Let's Read the Horus Heresy 27: Vengeful Spirit

The dead of Dwell were screaming.

 - The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit, Graham McNeill

After the White Scars, I'm taking a gamble on Graham McNeill and Horus. This one's set on Molech and I've got the Adeptus Titanicus expansion named after it, so I expect Knights. We haven't actually seen that much of Horus and his legion, so I kinda miss them.

**

The plot of Vengeful Spirit is basically that Horus thinks there's something very important to the Emperor on Molech, so he's scheming with Fulgrim and Morty to get it. Meanwhile, Malcador and Leman Russ are scheming to kill Horus, so they order ex-Luna Wolf Gavriel Loken to gather a special team to assault Horus's flagship.

If the latter plot sounds pretty much exactly like Nemesis, that's because it is, only Nemesis was better. Loken's team is made up of loyalist marines who are all completely forgettable, except that the contrarian Iron Warrior is called Tubal Cayne. The whole Loken plot is frankly quite boring and meaningless, and the book would have been better without it.

The part where we follow Horus and his new Mournival is much more interesting. It feels a lot like Horus Rising, but with the tragic absence of all the best Luna Wolves. In fact, a lot of the whole thing is practically a direct sequel to Flight of the Eisenstein, which isn't a bad thing at all. McNeill's Horus is light-years better than in False Gods.

The aerial assassination attempt on Horus made me want to get some Fire Raptors for Legions. But while the idea of various loyalist marines randomly attacking Horus like Cato assaulting Inspector Clouseau is very funny, wouldn't you think that if Horus is going to spend quite a bit of time ensconced at a strategically important facility, it would occur to someone to have at least some kind of anti-air defenses, or even surveillance radar, around? Especially since soon after, we're given detailed descriptions of the air defences on Molech.

Luckily most of the middle part of the book is dedicated to the Sons of Horus and the fighting on Molech. For some reason, the initial battle Horus leads is a practically suicidal frontal assault on a strongly fortified loyalist position, and most of the other fighting doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. I will say that the boarding shields definitely make me want to build some breacher squads. It says a lot about GW's priorities that we got a new edition of Horus Heresy before we got all of the troop choices in plastic.

The fighting is good, though, and Horus's schemes make for good epic space opera. It feels like ages since the plot's properly advanced, and now it has. There's good stuff with Knights and Titans and so on, even if the goings-on in Knight House Devine are quite sordid. That and the sheer length of the book are more than a bit Fulgrim, but this is much, much better. I think Vengeful Spirit could have done without about half of its sideplots and characters, but as a Horus Heresy novel, it's actually quite good.

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So here we are: Horus is on his way to Terra and I'm recommending Graham McNeill and avoiding Dan Abnett. It's a strange old galaxy.

Epic: The Ikteros Pattern Basilisk

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Legions Imperialis army must be in want of artillery. So obviously my Solar Auxilia need some Basilisks. But there's a problem: I can't tolerate the miniature in Legions at all.

**

The so-called Mars-Auxilia pattern Basilisk is an Earthshaker gun on a Leman Russ chassis. Or more accurately, it's an Earthshaker gun sticking out of a turretless, slightly extended Leman Russ hull, and I think it's ludicrous even for a Warhammer vehicle.

If you look at the layout of a Leman Russ, the engine simply has to be at the back of the hull. With the turret, sponsons, driver's position and hull gun, there's really nowhere else it can be. So on the Mars-Auxilia Basilisk, the breech where the gun is loaded, the fighting compartment around it, and the ammunition, would all need to be exactly where the engine is. This seems to be confirmed by the large door on the back of the vehicle.

I can't make this make any amount of sense, and even if it somehow did, that fighting compartment is just way too damn tiny. More to the point, that thing doesn't look anything like a proper self-propelled gun. Compare, for instance, the Armageddon pattern Basilisk, which does. I think I need to try to do something about this.

**

The Basilisk hull is made up of a top and bottom bit.

I cut the top of the fighting compartment off with a hobby knife, which was fairly easy.

And drilled a little hole in the bottom hull.

I then glued together the two hull halves.

And glued a cocktail stick in the hole to hold the roof up at the proper height.

This makes for what looks like an appropriately sized fighting compartment to me.

It leaves a bit more to be filled in on the left side.

Then it was just a matter of a little green stuff work, finished off with some putty.

This, then, is the Ikteros pattern Basilisk. It's not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but I think it's perfectly adequate on the tabletop.

Produced on forge world Ikteros, home of Legio Venefica, the Ikteros pattern mounts a substantial fighting compartment on the Leman Russ hull, keeping the crew and their ammunition supply safe while allowing room to work the gun.

Ikteros pattern Basilisks are fielded by the Yat-Kha Shock Cohorts of the Solar Auxilia, who appreciate the vehicle's capacity for sustained operations in hostile environments.

**

This was a fun little conversion to do! It may not be the prettiest thing ever, but I'm happy with it and it was a good learning experience with green stuff. I've already found a Solar Auxilia sub-cohort to be an excellent allied formation to include, and I'm definitely bringing the Basilisks in my next game as well.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 26: Scars

He rolled onto his front, coughing blood between broken teeth.

 - The Horus Heresy: Scars, Chris Wraight

We're here with Chris Wraight, who I've read a couple of short stories from that I liked, and the White Scars, the space Mongolian horde of Warhammer. I have to admit that I know practically nothing about the White Scars other than what I just said, but I do have an abiding interest in all things Mongolian, so why not play some Hu and give this a shot.

**

Scars follows several characters, starting with two neophyte Marines and going on to include the primarch, a female Departmento Munitorum officer, and a Librarian, or whatever it was they call them in the White Scars.

The Librarian, separated from the rest of the legion, ends up traveling with a motley crew of Salamanders and Iron Hands. There's a fun detail when they capture a Word Bearer ship:

The Word Bearers had done something very strange to their machines.

They no longer output binaric derivatives, but seemed to operate on a base-four internal mechanic, the reason for which eluded him completely.

I assume it's base-four because of the four Chaos gods, and I love it.

There's a couple of slightly silly scenes in the book, but overall I think it's well-written and I like how the story slots in to the general Horus Heresy narrative. The White Scars have been off on their own, so when the Heresy starts breaking out, they don't know what's going on or who to trust. They face off against the Alpha Legion, go to Prospero to see what happened to the Thousand Sons, and as all this is going on, the warrior lodges in the legion are mounting a coup. It's good stuff.

What I didn't expect is that Scars goes into what happened at Nikaea quite a bit. Apparently one of the few pre-existing details about the White Scars in the Heresy was that Jagathai supported the Librarius, and here they end up being one of the legions - along with the woofs, of all people! - who refused to disband their psykers. I said before that Nikaea seems to have been a terrible mistake, and there's a suggestion here that Horus actually engineered the whole thing, or at least set it up to fail, to some extent. It makes sense, but still leaves us with the question of what on earth were Emps and Malcador thinking.

**

Anyway, Scars is just a really good Horus Heresy novel, and an excellent deep dive into a legion that I really knew nothing about.