Pharos
Page 39
The entity processed the message the eyes provided without ever truly awakening. Automatically, instinctively, its gargantuan, dreaming mind analysed the signal, comparing it against all parameters for the one thing it sought.
Prey.
Slowly, glacially, the great devourer shifted its course.
Afterword
Night falls.
Those two words are evocative of so much: the collapse of the Imperium, Night Lords falling upon their victims, the dying of the Emperor’s dream, the return of Old Night, and of course it is almost the name of Konrad Curze’s flagship.
This is a story that marks the beginning of the end for Imperium Secundus, and with it what we might consider the second act of the Horus Heresy. The betrayal has been enacted. Horus rampages unopposed across the stars. The loyalists have reacted and begun to recover from their shock. Roboute Guilliman’s desperate ‘practical’ of establishing a new Imperium is a solid reality, yet still the galaxy burns as he and his brothers skulk unknowingly at the edge of events. The three loyalist primarchs on Macragge are certain that the Emperor must be dead.
So much depends on the overturning of that opinion, and it all begins here.
Pharos had to convey all this, to establish what has happened in Imperium Secundus in those fateful months since the Thramas Crusade, to unpick the mystery of the Pharos, to establish what the Night Lords have been doing after their shattering at the Lion’s hands, and to lay the groundwork for what is yet to come. Though Pharos isn’t quite the starting grid for the final race to Terra, it’s certainly in sight. And as every Black Library novel must, it had to be a rip-roaring adventure in its own right, a tale of heroism, insurmountable darkness, and hope.
As you can imagine, this was quite a big ask for my first full-length foray into the Horus Heresy. The honour of being asked to contribute to Games Workshop’s most popular novel series (and a New York Times bestselling one at that!) vied equally in my mind with the fear of messing it up.
Writing fiction of this kind presents a host of challenges. Continuity is perhaps the most pressing, especially so far into the series. I was a latecomer to the Heresy, and although I have done my utmost to familiarise myself with its many subplots and characters, it is impossible to hold them all in one’s own head. For keeping both me and the story in line, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to Laurie Goulding, the Horus Heresy series editor.
I’ve written several Warhammer 40,000 books, but the universe of the 31st millennium is a very different place, and to capture the tone of it a significant redecoration of headspace was required. This is an era of primarchs, of hundreds of thousands of Space Marines. It is a less superstitious era, but one where the terrible powers of the warp have revealed themselves.
The roots of the future lie in the past. Perhaps the 41st millennium could never have been any other way?
Questions of predeterminism fascinate me, it is something that I come back to over and over in my own thoughts and therefore inevitably in my fiction, and I could not pass up the chance to examine this through Sanguinius and Konrad Curze – two primarchs who are in many respects opposite sides of the same coin.
Curze is my favourite of the Emperor’s sons. To my mind he possesses a depth that some of his brothers lack. Of all of them, he knows the most. He is a tragic figure, so close to redemption, but never quite reaching it. If we look distastefully on his less savoury habits, perhaps we can forgive him. He is, after all, insane.
History lies as heavily on the inhabitants of the 31st millennium as it does on Curze (and indeed on us too). What Curze possesses is an awareness of this truth. Through the Pharos we have a glimpse of deep history of the galaxy. The Horus Heresy is, after all, only the latest flare up of a war that has raged since long before mankind existed. As someone intrigued by the deep time of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, even just hinting at that broader struggle was immensely satisfying.
No grand story is complete without its players. From great post-human primarchs to the lowliest human line trooper, they are small in the face of time and space no matter how mighty they appear to their fellows, but each is a universe unto himself. To allow us to experience that vicariously is the great gift of fiction. As the struggle for the galaxy proceeds, it is reflected in microcosm in the war for the hearts and souls of men, even within the ranks of the Night Lords.
It is easy to regard the sons of Curze as cartoon villains, bloody fiends as relentless as any B-movie maniac. I was keen not to depict them as such. The Legiones Astartes who make up the warriors of the murderous VIII Legion surely did not leap from their mother’s arms intent on torture and death. The process by which a man becomes a monster is another thing that intrigues me, and I was keen to explore it.
Furthermore, although the Night Lords look down upon those who have already given themselves to the Ruinous Powers, they are not immune to the manipulations and influences of the neverborn. Pharos was my opportunity to explore that for the first time.
We cannot ignore that which awaits us all: the final curtain of death. Authors tend to fall in love with their creations, and no matter their original plans for their heroes and villains, often shield them from the ultimate end. As someone concerned with the progression of time, the role of fate, and the intersection of fleeting life with the cold mechanisms of reality, death preoccupies me. A great war rages, and there will be casualties, some of them dear to us. I am rather bloody handed in that regard, I am afraid. Death lives in my keyboard.
Finally, a word on Black Library itself. A lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy, I have nevertheless been rather ambivalent about tie-in fiction. It never felt ‘real’ to me, as any story or novel is so easily overwritten by the next movie or TV show (although my fellow author James Swallow, through many discussions, has convinced me of tie-in fiction’s many other merits).
Black Library stories do not feel that way. They have always felt ‘real’.
In writing these books I am engaged directly in the feeding of these fantastic universes. I have been involved in the Games Workshop hobby since 1984, and it has played a huge part in my personal and professional life. To contribute to so august a series as the Horus Heresy is nothing but an enormous privilege. As readers, it is your positive reception of my previous Black Library stories that has allowed me to do this, so thank you all.
Guy Haley
September 2015
About the Author
Guy Haley is the author of the Space Marine Battles novel Death of Integrity, the Warhammer 40,000 novels Valedor and Baneblade, and the novellas The Eternal Crusader, The Last Days of Ector and Broken Sword, for Damocles. His enthusiasm for all things greenskin has also led him to pen the eponymous Warhammer novel Skarsnik, as well as the End Times novel The Rise of the Horned Rat. He lives in Yorkshire with his wife and son.
Macragge’s Honour
Following the attack on Calth, the Word Bearers battle-barge Infidus Imperator is pursued across the galaxy by the Ultramarines flagship under the tireless command of Marius Gage.
Click here to buy Macragge’s Honour.
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