A Study of the Reconstruction
From Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
A Study of the Reconstruction was a historical account penned by Diomedon of Luna. It focused on the era following the Horus Heresy.[1a]
Excerpts
| Excerpt |
| "The error of history is to assume greater awareness of circumstances at the time than ever existed; to imagine those of the past knew precisely and with insight what was the case then, what was about to be the case, and what they must do to bring about their desired outcome. So it must be with those days, the days I have made my own study. Will the age come to have its own marker, as the Age of Heresy now has? Will the period become a byword for some particular human failing or accomplishment? Surely it will. And yet, even now, so long after the ashes have cooled, I do not know what it shall be. I propose this, with caution: the Age of Confusion. Or maybe, the Age of Ignorance. For it was this way; there was no certainty, and no ready means of discovering it. As a gravely wounded Terra emerged from its seven-year trial into the fog of a new era, be sure of this one truth: nobody, not a soul, from the greatest of generals to the humblest of soldiers, had the faintest idea what to do next."[1a] |
| "One feature of that critical moment, when no direction had yet been set and all was still to play for, was the gap between prestige and power. The Lord of Ultramar had so little of the former – he had not been present during the great confrontation between his father and the Traitor – but he had more of the latter than ever before. He was incontestable in that, the one remaining titan in a diminished field. The opposite was true of those who had manned the walls. The Lord of Angels was no more, but was venerated with a fervour greater than he had ever enjoyed in life. The Great Khan was a shadow, his sons exhausted and scattered, and yet no one scorned the savage any longer. And Rogal Dorn, the great Praetorian himself, what was his fate? To be loved, finally, by an Imperium that had never felt warmth towards him. But also to be weak. To be alone. And worst of all, in consequence of that, to be pitied."[1b] |
| "No records state with any precision when the First and VI Legion vanguards arrived on Holy Terra. Some chroniclers place the reunion prior to the lifting of the Siege, though a majority of sources agree that the rendezvous occurred later, albeit while significant fighting remained throughout the Sol System. Controversy also remains over the extent of their contribution. Some maintain that the additional loyalist assets brought by the primarchs Russ and El’Jonson made the subsequent reconquest faster, while others assert that the addition of their military forces was minimal in contrast to the overwhelming Ultramarines presence, and that the insertion of rival generals actively hindered effective actions prior to the reformation of the Legions. What can be stated with more certainty is that the reunion on Terra decisively marked the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. With the exception of Corax, who was destined to remain forever outside Imperial command structures, all surviving primarchs of the original Crusade were now together again. The prospect of a second Ullanor loomed large, even to the extent that calls were made to appoint a new Warmaster. That concentrated minds, and it established possibilities. But it must also be remembered that for all those who took heart at the regathering of such power, there were others who felt nothing but dread. If it was true that the primarchs had ultimately saved the Imperium, it was also true that the primarchs had cast it into the flames. The more powerful they became, and the more it became possible to imagine their old magnificence being rekindled, the more widely dissenting voices were heard. Perhaps it would have been better if they hadn’t all come back, said some. Perhaps it would have been better, it was even whispered, if they had never been in charge to begin with."[1c] |
| "Very soon after the raising of the Siege, an index was drawn up, a list of names, circulated at the highest levels of the Imperial command in order to shape the immediate military response. It consisted solely of those surviving individuals held most responsible by the Imperium for the crimes committed against it. Authorship of the index was never confirmed, but few doubt it came from Dorn’s hand. The value of the document, preserved now only in a single manuscript copy within the Terran archives, comes not so much from the number of names on the list, but their order, which the author took pains to arrange by value. The field captains of the enemy, such as Ezekyle Abaddon, Typhus and Erebus were of course prominent. No mention was made of the primarch Konrad Curze, even though he was believed to be alive at the time. Perturabo, the architect of the Siege itself, ranked highly, which was to be expected, but he was not the most sought-after figure despite the devastation he had caused. The highest-value name on the list was one who had not even been on Terra, and who had left the main traitor alliance long before the ships had arrived in the Sol System: Lorgar Aurelian, the so-called First Heretic. Time had done nothing to diminish the bitterness felt towards this initial, critical act of treachery. There is no evidence that the index was ever taken up by the Senatorum as a guide to policy, but it should never be forgotten that in the time when memory of the Heresy’s destruction was most vivid, and when hatreds were at their absolute peak, the one they wanted most, and the one for whom Dorn was prepared to deploy the entire residual strength of the battered Imperium, was Lorgar."[1d] |
| "It was the Palace that endured the worst of the fighting, as is well known. Less well known is that virtually no part of Terra escaped without catastrophic damage. While the best elements of the Traitor’s forces were concentrated on the main prize, significant numbers of less capable soldiers roved all across the globe, given freedom to do so by the total orbital superiority they enjoyed. The slaughter in those places was monstrous, since few defenders of any stature could be spared from the Himalazian battle zones. The numbers of the slain will never be known – the final tally was certainly in the billions. It must not be assumed, though, that their loss was without significance. The atrocities committed in the Terran provinces were among the worst of the war, and never forgotten by those few who survived. Widely published accounts contributed more to the desire for vengeance than nearly any other cause, and were considered crucial by contemporary administrators in turning the atmosphere on the world from one of shock to one of resolve. So much so, indeed, that levies raised from Terra in the years to come often outperformed troops from the harshest death worlds and were highly valued by commanders. ‘We always knew how to fight,’ as the proverbial saying went, ‘but it was the Traitor who taught us to hate.’"[1e] |
| "When we talk of those times, we use terms that we recognise: Space Marines, Custodians, High Lords. It is natural, therefore, to assume that the nature of them is common between the two ages. It is not. All institutions were changed by that war. The Space Marines we venerate now, and rarely see, resemble their earlier brothers in form and function, but do not be fooled – they are new creations. The weapons and armour are much the same, as are some formations and tactical divisions, but crucial elements have undergone lasting transformation. Their minds are not what they were. Their dispositions are not what they were. Their imaginations, which beforehand were much as free as ours, have been curtailed. Their judgement on matters outside war has been limited. They are now both less and greater than the baseline human, a weapon forged solely against corruption. It was not always so, and yet history demanded the change. Too much blood had been shed, and too many had turned against their creator, for the old freedoms to be permitted. It happened quickly, this change, making use of protocols already in development within several separate institutions on Terra. There was no gradual progression, no slow evolution of the new type. Even as the last echoes of the Traitor’s demise ebbed through the wounded galaxy, the troops destined to replace their forefathers were being schooled and shaped into their new nature. Those who reconquered the galaxy would not, despite superficial similarities, be the ones who had first won it for humanity."[1f]|}} |
| "Their political enemies accused the Astartes of having narrow parameters, of failing to consider their purpose in the future in favour of the immediate priorities of war. This was, and always had been, entirely false. The Astartes had always been acutely conscious of their place within the Imperium, their strange role as semi-autonomous powers granted enormous licence, both valued and mistrusted by those at the Imperial centre. Indeed, it can be argued that excessive introspection over such issues was a major cause of the Great War, given the anxiety – even paranoia – about their function once the Crusade concluded. And even in those first campaigns of reconquest, during years of far greater uncertainty, the speculation never ceased. They were never simply fighting to regain territory. In every case, down to the level of each and every single legionary, they were fighting to establish a role, a place within a galaxy that from all sides now positively hated them and wished that they had never been created."[1g] |
| "The Cult of Sanguinius, which in later days was to become such an essential part of the mature Imperium, was slow to emerge. Why? Because very few outside the Senatorum and the Legions knew that the primarch had died. It was not broadcast. Even after the worst of the confusion was over and the capability existed once more to transmit accurate information to the masses, they were never told. The greater part of Terra’s population would have assumed, reasonably enough, that the Great Angel had returned from the war to govern them again alongside his brothers. The very first proto-religious ceremonies centred around primarch sacrifice were therefore focused on Ferrus the Martyr, who immediately after the lifting of the Siege was venerated far more than his brother. Why was the information suppressed for so long? To maintain morale, in the main – Sanguinius had been loved in life, and it was feared that news of his death would tip an already febrile populace over the edge. A secondary reason was the concern felt across the Senatorum over the state of the IX Legion; classified reports were rife with rumours that they had become unstable, and that a grand declaration of martyrdom would provoke repeat outbreaks of mania. So it was that nothing at all was said of Sanguinius, greatest and most beloved of the loyalist primarchs, until cautious minds deemed it safe to do so. The effect that this deception had on his surviving sons is hard to gauge. Their own thoughts on the matter, as well as on the later sacralisation of his death by outsiders, are not recorded."[1h] |
| "Many human institutions predated the Imperium. Those holdovers had only ever been tolerated because He protected them and had allowed them to flourish. Once He was no longer speaking, they were more vulnerable than any others. It was easy to forget about them altogether, despite the fact that were they to disappear, the entire structure would collapse. So they had to live. They had to find a way to endure. And the older they were, the longer they had been around and the more horrors they had witnessed, the more ruthlessly and effectively they had to fight. Survival was by no means guaranteed, even for the most ancient. Who now remembers the Thunder Warriors? The name has become meaningless to Terrans, and yet once they had been called Conquerors. That fate now became a warning to others, the price that would be paid for weakness, the penalty for ignoring the warnings of history."[1i] |
| "We had dreamed of being children of a new age, ones that would arise to claim our birthright, but we were mistaken. Our fate was even worse than that of the xenos, for we did not destroy it all but, by surviving, doomed ourselves to slow paralysis. We would be forever the children of a frozen war, locked within it like an insect trapped in amber.
Now all we have is violence, and all we own is grief. We must learn to live with that. We must learn, in time, to love it, or we will perish yet, and with us the galaxy itself."[1j] |
