# was the horus heresy designed to fail



## bobahoff (Nov 24, 2011)

This is a question I often ask myself but have yet to voice it to anyone else. The reason I say this is simply because of the very nature ofchaos, specifically tzeentch, it is said that should tzeentch ever accomplish his goal he would cease to exist. Therefore if he were to take over the galaxy as the chaos gods seemed to want to do from the beginning tzeentch would have had nothing else to plot, also chaos thrives on bloodshed and war therefore with a galaxy under chaos the galaxy would be involved in a massive civil war and possibly wipe itself out. This would have briefly made the gods a lot stronger but then left them weakened as humanity died out leaving either the eldar able to find a way todestroy them or the necrons able to destroy the warp. As they have planned to.this is better explained in the book legion. However a brief demonstration of chaos' power in the heresy leaves more opportunity to recruit humans to their cause over an extended period of time.
Alsi the chaos gods are supposed to have carefully selected the worlds were discovered on,now I'm assuming the gods knew at this point who the loyal and traitor primarchs were, why not stick the loyal ones on uninhabited worlds so they would die? 
Finally why did horus lower his shield? Apparently it was to draw out the emporor because the space wolves and ultramarines were on route to terra, but to me the whole thing smacks of tzeentch.
The chaos gods have caused more havoc with abaddon in the millennia since the heresy by turning the whole thing into a long drawn out, unresolvable conflict than the short sharp shock of the original heresy. With terra being so well defended the forces of chaos cannot hope to breach it now but their constant 'failed' attempts causing huge casualties and bloodshed.
In conclusion I believe that the heresy was simply a demonstration of chaos' power to split the galaxy and limit the emporors ability to hinder them.


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Some argue that the Chaos powers benefit more from a stalemated Imperium rather than a destroyed one.

But then you have the quote about the demise of the Emperor leading to billions of daemons infesting the real world and destroying humanity which would contradict the first statement.

Some say the Alpha Legion lowered Horus's shields and some say Horus discovered that the Ultramarines and Dark Angels were on route to Terra and so he decided to try and take on the Emperor in his chaos-steroid buffed form since killing the Emperor would be a guaranteed victory.

The Chaos powers/Tzeentech (he sent his minion into the Well of Eternity [almost zero fluff on what it is exactly] to find out everything about the future but his minion became insane) cannot predict the future or every possible outcome so they did not exactly know which Primarch would turn.

PS: the enter key is your friend.


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

bobahoff said:


> In conclusion I believe that the heresy was simply a demonstration of chaos' power to split the galaxy and limit the emporors ability to hinder them.


I agree completely. Though that does mean that the Heresy wasn't 'designed to fail' it just wasn't fought as a conventional war.



Malus Darkblade said:


> But then you have the quote about the demise of the Emperor leading to billions of daemons infesting the real world and destroying humanity which would contradict the first statement.


Do you have a source for that? I can't recall ever having read it myself.


Also, just to expand on the OPs position. The Chaos Gods clearly had a very powerful influence on all the Primarchs from a very young age (_First Heretic_ shows that they controlled the pods and _Prospero Burns_ shows the lifelong manipulation of the SW) yet they only made serious overtures towards half the Primarchs. It seems to me that the Gods could have very easily 'won' the Heresy at this point, either by more carefully selecting the starting worlds or simply murdering all the 'good' guys in their infancy. The fact that they didn't, but rather set it up for a civil war, suggests to me that they wanted strife not victory.


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## darkreever (Apr 3, 2008)

I don't think it was designed to fail, more so that the chaos gods led things about in a way that the outcome was in their favour no matter who won.

Had Horus won, then chaos would have gotten revenge on the Emperor and who knows what from there.

But by the Emperor prevailing over Horus, look at what the aftermath left:
-The Imperium shattered
-Half the greatest warriors of man turned traitor
-Technological stagnation

The Emperor defeating Horus meant the galaxy was preserved, but all of the big E's aims and ideal's were shattered and left to rot.


The Heresy was designed as a win-win, whatever the outcome chaos wins.


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

MEQinc said:


> Do you have a source for that? I can't recall ever having read it myself.


CotE has linked it so many times. I'll try to find it. It's nothing special, it just says that if the Emperor dies, the Astrominican will vanish and the billion daemons in the Webway would come out and destroy everything.



MEQinc said:


> Also, just to expand on the OPs position. The Chaos Gods clearly had a very powerful influence on all the Primarchs from a very young age (_First Heretic_ shows that they controlled the pods and _Prospero Burns_ shows the lifelong manipulation of the SW)


Don't you mean the 1k Sons?

I'm not on-board the Chaos powers planned everything boat because if that was true, they would have to know every single aspect of what the future holds which we know is not true.


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## bobahoff (Nov 24, 2011)

Malus Darkblade said:


> But then you have the quote about the demise of the Emperor leading to billions of daemons infesting the real world and destroying humanity which would contradict the first statement.


I remember reading something like this on lexicanum. I know it isn't proper black library/codex fluff but its out there.

Sorry about the big long post without gaps


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## normtheunsavoury (Mar 20, 2008)

This is all pretty much my opinion based on what I've read so far.

I do think that the Heresy was designed to fail but I don't think that all the traitor Primarchs were necessarily aware, including Horus. I think it was in Nemesis that either Lorgar or Erebus mentions something about Horus having his own ideas about what was happening and that it needed to be watched. The Astartes were used to winning and it would be near impossible to try and tell them that they were fighting a war they couldn't win. Horus meant to win, so did most of the other traitor Primarchs but whether or not Lorgar or Erebus were of the same mind is debatable.


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## bobahoff (Nov 24, 2011)

I don't believe any of the primarchs knew and erebus may have suspected but I don't believe he knew anything for certain. As with a lot of the players in the heresy they probably thought they were important but were in fact expendable pawns. 
This is especially prevalent with fulgrim killing ferrus manus (after discarding the sword ferrus crafted for him, favouring a daemon sword)


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## GoRy (Apr 1, 2008)

Malus Darkblade said:


> The Chaos powers/Tzeentech (he sent his minion into the Well of Eternity [almost zero fluff on what it is exactly] to find out everything about the future but his minion became insane) cannot predict the future or every possible outcome so they did not exactly know which Primarch would turn.


Space Marines on Azeroth?!

Anyways beside that, I do like the Alpha legion theory but fluff always has been that it was a desperate last gamble.

Also see the Cabal in HH Legion - The victory of Chaos would lead to it's death. Is it possible the Chaos gods realised this at the very last moment and deserted Horus not simply due to the Emperor wounding him?


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Blizzard has plagiarized all its Warcraft and Starcraft lore from Warhammer.


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## bobahoff (Nov 24, 2011)

Malus Darkblade said:


> Blizzard has plagiarized all its Warcraft and Starcraft lore from Warhammer.


And buzz lightyear is a space marine without shoulder guards


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

Malus Darkblade said:


> CotE has linked it so many times. I'll try to find it. It's nothing special, it just says that if the Emperor dies, the Astrominican will vanish and the billion daemons in the Webway would come out and destroy everything.


Oh, I understand now. However that event is specifically because of the functioning of the Golden Throne and the torn open webway. While the Astronomicon is powered by the Emperor and it's loss would be devestating (most likely shattering the Imperium into the fragments of the Age of Strife), I don't believe that the shattered webway will provide enough of a breach for daemons to destroy much more than Terra.



> Don't you mean the 1k Sons?


Well both. The Gods played the two against each other from the very beginning.



> I'm not on-board the Chaos powers planned everything boat because if that was true, they would have to know every single aspect of what the future holds which we know is not true.


They don't need to know every aspect, just the broad strokes. And given that they are present at every point in time, and that they can in fact see the future (just not always that precisly) I have no trouble believing that they could see enough to figure out that this is the better state (after all the Cabal had a vision of what would happen to Chaos if Horus won, why the hell wouldn't Tzeentch be able to get his hands on that?).


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## GoRy (Apr 1, 2008)

Actually the first Warcraft game was in development FOR GW. They finished developing, rejigged the lore and released it anyway after GW pulled out.

And thats how Warcraft was born.

MEQ, that would suggest though that Tzeentch is Omnipotent, all knowing. Perhaps he didn't know definite outcomes as he just didn't know? Perhaps the Cabal had a better talent for reading the future based on what they knew, who knows, but why would Tzeentch know either way how it would work out?


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## MEQinc (Dec 12, 2010)

GoRy said:


> MEQ, that would suggest though that Tzeentch is Omnipotent, all knowing. Perhaps he didn't know definite outcomes as he just didn't know? Perhaps the Cabal had a better talent for reading the future based on what they knew, who knows, but why would Tzeentch know either way how it would work out?


Tzeentch isn't all knowing (omnipotent means all-powerful by the way) because he doesn't know *everything *but that doesn't mean he can't figure out most things. As the God of Plans I would be very, very surprised if he didn't have a backup plan for pretty much any occurance. But that's not what we're talking about, we're talking about a war and the idea that the immortal Gods couldn't figure out a way to make Horus losing (ie. one of two possible results) work in their favour. Also, how do Eldar Farseers work? Do they see exactly what will happen? No. They see multiple possible futures and then plan so that the most beneficial ones come to pass. That's what I'm suggesting Tzeentch and the other Gods did.

Lastly, the idea that the Cabal, a disorganized cult (and one which I feel is distinctly Tzeentchian in flavour), could out-predict the GOD OF PREDICTIONS is frankly rediculous.


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## bobahoff (Nov 24, 2011)

In HH false gods horus is shown a vision of a shrine world which shows all the primarchs but him. If this is indeed an accurate representation of the future, then it is completely reasonable to assume that it was created in the future where horus failed meaning that tzeentch knew that the whole thing would probably fall apart.

Also in the CSM codex in Abbadons character bio it says that abaddon resisted becoming a pawn of any of the gods. Also in a few of the unofficial sites it states that the reason for the black rage and sanguinor was that horus was unable to best sanguinius in combat so he unleashed a psychic attack which ripped sanguinius mind in two.
Then all of the good parts of his mind became the sanguinor, the bad part however sent a massive psychic shockwave through the geneseed creating the black rage and red thirst.

However this is only unofficial and I don't have any "proper" fluff to back it up 

Any way I digress in the HH books horus is never described as having any psychic abilities whatsoever yet in codex CSM he is described as battling the emporor physically and mentally, now with the emporor being an incredibly gifted psyker and horus originally having no powers that would mean he got them from the chaos gods ie tzeentch suggesting that horus gave more of himself to tzeentch than any other. Which says to me he became tzeentch's pawn in the end.


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## Davidicus 40k (Jun 4, 2010)

"No... this fellow ain't dead... She jabs them with her stinger and they go as limp as a boned fish. Then she has her way with them. That's how she likes to feed: fresh blood."

If giant spiders in Lord of the Rings, reincarnations of ancient evil spirits, do it that way, I'm not surprised the Chaos Gods do it that way, too. Why destroy when you can prolong torture?


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