The First Wall

by Gav Thorpe

‘No, I’m not one of Horus’ servants.’ The man carried on walking, almost swallowed by the dust and night. His voice drifted back on the wind. ‘My name is John, and I’m on my own side.’

  A heartbeat later, he was gone.

  You’ve just read my fortieth novel for Black Library. First of all, thank you for reading it, and any of the others. It is still a source of wonder and pride when I reach a milestone like this, to think that not only has my life been blessed with the opportunity to write and design games for a living, but that I have also been afforded the chance to do so in one of the settings I have loved from my youth.

  Though I dabbled in many Games Workshop systems as an adolescent and later, the game I played the most was Adeptus Titanicus/ Space Marine. The Horus Heresy exists in the way it does thanks to the old Epic game system and the pragmatic necessity to have Titans and Space Marines fighting each other to keep down the cost of the boxed game. It’s incredible to think that had GW of old had a bit more cash to throw in some 6mm ork sprues, the history of the Warhammer 40,000 universe may have been completely different! From Space Marine through to Bill King’s original story and Adrian Smith’s seminal artwork in the Horus Heresy board game, the Horus Heresy has become the founding myth of the Imperium.

  And now I am here, thirty-two years later, writing about that pivotal war.

  Now that it is done, I feel that the previous thirty-nine novels have been practice for this one. This has been the most ­challenging ­writing I have ever undertaken. There’s the simple matter of the ­pressure and expectations for the Siege of Terra series. The ­scrutiny that my words will be subjected to is going to be immense. It is also part of a narrative that will include over sixty novels, plus many more audios, short stories and a good number of novellas too. As each of us coming into the project has discovered, the raw amount of stuff to get your head around as a writer is intense. Doing justice to characters and plot lines that have been years in the making, whilst ensuring that each book is still satisfying on its own merits, ­regardless of what comes before or after, has made this a complex task.

  At first I thought perhaps I had got it easy, compared to John French having to conjure up the scale of the Solar War, or Guy Haley, who had to spin a gripping story out of sixty days of c­onstant bombardment. I had three distinct but related topics on our timeline to cover:

  Traitors are revealed in Imperial ranks (Alpha Legion presence)

  The Lion’s Gate space port falls

  First daemons arrive/are summoned/manifest

  Easy, right? Experience tells me that three narrative strands are a great number for a 90-100,000-word novel, each being about the equivalent of a novella in complexity and length. Having the Lion’s Gate space port falling gave a nice end note to tie all three strands together, plus a core of intense warfare to keep the tone of the Horus Heresy strong throughout.

  As it turned out, Siege of Terra novels are quite like an Alpha Legion plot: nothing is ever as straightforward as it first appears.

  A tale of attrition

  A potential pitfall when working on a story with established events and a fairly set plot – The Horus Heresy, The Beast Arises, War­hammer: The End Times – is that the sense of story gets lost in hitting all the predetermined beats. Getting character A to ­location D in time for event X risks turning a project into a logistics ­exercise and ­nothing more. The narrative that makes a story tick gets missed out.

  Understandably, I didn’t want that to happen with what is likely to be my most important Black Library novel. That meant ­teasing out the events into something more narratively coherent and then pulling them back together into a story. I started out by ­settling on a theme for each of the story threads to riff on: a theme that would add something to the overall arc and scale of the Siege of Terra.

  That theme was attrition.

  Sieges are usually battles – sometimes lasting months or years; but castles and cities that have been besieged in our history are nothing like the campaign that is being waged for the Imperial Palace. An edifice so large it is greater than many contemporary nation states, a continental conurbation. While it may be called the Battle for the Imperial Palace, in reality it is a full-scale war. A war with fronts and supply lines and the logistics of moving large ­bodies of troops around. It’s a war that is so devastating that the forces involved are but shattered remnants of their former glory by the end of it.

  Once I started pondering the idea of attrition – an idea strongly associated with the Iron Warriors that would be central to the battle for the Lion’s Gate space port – I started thinking about the different types of attrition that can occur.

  I came up with three: physical, mental and spiritual. A fighting force is slowly eroded in firepower and manpower, in its capacity and willingness to fight, and in its belief in the cause for which it is fighting or the leaders it is following. Given that I had three ‘beats’ on the timeline to explore, it made sense to me that each storyline should illuminate a different type of attrition.

  ‘There are three weapons in the armoury of the victorious. Endurance, Belief and Loyalty.’

  – Monito san Vastall,

  First General-Maximus of the Lucifer Blacks

  Physical – the space port story

  As I briefly mentioned, the Iron Warriors are (in)famous for their brutal, uncompromising doctrine. In contrast, the Imperial Fists are dauntless and defiant. What better way to explore physical attrition than to have the irresistible force and immovable object of the Horus Heresy pitted directly against each other? As Perturabo somewhat immodestly but not inaccurately couches this:

  ‘Dorn has set a trap for me, and I intend to use Kroeger to spring it. The Emperor’s Praetorian has laid his plans with guile and patience, doubtless trying to anticipate my every move, countering in advance every stratagem, ploy and tactic he has gleaned from my previous work. Be sure, Forrix, that every stone laid in this palace was done so in consideration of my arrival. As certain as our foes have been that Horus would one day reach Terra, my brother has been equally sure that it is my wit, my siegecraft, that would be the test of his defences.’

  Rann makes a similar point, in much shorter fashion: ‘This is why we are here. This is what we were created for.’

  At this point I need to talk about the sheer scope of the Siege of Terra. There are literally scores of storylines converging at the Imperial Palace from across the previous material. Some of these will end during these events. Others are stepping stones or precursors to tales that continue into the Scouring that will follow.

  Most importantly, this is a story about the Emperor, what He was trying to achieve and how Chaos thwarted Him. Central to this is, of course, the titular foe, Horus. This gives us the first hurdle to overcome as writers – established background tells us that Horus doesn’t confront the Emperor until the very end. There’s no two ways about it, no sleight of hand to pull, the fact is the other primarchs do all the fighting for the Palace. Despite this, we need to keep that conflict between Horus and the Emperor central to any story about Terra.

  An adjunct to this is the rise of Abaddon. As much as this is the story of the end of the Age of the Imperial Truth, these are the events that will cement the role of Abaddon in the future. Though not as metaphysically important, of equal interest to readers are the arcs of characters like Khârn, Sigismund, Forrix, Ahriman, Loken, Garro, Keeler and many, many others. Characters we have known from the earliest books, many of whom have been very quiet for some time.

  And there are the smaller but just as valid stories, of characters being seen for the first time, or whose journeys are just beginning, like Volk. These add some texture to the bedrock of the major characters.

  John French did a great job setting up the Emperor and Horus in Book One. The challenge for the rest of us is to find ways to continue that theme without it becoming repetitive, both in content and presentation. Book
after book should add layers to the ongoing struggle between the Emperor and His most gifted son, until that climactic battle to decide the fate of the galaxy. But that struggle cannot occur in isolation, mere teasers of what is happening; the spiritual war betwixt the Emperor and Horus must be inherently tied to the novel narrative too.

  Which is a microcosm of the issue presented by a huge ongoing narrative. Each novel has a near-impossible task to convey the wider siege, the personal stories of the characters involved, the steps along the existing events of the timeline and the addition of others, all for an audience that may have been following for nearly a decade, or just jumped on board with The Solar War…

  And perhaps the greatest challenge was deciding what had to be left out. I really love writing about Sanguinius, but there was not space nor narrative opportunity to do so – and he’s getting increasing page time as the siege goes on. Similarly, there could have been a whole sub-plot in the daemon story with the Sisters of Silence, but I will likely have to save that for a short story, if it gets written at all.

  Given all of that, I had to prioritise. Top of the list was Perturabo and his Iron Warriors. Though they don’t get the lion’s share of the word count, they are nevertheless the focus, the driving force behind the main event of the book. After that, it was simply a matter of getting in as much as I could, without sacrificing the depth and flavour of what was absolutely needed to tell the stories I had to tell.

  Spiritual – the daemon story

  The daemons seemed a natural fit for the spiritual attrition. Much discussion was had in our meetings concerning the psychic shield of the Emperor, and how it held Horus and the Chaos Powers and their daemons at bay. This is a central tenet of belief in the 41st millennium: that by the Emperor’s Will alone is humanity protected, by His sacrifice is the Imperium sustained.

  Throughout the Siege of Terra the challenge the authors have taken onto themselves has been to find the story behind the events. A line in a chronology that says the first daemons appear could be taken many ways. We had already discussed this with regard to Angron’s entrance in The Lost and the Damned, and the arrival of other Chaos-tainted characters, so finding the nuance of what this statement meant lay in uncovering the story behind it.

  We discussed the idea that Horus – the Chaos Gods through Horus – have been battering away at the Emperor’s defences since the start of the siege. What if that shield was undermined from within? There’s plenty of scope for Word Bearers, Alpha Legionnaires and others to perform rituals and such – indeed the seeds have been laid for those events in previous stories.

  The issue is that we’d already had two great ritual moments in the series: the comet that tears open the warp rift in The Solar War and the great octogrammatic slaughter that occurs in The Lost and the Damned. To have another on-the-nose Chaos ritual risked repetition.

  Another approach was needed. It came from one of the great themes of the whole series – the loss of the rational Imperial Truth and the descent into the superstition and religion of the Imperial Creed.

  The question was simple. What if it was actual faith in the Emperor – the very thing He tried to eradicate – that became His Achilles heel?

  That’s not just a plot beat, that’s a story.

  Just as John French went back to the very beginning, to Mersadie Oliton, it made sense to bring the story of Euphrati Keeler full circle. She was the perfect viewpoint for the burgeoning Lectitio Divinitatus.

  It took a bit longer to come up with her ally/antagonist, but a story about a Custodian defending the Palace fit the bill. Amon – the first Custodian we met in Dan Abnett’s early story ‘Blood Games’ – was another nod to the foundational stories of the series. That short had shown us the Palace undergoing its transformation. Amon makes an excellent observer of the results of that change and by bringing in memories of Monarchia, when the Emperor levelled a city that was raised in His worship, he became a perfect foil to the faith of Keeler.

  It was through Keeler’s faith that I was then able to solve the problem of how we would continue to show the conflict between the Emperor and Horus. Through her visions, there was a vehicle for the metaphysical battle to be made into visible metaphor.

  She was drawn across a babbling brook into a broad pasture, where she came upon the greatest tree she had even seen. How she had not observed it before defied logic, but she knew this was a place of faith not reason and accepted it as such.

  The tree stretched beyond the clouds, its sprawling limbs holding up the vault of the heavens themselves. The branches quivered with life, bending beneath their burden, and from this came a tremendous creaking. She listened awhile, trying to hear the voice of the Emperor in the sound of the tree.

  Mental – the army story

  This left the Imperial Army traitors to embody the third of my attrition types. The mental fatigue of war. I had already read The Lost and the Damned by this point, and Guy’s excellent portrayal of the poor, bloody life of an Imperial conscript. He had also shown us some brilliant glimpses of life in the traitor army. Since I knew the outcome – the characters would be traitors – I thought to take the reader on a different journey altogether, and explore a mental attrition far longer in the making.

  With all of these existing storylines and character arcs, I’d have to be crazy to dedicate nearly a third of the book to a new character, right?

  Right.

  But crazy is sometimes the way to go. In this case, there was a simple choice, and that was to approach the traitor army units either as a plot point or a character arc in their own right. To have the ‘turn’ happen off-page seemed deeply unsatisfying.

  In situations like this, sometimes it’s useful to go back to the original source material. In this case, that actually meant the Horus Heresy board game – I own a copy, of course. The Traitor player can use a special card entitled ‘Chaos Cultists’. Here’s what it says:

  Led astray by the whispered promises of the Chaos Gods, once loyal citizens rise up in rebellion against the Imperium.

  It then goes on to say how to place extra cultists units, most importantly:

  …including areas that are behind the front line in Imperial territory.

  What would the whispers of the Chaos Gods be? In the context of the siege at this stage, and the assault on the Lion’s Gate space port, what would have a meaningful impact yet not detract from the efforts of the Imperial Fists and Iron Warriors?

  I decided that the betrayal had to be significant, but not overwhelming. Instead I wanted the moment to deliver an emotional punch to the reader rather than simply being a plot point. I needed the reader to be invested in the story of these soldiers, to will them to success, and then to turn that expectation around.

  The plan formed around a story that was in stark contrast to that of the conscripts in Book Two. This was a force that wanted to be in the battle because, unknown to the reader, this was their only opportunity to strike a blow against the Emperor. We are reminded the Emperor was a warlord, a conqueror of Terra before He began the Great Crusade. Unification was not achieved with kind words alone. And that had fallout.

  This was also an opportunity to show that although the fighting is centred on the Imperial Palace, this is a global war. The idea of a hive city being sucked dry of its resources and then of its people was appealing, and I needed to pick somewhere that would give enough of a journey to get to know some of the characters. We’ve said little enough about Afric, and its distance from Himalazia seemed to fit ideally in a timeline that would have them arrive at a potentially pivotal moment.

  Zenobi had to have a strong, compelling arc. There was some to and fro with the initial drafts on this, as I wrote her story first, and it was too long and dwelt too much on some of the day-to-day experience. It was important that this story was grounded, a normal human with a desire to see through what turns out to be an extraordinary feat.


  Knowing the destination, having worked out how to make the betrayal significant, I then tried to play in as many Imperial tropes as possible. Proto-commissars clamping down on dissent, the rejection of the Lectitio Divinitatus, the fear of infiltration and treachery.

  I also wanted the story to be genuine for the reader. This is not an attempt to trick them, but to let them see another side to the conflict. I didn’t want to pull the rug out from under the reader, simply make them realise that there was a different truth to the story they were reading. There’s still plenty of mystery – are the recruiters agents of Horus or opportunists? Who were the Space Marines that attacked the transfer point? Were they loyalists on a tip-off or the Alpha Legion covering their tracks, perhaps?

  As of writing this, one person that did not know the arc in advance has read the story – fellow author Graham McNeill – and he contacted me to say he’d loved Zenobi’s turn, the moment when she utters those infamous words. I take that as a good sign and hope other readers enjoy this part just as much.

  ‘For freedom! For Addaba!’ she shouted as las-fire ripped into life around her. A series of sharp detonations echoed across the base, plumes of yellow fire erupting within the tank columns and artillery batteries from demolition charges concealed that morning. ‘For the Warmaster!’

  Cartographic Conundrums

  One of the greatest challenges for all of the authors involved in the series is to convey the sheer enormity of the Siege. In recounting massive battles, a writer can lose sense of the emotion and personal action; conversely the interactions between a relative handful of charac­ters can make a continent-spanning war seem like a fight over a city block. This is true of the Lion’s Gate space port too, a ­soaring hive city in its own right, of a size that defies comprehension.

  This challenge is not for the authors alone. Francesca Baerald, the illustrator of the exquisite maps for the Siege of Terra series so far, has had to wrangle with the same impossibilities. These maps therefore, and by necessity, provide a sense of the Palace’s topography and style but are not meant to be geographically literal. The city and the space port are far more intricate and sprawling that any illustrations could realistically convey, but I think the map manages to both fuel the imagination and provide important context for my words.