The Horus Heresy was so momentous that its consequences are still being felt over 10,000 years on. The climax of this epic rebellion was the Siege of Terra, when the forces of Warmaster Horus finally stood before the Emperor’s walls and battered their way inside. The tale is told across the novels of the Siege of Terra series from Black Library.
This weekend, the eighth – The End and the Death: Volume I by Dan Abnett – will be upon us, closing out the series in a multi-part spectacular. It’s one of the most important narrative events in Warhammer history, and to make sure you’re all caught up before the awe-inspiring climax, we’ve put together a guide to the major moments.
It all starts with The Solar War by John French, when the traitor armada smashed its way past the formidable defences of the Sol System through a combination of warp trickery and classic Alpha Legion shenanigans.* While Perturabo secures the outer planets, Abaddon and his gang of Horusian heroes crack open a portal between Luna and Mars, allowing tens of thousands of traitor vessels to pour right onto Terra’s doorstep.
The traitors make their landing in The Lost and the Damned by Guy Haley, swarming Loyalist lines with hordes of cultists, conscripts, and mutants in a bid to overwhelm the mighty Aegis shield dome protecting the Imperial Palace. After weeks of bloody battle, the weight of the traitor assault – combined with a ritual conducted by the Thousand Sons – exhausts the Aegis and the Palace itself lies open.
Up to this point, daemons have been locked out of the battle by the Emperor’s sheer indomitable will, and Perturabo realises that he’s possibly the only traitor Primarch who actually cares about the siege. Horus is locked in a psychic battle with his father, Mortarion is content to lob poxes over the walls and wait, Fulgrim is building a chair made of corpses, Angron is doing Angron things, while Magnus is nowhere to be found.
To keep the momentum going, Perturabo stages a bold attack on the Lion’s Gate spaceport in The First Wall by Gav Thorpe. Though at first it fails, a spirited two-pronged attack eventually takes the port, and though Rogal Dorn and Perturabo come face-to-face during the battle, neither attempts to engage the other.
Things start to look up for the Loyalist defenders in Saturnine by Dan Abnett. A massed traitor charge on the eponymous gate is blunted by intervention from Rogal Dorn, and hand-picked strike teams wreak havoc on the Sons of Horus in a massive underground battle. Dorn nearly kills Fulgrim, Garviel Loken nearly kills Abaddon, but many loyal heroes die in the process – the siege hangs in the balance.
Mortis by John French escalates the conflict as a colossal Titan battle erupts over the Ultimate Wall, with the Legio Mortis and Legio Ignatum knocking seven bells out of each other. Perturabo is relieved of his position by Horus and storms out of the Sol system, but the Warmaster’s forces break through to the inner palace with the help of the corrupted Imperator Titan Dies Irae.
Jaghatai Khan is understandably upset by the loss of the Lion’s Gate spaceport and resolves to take it back in Warhawk by Chris Wraight, at the head of a huge Imperial counter-offensive. The White Scars make it all the way to the port but get bogged down fighting the Death Guard inside, and a climactic duel between Jaghatai and Mortarion ends with the former seemingly dead and the latter banished to the Warp.
Traitor forces reach the Eternity Gate in Echoes of Eternity by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, and there’s an iconic duel between Ka’bandha and Sanguinius atop the last Imperial walls. Sanguinius breaks the daemon’s back and hurls it into the ravening hordes below, before crossing swords with Angron himself and barely beating the Daemon Primarch.
With Loyalist backs against the wall, Roboute Guilliman’s reinforcements are only a week away. But with the Vengeful Spirit now in low orbit and millions more Traitors massing for the final push, there may not be a week left.
The final piece of the saga begins when The End and The Death: Volume I comes to pre-orders this Saturday, including an awesome Limited Edition with internal illustrations, a foldout map of the Imperial Palace, and a faux-leather cover matching other Siege of Terra Limited Editions.
* They’d stolen a map of the Loyalist defences long before the traitors’ arrival.