On one hand, Dark Imperium: Plague War as a good book. I enjoyed it. On the other hand, I have not gotten over my exasperation with 40k’s doom and gloom. Yeah, yeah, everything is grimdark and terrible forever and getting worse and the only light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. I get it–I just don’t have a damn to give or a desire to read it.
I get that Guy Haley writes fight scenes like someone who was forced to add pointless fight scenes he didn’t care about in at the last minute by his editor, but the battle aboard the Galatan still comes across really weird.
Here you had Chaos winning, the loyalists decidedly outmatched, all hope lost… and then cut away. Then there’s the moment of cliffhanger–did the traitors win or the loyalists? Well obviously it’s going to be the loyalists because they’re not going to anticlimactically kill off Guilliman and all the other named characters right here, spoiler alert.
I’m fine with things happening off-screen and then being quickly recapped later, especially if the explanation is ridiculous and/or humorous, but this just felt like a cop-out. When we finally do jump the POV back to the space station, there’s no explanation. How did they win? Did something cool happen? Who knows. It’s kind of implied everyone got bored and went home for no particular reason.
Why the hell did you waste a POV character and screentime to show events on the Galatan at all? I don’t know, because in retrospect it proved really pointless. The character bits with Primaris vs. old-style Marines was perfectly good, but then it moved into the fight portion and was just random set-up and then abruptly ended.
“Guilliman’s every thought was directed towards the stasis unit given to him by Yassilli Sulymanya and the book that it contained. For now, the container was closed, nothing more sinister than a wooden box decorated by a plain pattern on the lid. But it dominated his desk. He was reminded of the box of woes from an ancient legend no one in the current age remembered.
He debated opening it and reading the book inside.
‘There will be no hope beneath it,’ he warned himself.
Guilliman had never read the book in the box. He had refused at the time it was published. Having never made the same decision about any other book, he had made a public point of ignoring this one. Back in the Age of Enlightenment, Guilliman had always thought of himself as one of the more reasoned of the primarchs. He had been a man of learning, rationality was his first and last resort, and yet he had ostentatiously condemned this work. Why? He had done so to please the Emperor, as he did everything back then, but that was not the only reason. He should have made his own mind up. He should have read the arguments and addressed them, not dismissed them. The creed of the Imperial Truth he stuck to so hard was just that, a creed. It was flawed, and in large part based on a lie.
His refusal was a calculated insult. Lorgar and he had never seen eye to eye. Guilliman was a rationalist, Lorgar was a quester after metaphysical truths. Faith was his mode of thought, and Guilliman had disdained it. The Word Bearers’ way of war had annoyed him. How petty of him. He knew by spurning his brother’s beliefs so bluntly he had hastened the end of everything the Emperor believed in.
Professed to believe in, Guilliman corrected himself. He had never had chance to speak with the Emperor about the truth. The war prevented it, and when it was over, the Emperor was gone beyond communication. Only that one time upon his return to Terra had Guilliman been in His presence and received something more from his creator other than silence.
He thought back on the meeting, as he often did, still unable to reconcile what he thought he had seen with what should have been possible.
Maybe, he thought, I did not read it because I was afraid that Lorgar was right.
How can I know without reading it? He did not care that he had wronged Lorgar, but that he had abandoned his own intellectual rigour. He had been a fanatic as much as Lorgar was, after his own fashion.
Theoretical: I must set this right. Practical: I must read it.”
–Plague War
Fuck, yo. I need to finish Dark Imperium to get here… this sounds awesome. I love Guilliman so damn much.
I want him to show up on Sicarus with an entire book arguing with everything Lorgar ever wrote in Lectitio Divinitatus, both line-by-line rebuttals and on the overall themes and flow of the work by the chapter and as a whole.
Lorgar: But I don’t even follow this religion anymore.
Guilliman: I just want you to know I hate you this much.
“Lorgar was a quester after metaphysical truths.”
You know, no, that gives him too much credit. Lorgar was looking for an object to direct fanatical worship at. You could replace “the Emperor” with “a shiny lamp” without changing anything about his religious beliefs.
That’s the whole point about how it’s so easy to replace venerating the Emperor with Chaos without missing a beat. The only tenets we ever see are building monuments, chanting repetitive aphorisms, and killing anyone who disagrees with you as a heretic. We’re told Lorgar writes extensively about his religions, but we never see any content to that writing. Sure, Warp entities exist, but his interpretations of the implications of that are shallow and authoritarian. That’s a specific bit of information that had been suppressed, but not some great metaphysical revelation. Guilliman probably has much more interesting and accurate theories about how the metaphysics of how the Warp works than Lorgar, in terms of pure mechanics.
The entire religion seems half-baked. How should you live as a person in a society? What does living a good life mean? What is right and wrong? Whatever will keep you from being punished–be that from religious authorities or the Ruinous Powers threatening you. No wonder it’s morally bereft. There was never any ethical depth or philosophical discussion to it. It was never anything but might makes right.
“Guilliman’s every thought was directed towards the stasis unit given to him by Yassilli Sulymanya and the book that it contained. For now, the container was closed, nothing more sinister than a wooden box decorated by a plain pattern on the lid. But it dominated his desk. He was reminded of the box of woes from an ancient legend no one in the current age remembered.
He debated opening it and reading the book inside.
‘There will be no hope beneath it,’ he warned himself.
Guilliman had never read the book in the box. He had refused at the time it was published. Having never made the same decision about any other book, he had made a public point of ignoring this one. Back in the Age of Enlightenment, Guilliman had always thought of himself as one of the more reasoned of the primarchs. He had been a man of learning, rationality was his first and last resort, and yet he had ostentatiously condemned this work. Why? He had done so to please the Emperor, as he did everything back then, but that was not the only reason. He should have made his own mind up. He should have read the arguments and addressed them, not dismissed them. The creed of the Imperial Truth he stuck to so hard was just that, a creed. It was flawed, and in large part based on a lie.
His refusal was a calculated insult. Lorgar and he had never seen eye to eye. Guilliman was a rationalist, Lorgar was a quester after metaphysical truths. Faith was his mode of thought, and Guilliman had disdained it. The Word Bearers’ way of war had annoyed him. How petty of him. He knew by spurning his brother’s beliefs so bluntly he had hastened the end of everything the Emperor believed in.
Professed to believe in, Guilliman corrected himself. He had never had chance to speak with the Emperor about the truth. The war prevented it, and when it was over, the Emperor was gone beyond communication. Only that one time upon his return to Terra had Guilliman been in His presence and received something more from his creator other than silence.
He thought back on the meeting, as he often did, still unable to reconcile what he thought he had seen with what should have been possible.
Maybe, he thought, I did not read it because I was afraid that Lorgar was right.
How can I know without reading it? He did not care that he had wronged Lorgar, but that he had abandoned his own intellectual rigour. He had been a fanatic as much as Lorgar was, after his own fashion.
Theoretical: I must set this right. Practical: I must read it.”
–Plague War
“Night and day aboard a vessel are arbitrary things. Turn down the lights, and lo! it is night. Flick a switch again, and so it is day. Power like that was once the province of gods.
Roboute Guilliman sat alone in a night of his choosing. The scriptorium was empty. The ship’s life went on beyond the sealed doors, but within, in the silence, Guilliman could fool himself that he was alone in the small hours and the stars outside shone for him alone.”
–Plague War
“‘You speak, you priests, as if you know my so-called father, as if you are privy to His will and His word, as if He would speak through you!’ His fist clenched. Out of his armour he seemed more dangerous. ‘You have never spoken with Him. Not one of you damnable fanatics has ever exchanged so much as a word with the Emperor. I lived with Him. I fought at His side for centuries. I studied with Him. I learned of His dreams for mankind from His own lips and I raised my sword and spilled my blood to make them a reality!’
‘But there are visions–’
‘There are lies!’ shouted Guilliman. ‘I am the only living being to have spoken with the Emperor for ten thousand years. Ten thousand years, Mathieu, and yet you dare to suppose you know His mind? You priests burn, maim and condemn on the basis of supposition. You practise your barbaric religion in the name of a man who despised and wanted to overthrow all of these things. The Emperor’s purpose was to lead us out of the darkness. You, Frater Mathieu, you and your kind are the darkness!’ He turned his head aside in disgust. ‘These feats of faith can be explained by the workings of the empyrean. No god need be invoked, and if one is, it is rarely the thing that is called upon. There are beings in the warp that hearken to such entreaties. I assure you they are not gods, and the Emperor is not one of them. None of what you believe in can be trusted. None of it!’
…
Mathieu had never suspected the primarch might harbour such depths of rage. Guilliman had always been described as such a bland fellow, a competent genius untroubled by the miseries of unbounded humours. In the scriptures it was his brothers, and mostly the traitorous fiends at that, who had exhibited the unsaintly traits of anger. But the primarch was angry, and it was a primordial rage born in the hearts of tortured planets and fast-burning stars. In the brunt of his fury was the anger of the God-Emperor Himself.
Mathieu quailed, and yet he felt the beginnings of religious ecstasy creep into his gut. The thought of being destroyed by Guilliman, of falling to the Emperor’s only living son, almost undid him.
Guilliman recoiled from the adoration shining from Mathieu’s eyes. ‘You disgust me. I will not kill you. I cannot. I miscalculated, choosing you. I should have appointed another parasite to your position, like Geesan and the rest. Instead I thought it best to have an inspiring man by my side, to make a virtue of your religion. And this is the repayment I get for giving weight to your faith? You could have killed us all! Chaos has tried to trick me several times – me! Do you think you are below its attentions? It will use anything to see our species fall. Be sure that your faith does not give it an open gate into your heart.’
‘You saw, my lord. You saw your father’s light!’
‘He is not my father,’ Guilliman said. ‘He created me, but I assure you, priest, that He was no father. King Konor was my father.’”
–Plague War
Did Mathieu advise Sister Iolanth to go against Guilliman’s direct orders? Yes. Is everyone lying about it? Of course. On the other hand, this was on the basis of a maybe ten minute acquaintance, so personally I’d say that while it’s fair to be mad at him for this, primarily responsibility for decisions made is definitely on her.
“‘Take heart,’ she said. ‘Those who die in the Emperor’s grace are not lost, but shelter within His light in the everlasting empyrean. Oh, my lord, it is beautiful.’ She moved a strand of hair from the dead girl’s face and smiled a bloody smile. ‘The Emperor protects,’ Iolanth said. ‘Never forget that the Emperor protects.’
Guilliman looked at the girl’s mutilated body.
‘I can never believe that,’ he said.”
–Plague War
“‘We are legion. We can never be destroyed.’
‘Maybe not,’ said Roboute Guilliman. ‘But I can make a start with you.’
The Emperor’s sword burned bright. Septicus shrank back from its blowtorch roar. His eyes shrivelled in his head, their jelly running in thick tears down his face. He never saw the blow that ended him.
The fires of the sword doused themselves in his guts. Septicus looked down sightlessly at the weapon buried up to its hilt in his heart.
‘And when you are driven from this universe,’ said Guilliman, ‘I shall purge yours also, until the warp is purified, and calm comes again to the minds and souls of humanity, though you shall never see it.’”
–Plague War
because by fate even the gods are cast down 