Maleum Datum : 584.M34
The rise of the Cacodominus and the Pale Wasting had reminded Horus that, for all his power and influence in the Eye of Terror and beyond, there were still things in the galaxy beyond his ability to control or predict. This was not a pleasant reminder for the Prince of the Eye, who had salvaged his wounded pride after the Siege of Terra and the Broken Conclave by engineering the current form of the Long War. To be forced to confront that fact that he was but a player on the stage rather than the puppetmaster was a sobering thought, but it did nothing to make him reconsider his ambition. No matter the cost or how winding the path, he would ascend to his rightful place as the true Master of Mankind and lord of the galaxy.
His attempt to influence the secretive Leagues of Votann and turn them to his side had also ended in failure, with the Leagues closing their borders to all outsiders in an effort to keep themselves free of the taint of Chaos. Yet the failure hadn't been absolute : by isolating themselves, the squat abhumans had also removed the possibility of them rejoining the Imperium and bringing their ancient technology in service to the rest of Humanity. This, Horus saw, was how he must act from now on : not with a singular plan upon whose success rested the entire war, but with many, each of which tailored so as to benefit him in the long-term regardless of the outcome, each with the potential of shifting the entire balance of galactic power.
One of these plans had been centuries in the making, and at last all the pieces were in place. The Imperium was still recovering from the war against the Pale Wasting and the loss of Guilliman, whose leadership had played a large part in keeping the Ultima Segmentum under control since the Heresy. Sanguinius was far from the centers of Imperial power, gone fighting xenos empires enslaved by the Ruinous Powers in their more dreadful aspects, those which they hid from Humanity in order to prosper in the Long War's more subtle games.
It began with a single astropathic message, sent by the Governor of Pandora in the Veiled Region to the Inquisition. In it, the Governor, who was secretly in league with the Warmaster of Chaos, reported unrest on his world, and sigils of the Ruinous Powers being observed among the insurgents. As a faithful servant of the God-Emperor, the Governor now called for aid, that his people may receive the Inquisition's most holy aid and his world preserved from the taint of heresy.
By this point the Ordos had centuries of experience fighting the cults sponsored by the Traitor Legions, and the forces they dispatched to Pandora were veterans of this type of investigation and purging. They were on the look-out for any sign of the Heretic Astartes' involvement, and soon their interrogation of captured cultists revealed the presence of one of the transhuman traitors on Pandora. After much adventure, the Inquisitors managed to corner the heretic in question, in the stronghold he had built in the depths of Pandora Prime's underhive.
His name was Obidiah Hrakon, and he was one of the Fallen, who had been delivered to Pandora straight from Caliban by Luther's last spell. The machinations of Horus had ensured his arrival on a world already sworn to the Prince of the Eye's cause, and the rebellion the Fallen had joined in his bitterness at the Imperium that had destroyed his homeworld had been carefully cultivated to draw the Inquisition's eye, but not that of the ever-watchful First Legion.
Obidiah fought well, but he was just one Space Marine in the end, and through the intervention of deep-cover Horusian agents the Fallen Angel was captured alive and put to the question. His gene-seed was tested, and proved to be of the First Legion. This by itself wasn't that alarming : all Loyalist Legions had their renegades, though none liked to discuss it and all considered it a source of deep shame. But Obidiah's testimony, a tale of rebellion hearkening back to the Horus Heresy itself and which had, according to him, divided the Dark Angels themselves, was unprecedented.
Of course, the Inquisition didn't put much worth in the word of a single traitor. But this required investigation nonetheless, especially as there were records in the Ordos' archives of warriors in the defiled livery of the First Legion fighting alongside the Sons of Horus during the Black Crusade that had preceded the Proclamation. Records of Obidiah's confession and images of his armor were compiled into a data-archive and sent to the Dark Angels' mobile stronghold of the Rock, to inform them of Obidiah's capture, interrogation, and subsequent execution at the hand of the Holy Ordos. An Inquisitor was chosen to accompany this package, in order to impress upon the Dark Angels the importance of ongoing loyalty and vigilance against the taint of Chaos, which can creep into even the stoutest of fortresses if given but a moment's opportunity.
The first phase of Horus' plan was complete.
Aboard the Penitent's Blade, Inquisitor Gabriel Heno'defor journeyed across half the galaxy in search of the Rock. His quest lasted for years, and took him to other worlds where he did the work of the Ordo Hereticus, pausing for weeks or months while his ship repaired and refuelled before departing again, a trail of blazing pyres and quieter deaths marking his passage. Eventually, ten years after the events of Pandora, he found the mobile fortress-monastery of the Dark Angels. Using his authority as an Inquisitor, he demanded an audience with Armaros, the twelfth Supreme Grand Master and leader of the First Legion in the absence of Lion El'Jonson.
Even one such as Armaros, who held authority and power to rival that of the High Lords, had to grant such a request. For millennia, the Dark Angels had kept their shameful history from the Imperium, as well as from the other Primarchs. Even among the Dark Angels themselves, only a select few, the Inner Circle, were aware of the truth of what had transpired during the final days of Caliban : the rest of the Legion had been kept ignorant, through vows of secrecy imposed in the aftermath of Luther's rebellion upon those who had fought in that final battle. They had hunted down the Fallen with alacrity, and their obsession with secrecy and deep-seated paranoia born from the Lion's blood and Luther's betrayal had served them well in the centuries since the Proclamation had altered the nature of the Long War. Now, however, these gifts would turn against them.
Armaros was shocked to his core when Heno'defor told him of Obidiah Hrakon's capture on Pandora. The traitor's name was on the records of the Fallen that the First Legion had recovered from Caliban's ruins. For one of the Fallen to be slain by the Inquisition without being given a chance to repent in the Rock's cells was one thing, hardly unexpected given how far Luther's followers had been spread. There had been several times when this had happened already, with the hunters of the Deathwing following rumors of a Fallen's presence only to find the Inquisition had already killed them.
But for the Ordos to have a transcript of Caliban's end, however partial and limited; for them to know of the ancient shame, even if only in a single renegade's words; this was Armaros' every nightmare made real. In the days following the destruction of their homeworld and the disappearance of their Primarch, the Dark Angels had concealed the truth out of fear as much as shame, and the centuries of keeping the truth hidden had only added new sins to their tally. Nowadays, Armaros believed, like most of the Inner Circle, that the Imperium would destroy the First Legion if it learned the truth – and that was something the Supreme Grand Master couldn't accept, not while there were still Fallen to hunt and the Lion to honor.
The Inquisitor noted his host's distress, but assumed it was due to learning that one of his Legion had turned renegade. He reassured the Supreme Grand Master that the downfall of one did not invalid the faithfulness of the many, for indeed even Inquisitors had succumbed to the lures of heresy in the past. Gabriel reminded Armaros of his Legion's long and loyal service to the Imperium, of how the Lion had fought without pause or respite during the Heresy, expecting no reward for his loyalty as the galaxy burned. Still, they must all remain vigilant, which was the core of the message the Conclave had tasked him with delivering to the First Legion.
And, of course, he added, the Inquisition didn't believe Obidiah's mad story was true. But even if it were, it would not mean the loyal Dark Angels should be punished for it. There were precedents for this sort of things, and a Legion couldn't be blamed for the actions of a small group, else the entire Legiones Astartes would have been purged after the Heresy.
Armaros wasn't completely reassured : centuries of imagining worst-case scenarii couldn't be so easily dismissed. But the panic that had dawned on him when the Inquisitor had first spoken settled. He did not reveal the truth of Caliban's fate to Gabriel, but as he led him back to his gunship and the transport left the Rock to return to the Penitent's Blade, the Supreme Grand Master began to consider that perhaps his Legion should reconsider their position on secrecy, once they made sure that Heno'defor's position was sincere and shared by enough members of his organisation.
Then a phase blade buried itself through his back, piercing through his two hearts and bursting out of his chest. He died just as his mind recognised the weapon as a favorite of the Callidus Temple of the Officio Assassinorum, and his final thought was that he had been deceived.
His body was found moments later, and before the Penitent's Blade could activate its Warp engine, it was shot to pieces by the Rock's vengeful guns, the Dark Angels convinced that the Inquisition had just murdered their Legion Master. Armaros had made sure that his meeting with Gabriel was listened on by a handful of his trusted officers, all members of the Inner Circle, who now believed that the day they had all feared had finally come.
The first shots of the Unforgiven War had been fired. Meanwhile, on the Rock, a pale creature known only as the Blade of Ptesh hid within a gunship sent to investigate the wreckage of the Penitent's Blade, killing everyone aboard and taking the craft to a small vessel hidden in the system years ago. Its engines, designed and assembled in the Forge of Souls itself, ignited, and the ship vanished, taking its solitary occupant back to the servants of its employer, whose brand burned upon its alien skin, compelling service in return for continued life and protection from She-Who-Thirsts.
The second phase of Horus' plan was complete, but the trials of the First Legion were far from over.
AN : And here is the first part of the new narrative arc of Prince of the Eye. I am going to focus on this story for now, in the hope of finishing it before the end of the month (but we'll see how this goes). So you can expect more frequent updates.
The story arc of the Dark Angels in canon has always perplexed me. From what I have read, including the stuff from the Horus Heresy, it really seems like the whole mess with Caliban could have been avoided if Lion El'Jonson had just talked with Luther like a normal person. Seriously, the fandom riffs on Perturabo for being asocial, but the Lion makes him look like a master of social graces. And the obsession with keeping the Fallen's existence a secret even at the cost of killing other Imperial subjects and abandoning them to die in order to hunt the Fallen ... I mean, it's not like they are the only ones with renegades, you know ? Every loyalist Legion had them.
The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that the Dark Angels were already being regarded with suspicion by the Imperium at large at the end of the Heresy due to not having been there in full force for the Siege and having spent the Heresy far away in the Thramas Crusade, and because they were paranoid (which is excusable given the circumstances) the commanders thought they needed to keep the truth hidden.
Then you get centuries of things fading into legend and hearsay, the hunt for the Fallen calcifying into an obsession, and the Dark Angels become their current, grimdark selves. Really, there is a reason I made them the Tzeentchian Legion in the Roboutian Heresy.
As always, please tell me what you thought of this chapter.
Zahariel out.