoned by many to be the greatest single disaster ever suffered by the Imperium,” begins an innocuous boxout on page 13 of – an expansion for game (known as to fans). Here we learn that Horus was a high-ranking general and “the most trusted servant of the Emperor”, but “in his heart there dwelt a hidden evil, and he became seduced by this evil, and came to nurture demons and other forces of destruction”.
