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THE TALE OF ASTELAN
PART FIVE
The forhts before he started, pushing himself back up onto the table He spoke slowly, purposefully, his voice betraying none of his physical andI have told you, if you wish It is a reht find hard to accept If you cannot recognise th of what you have already heard, then your masters have trained you well, and your loyalty does you credit But your loyalty isof it Your only loyalty is to the Eet that Consider that fact when you listen to what I tell you now Of the many truths I have to reveal to you, this is the els considered themselves damned by the sha Their daan when Caliban was rediscovered, and Lion El’Jonson took coion’
Astelan paused and watched Boreas’s face It was as expressionless as ever, his stare dark and intense
’Continue,’ the Chaplain said
’For ten thousand years, the Dark Angels have sought to atone for what happened on Caliban This I learned froh your own actions and words You have shrouded yourselves in secrecy, suppressed all knowledge of those events, and eliminated all evidence that the Fallen exist Even within your own ranks, you have created tiers of secrecy so that even the battle-brothers of the Chapter are unaware of their true origins Like a coven of malcon­tents, you whisper to each other in the shadows You conspire to carry out your quest away fro you do It is not because of the Horus Heresy, it is not because Luther and I, and others like us, fought with our own brethren It is not because the shame of our sins must never been known to others All of these are excuses, fab­rications, justifications to hide the truth And the truth is so si There was a darkness within Lion El’Jonson A darkness you all carry within you It surrounds you, yet you are blind to its presence Intrigue, secrets, lies and acy of your pri­march’
’And whatexplanation, but listen to it in its entirety,’ Astelan told hie of Imperium Ancient Earth suffers froulfs mankind A visionary sees the way to lead huuide man back to the stars We know him only as the E an arates the barbarian tribes that dominate Ancient Earth and creates a new society, that of Terra, the foundation of the I, fast, intelligent and loyal, He strives even further to perfect His vision, and creates the beings known as the priels
The primarchs were the perfect creations, far superior to any mortal enes that would alaxy Quite what the Emperor intended will never be known, for the primarchs were taken from Him, in much the same way as you say those of us who sided with Luther were taken froht thealaxy, awaiting rediscovery The pri to try, and He founded the Space Marine Legions instead Using what gene-seed He had reels, and the other Legions, and so the First Founding was coan and ept out into the stars on a great war of conquest As planets fell to us, or were brought back into the fold of the growing Imperium, we raised nearriors and created new Space Marines froions were kept at full strength
Over time, the primarchs were rediscovered They had not been slain, but instead had been flung to the corners of the galaxy, awakening as infants on hurew up in huions which had been created froion that bore their gene-seed, and the Great Crusade continued
Much of this is known to you, I aends, you can still see the evidence of what I aht have been that their gene-seed was not as perfect as the Eained influence over them while they were separated from the Emperor But there is another, ions becaene-seed was used directly to raise new Chapters for the Legions, and they became the commanders Their per­sonality and that of their hoions, so that their battle-brothers became but lesser reflections of their primarchs They, of course, shared a common homeworld, their people had raised the primarchs as their own Still, this does not explain fully the effect the priions they commanded
The reason, I believe, that the priions became as one with each other is because the pri­marchs learned how to be human from their homeworlds When Lee ice world ruled by barbarian warriors He grew up to be fiercely loyal, impetuous and unorthodox, just like those who had raised hie, he had been tutored in life by statesists and leaders of society, and was fa plan to the smallest detail Think about it The primarchs had to learn how to be human
Perhaps it was unavoidable, or perhaps it had always been the Emperor’s intent to raise and educate them as his own sons Whatever the cause, the prience, were a blank slate They learned well and they learned quickly, but at the heart of the matter is the fact that they had to learn how to be hu far above and beyond a normal human Our bodies bear only a physical reseene-seed and i far from normal men We were not chosen on our physical suitability alone We, like the prient, dextrous and quick ofand a lifetime of battle have honed those skills It is said that we know no fear, and it is true, for the kind of fear a man suffers from is alien to us We are incapable of the passion that huer humans, the e are created ensures that It is a sacrifice, for mankind’s own humanity makes it vulnerable, makes it susceptible to betrayal, to doubt, to despair and destruc­tive ambition We are beyond such weaknesses, and yet ill never again truly be part of huain be one of the creatures we have been created to protect
But even with that great catalogue of changes that marks us as far superior, and sometimes far weaker, than normal humans, we are still closer to mankind than the pri had a true mother and father We Space Marines, you and I, were once hu, no matter what they do to our bodies, no matter how much a lifetime of battle hardens us to it, at the core of us lies that humanity It will never surface wholly - it is suppressed, buried far beneath our conscious recogni­tion of it - but in our hearts and in our souls ere once and still are hu the primarchs never had’
’So what does that mean for Lion El’Jonson?’ Boreas asked ’He was raised by Luther, ahts of Caliban’
’The very aptitude the pri to those around the basic, unalterable humanity, they were just replicas Physically perfect, intellectually without peer, but spiritually vacant Fro, started shaping them­selves into what they would becoht them the values they would hold dear to them for their rest of their lives The pri­marchs learned their moral values froht, how to lead and how to feel from others’
’I still fail to see the relevance,’ Boreas said with a shake of his head
’In so was perhaps a semblance of what the Ereatest of the primarchs, and never once wavered in his dedication and service But he was inferior to Horus in every way He was not as able-minded, nor as charis­matic, and not as physically adept Why was it that Horus turned to the powers of Chaos, perfect as he supposedly hen Guilliman, his inferior, is still renowned ten thousand years later as the shining example of a pri­march?
It is because Guilliman had learned incorruptibility For whatever reason, from whatever source, Guillinable to the lure of power and personal arandisement, and he spoke truly for he took all Space Marines to be as worthy as hi, had learned a fatal weakness, a chink in the arreater than the Eainst his master, as did those who also had such flaws, and eventually Horus was killed and the others driven into the Eye of Terror where they stay to this day, nursing their flaws, reinforcing their prej­udices’