Unification Wars

Pan contintential eugenicist tyrants, orbit capable attack craft, barbarians with
spears and shield, radioactive death zones, city size underground prisons, child
sacrificing sorceres in the mountains, gene bulked cyborg warriors, undergrouns
strongolhds with invincible selfaware remnants of ancient times, martian and xenos
raiding parties, 5000 year old war robots and indonesian space hitler.
Thunder Warriors, we've even seen people directly affected by Cardinal Tang.

We saw the Tempest galleries in detail in an FW book. We've seen Thunder Warrior
memories of battles. We've seen Valdor fight warlords while his golden armor was
still new, and Ra destroy a psyker warlord at some point during the wars, and lots
of talk about skylance gunships and the first stormbirds, and Martian raiding
parties. We've covered the battle of Luna in some detail in at least 2 novels, and
the Last Church is set right at the end of the period.

What we've seen are glimpses. And that's enough. We've seen the edges that allow us
to fill in the middle. When books like Outcast Dead talk about these fantastic
things, like global mind-control and pilots who never touch the ground and the
vaults of the Terrawatt clan -- that's enough. That's all it should be.

The citizens of Ursh, the mightiest Techno-Barbarian state on Terra, were known to
worship Chaos Undivided. The Nordafrik Conclaves, the ancient rivals of Ursh, were
also known to utilize Chaos Sorcerers.

I doubt this will happen, but I would definitely want to read a Unification Wars
series about the Emperor and his Thunder Warriors fighting the Techno-Barbarians on
Terra. Apart from the various Techno-Barbarian warlords and psyker-kings the
Emperor had to defeat to unify Terra, he also faced a legacy of "recklessly potent
human science" from the DAoT and after. Terra was an important place for a long
time before the collapse so it ended up with a lot of secrets that were probably
better off never discovered.

By the time of the coming of the Emperor to finally quell the endless war, splice-
wrought and muscle-grafted warriors were the common currency of war amid the
technobarbarian tribes and mercenary clans which dominated much of desolate Ancient
Terra, while degenerate gene-damaged mutants and abhumans haunted the ruins and
wastes beyond the holdfasts of petty empires.

The more extreme children of the Dark Age of Technology were also a fearful legend
which haunted, all too real, the dreams of men, be they the Excubari Vivamorphs of
Cah�marg, who culled the young for �beautiful� flesh to graft to their own failing
bodies, or the nightmare horrors of the Ghourmant clans of the deep sinks of Detra-
Merica, whose terrible strength and longevity were bought only at the price of a
far more indiscriminate and insatiable hunger.

It was only the Emperor, in His wisdom, who could claim the inheritance of the
gene-craft of the Dark Age of Technology, and turn it to these ends, to forge
angels of flesh and blood where lesser men had created mutilated monsters and
imperfect messiahs.

Pre-Unification Terra was basically a combination of Mad Max, Fist of the North
Star, Fallout, and Zardoz. Pre-Unification Terra was way more than some Mad Max
thing. There was also significant technology and knowledge that is now forever lost
or locked up due to the Emperor's actions.

The Techno-Barbarians took hundreds of years longer to conquer than it took to

unify/conquer a million worlds. He had his 10,000 Custodes and many many more
Thunder Warriors, who on occassion were defeated.
Another cool thing to hit would be Ursh. During the Unification Wars on Terra the
mightiest Techno-Barbarian state was known as Ursh (Central Asia/Russia). While it
may not have been the most technologically advanced on Terra, it was still
powerful. Ursh was ruled by the despot and warlord named Kalagann at the time of
the Unification Wars. Kalagann was described as being of cruel character, and
commanding vast armies of Techno-Barbarians. Kalagann was known for wearing a
distinctive suit of Artificer Armor known as the Armor of Pearl, which by the time
of the Horus Heresy was kept as a trophy in the atrium of the Eternity Gate of the
Imperial Palace. Other high positions within the government of Ursh were all filled
by military warlords including Lurtois, Sheng Khal and Quallodon. Kalagann was so
powerful that he had to be taken out by the Emperor himself. Kalagann's infamous
exploits were documented in the ancient manuscript called the Chronicles of Ursh,
which would later be considered by Imperial scholars as a classic work of human
literature that provided valuable insight into this pre-Unification state's rise
and the wars of the Ursh against the Nordafrik Conclaves. Its citizens were
infamously known for worshipping Chaos Undivided and they were particularly fond of
Skulls for the Skull Throne and Sorcery. Some of Ursh's troops are actually known
by name including:

The Roma - The Roma were organized mercenary fliers who fought for the forces of
Ursh. Highly-skilled pilots, they were said to never touch the earth beneath them.
They were trained to carry out pinpoint aerial attacks, and were therefore of great
value to the generals of Ursh.

The Red Engines - Both the Red Engines and the Tupelov Lancers followed the command
of the warlord Sheng Khal. The Red Engines were masters of the siege, and possessed
siege engines able to raze whole fortresses or hive cities to the ground.

The Tupelov Lancers - The Lancers are described as screaming berserkers. These
warriors were trained for close-combat action, and proved ruthless and deadly. In
many ways they were a model for the later tactics of the World Eaters Legion of
Space Marines.

Oneirocriticks - The Oneirocriticks were the personal counselors of the Urshian

warlord Sheng Khal. Their name means "interpreters of dreams," in the ancient
Urshian dialect of Low Gothic, but it is likely that they used some kind of Warp
sorcery to guide Sheng Khal in his actions.

Wrathsingers - This specialized unit was likely comprised of practitioners of

sorcery that bent the powers of the Warp to their will. They were able to use their
psychic abilities or "magic" as the Chronicles of Ursh names their abilities, to
change the environment to their advantage or to kill men from afar with their
"spells."

Honestly, I can't tell if this would be the coolest or the most horrible apocalypse
ever.

I want more of the Unification Wars stories we got in the HH books. Crazy stuff
like the Tempest Galleries

In the very large gaps between those polities, we have toxic/radioactive wastelands
where only tribes of man-orks riding half-scrap half-tracks and carrying clubs and
salvaged autoguns live, raiding and trading with the bigger states and looting the
extensive ruins of the past for the necessities of life.

Into that mix we throw ancient autonomous nanotech superweapons in forgotten

bunkers, raiding parties from Mars (and maybe the occasional Xenos? Maybe from Luna
also?) with super-high-tech weapons, a few sub-warp trading vessels plying routes
between points on Terra and other worlds, heavily armed trade caravans crossing the
wastelands, crude cyborg and gene-modified mercenaries, rogue psykers...

Vengeful Spirit suggests that it was the Clan that had the tech to create Space
Marines

The tech to create space marines was garnered from all over. From the Terrawatt
Clans, to the Lunar Genemasters, to the Saturnyne armor smiths.

two metaphysical blades

A moment of pure instinct caused Zahariel to flinch a moment before he made contact
with Astelan�s inner thoughts. The core of the First Master�s mind was encased with
a protective layer, the like of which the Master of the Mystai had not encountered.
Even as he tried to avert his delving, it was as though he was punching through
adamantium. The shock of the impact numbed him instantly.

Psychic feedback lanced into Zahariel�s brain. A golden fog permeated everything. A
booming voice, the words unintelligible but commanding. Beside its power, Zahariel
was as a candle next to the sun. Warmth. Becoming hotter. Searing. Scorching.
Turning him to ash.

Zahariel ripped himself free from Astelan�s thoughts, reeling inside, every mote of
discipline needed to show no outward sign of the agony that had been set inside his
brain. He retained just enough cogency to witness Asmodeus� attempt to penetrate
the core layer. The attempt was far slower, but the reaction no less vehement.
Inside Zahariel�s mind�s eye it was as though a plasma bomb had detonated,
disintegrating the threads of Asmodeus� investigation with a corona of white-hot
energy.

The Librarian almost missed a step, recovering from the stumble at the last moment.
He stared at Astelan with wide eyes. The First Master seemed oblivious to all that
had transpired.

�I am sure that we can put behind us whatever unpleasantness has occurred,� said
Astelan, obviously not meaning a word of it. He matched Belath�s stare. �Are we not
all brothers beneath the banner of the Legion?�

+What did you do to him?+ In his disorientated state, it took a moment for Zahariel
to realise that Asmodeus� words were transmitted, not spoken.

+Nothing,+ he replied in kind. Their thoughts merged close to the tiny flicker that
was the light of Astelan�s mind. From outside it looked entirely normal.

+He is not one of us. He has no projection.+

+Did you see it?+ Zahariel asked. +Did you feel the power?+

+For an instant only, thankfully,+ the Librarian replied.

...A little more drama happens unrelated to this specific excerpt...

�What did He do to you?� Zahariel hissed, the question bursting out like water
through a crack in a dam.

�Asmodeus?� Astelan glanced at the Rhino and shrugged. �Nothing, that I know of.�

�Not him. The Emperor.�

Astelan�s dumbfounded silence was as concise an answer as any he might have spoken.

�Do you remember anything from your time with the Emperor? Any specific moments
when He might have�� Zahariel let the words drift away in the face of his
companion�s blank incomprehension.

�What about the Emperor? You are babbling, Zahariel.�

�It is� difficult to explain.�

�Try,� Astelan growled. �What were you saying about the Emperor?�

�You were one of the First, yes?� Zahariel said, choosing a different tack.

�Before the First.� Pride radiated from the ancient warrior. �An Angel of Death.�

�You fought beside the Emperor, spent a great deal of time in His presence.�

�Years, why?�

�It has left a mark upon you, upon your mind,� Zahariel said. It sounded weak, but
he had no other theory he wanted to share. �A gift, you might call it.� Astelan
grinned and tapped the side of his head.

�You tried to get in, didn�t you?� He slapped a hand on Zahariel�s shoulder and
looked back at the Rhino that Asmodeus had boarded. �He did too? Both of you found
something surprising?�

It was Zahariel�s silence that answered this time.

�Do you think the Emperor was the only powerful psyker vying for Terra during the
last years of the Long Night? Dhul-Quarnayn? The Sigillites? Did we not expect to
meet untold horrors in the shadows between stars? Of all those that understand the
true nature of the universe, would the Emperor send out His warriors with the best
war-plate to protect our bodies, when our minds were like a fortress with the gates
unbarred and unguarded?�

Astelan thought about this for a few seconds, his gaze becoming distant with
memory.

�Were you all� I mean, all of the Angels of Death were protected? What was it like?
�

�It was� beautiful,� Astelan replied. Then he focused on Zahariel again, expression
hardening. �It was also taxing to the Emperor, I think. Not to be repeated for the
Legions. Anyway, that is the past. The future is still being forged, and we have
tasks at hand.�

Adrathic weapons are one. They were so devastating that Emps confiscated them all
and personally banned anyone but Custodes from using them.

This was mentioned in the other post about how powerful the Emperor was during the
unification wars so I thought it would be worth posting this extract from FW's
Inferno afresh. Apart from the various techno-barbarian warlords and psyker-kings
the Emperor had to defeat to unify Terra, he also faced a legacy of "recklessly
potent human science" from the DAoT and after. Terra was an important place for a
long time before the collapse so it ended up with a lot of secrets. This is what
the Emperor was facing with his thunder legions and, eventually, the first
generation of astartes. Creepy.
Nowhere was this more so than on Terra itself, the seat and capital of that ancient
empire, and storehouse of its secrets. For centuries such dread secrets slumbered;
in forgotten bunkers and armoured vaults lay the masterless gene-looms and
autosurgical chambers of the Dark Age of Technology, waiting for the ignorant and
the power hungry to set them to work once more to bloody and ill-reckoned purposes.

The end result of their inevitable rediscoveries was a world already plunged into
violent anarchy and environmental collapse made infinitely worse by the abused
powers of those lost gods and devils of ancient science unleashed, genetically
tailored viral warfare, desperate schemes at blood-bought immortality and power,
and a hulking grotesquery of once-human shock troops driven into battle by the
ambition of crazed warlords. Mutation, monstrosity, pogrom, disease and death
unimaginable were let loose by the warlord's lust for conquest; such was Terra�s
long night.

By the time of the coming of the Emperor to finally quell the endless war, splice-
wrought and muscle-grafted warriors were the common currency of war amid the
technobarbarian tribes and mercenary clans which dominated much of desolate Ancient
Terra, while degenerate gene-damaged mutants and abhumans haunted the ruins and
wastes beyond the holdfasts of petty empires.

The more extreme children of the Dark Age of Technology were also a fearful legend
which haunted, all too real, the dreams of men, be they the Excubari Vivamorphs of
Cah�marg, who culled the young for �beautiful� flesh to graft to their own failing
bodies, or the nightmare horrors of the Ghourmant clans of the deep sinks of Detra-
Merica, whose terrible strength and longevity were bought only at the price of a
far more indiscriminate and insatiable hunger.

It was only the Emperor, in His wisdom, who could claim the inheritance of the
gene-craft of the Dark Age of Technology, and turn it to these ends, to forge
angels of flesh and blood where lesser men had created mutilated monsters and
imperfect messiahs.

Worth noting as well that the text also refers to ogryns and navigators as
"descendants of some of the Dark Age of Technology�s more stable flesh-works".

Totally using a reference to the Vivamorphs in my personal artifact list. My

Thousand Sons Warband is striving to find any way to stay "young" and to control
their mutations, and a society who culls flesh to maintain their beauty would make
a great inspiration for a surgical tool or artifact for them to have/hunt down.
Maybe a leftover relic stolen from Terra's vaults during the siege.

Context: The set up is Horus and his legion are completing some last minute
compliances before the Ullanor campaign begins. Horus heads out to to help finish a
costly compliance quickly because he thinks his sons have found a mad scientist who
fled Terra before Unification. Horus is ambushed on arrival by gene-horrors the
likes of which haven't been seen since Old Night. After prevailing against the
abominations he goes to face down their creator to find out what kind of man man
could create such monstrosities.

Also final spoiler warning, this does contain the end of the short story.

You slew it?' asked Fo.

Horus sat down facing him in the stark cell-block chamber. He was drenched in
blood, and the chest and fore-guards of his plate were gouged and stripped back to
bare metal. He made no answer at first. Blood dripped off him onto the deck. A
trail of little blood pools led back to the hatch.
'It was reluctant to die,' said Horus. 'I dismantled your work until I found the
one part it could not persist without.'

Fo nodded. He was small and bird-like, his forehead broad, his eyes bright. He
perched rather than sat, hunched in his simple black robes.

'You were waiting for me,' said Horus.

Fo shrugged.

'I knew you would come one day, and when you did, I would not win. I resolved to
make my stand count for something. If not defeat the enemy, then eliminate the
greatest of its party. Its leader.'

'You knew I would come?' asked Horus.

Fo nodded.

'Mm-hmm. You or something like you. One day. Eventually. It's been a long time, but
it was inevitable. Terra endures.'

'You left there a long time ago.'

'My art was not appreciated.'

'I have seen it first-hand. That does not surprise me. Abominations, Fo.'

'Abominations?' Fo smiled, and showed small and perfect teeth. 'I see tastes have
not changed.'

He sat back.

'I have been monitoring your activity since you arrived in this zone twenty months
ago,' he said. 'Through my listening stations and watch-networks, I have observed
your dealings with local cultures. Your message. Your offer of embrace. I knew you
would knock on my door before long.'

'And you were prepared,' said Horus. 'Afraid, for you thought we would judge you as
poorly as the people of Terra once did.'

Fo frowned.

'No, you are mistaken,' he replied. 'You think I left Terra because I was driven
out? Shunned? Demonised? No, no. All artists and innovators are misunderstood.'

'Then why?'

'Because I saw the start of his rise,' said Fo. 'Even then, early days, but I could
see what he would become. Your father, I mean. I knew what future awaited a man who
dreamed the dreams he did. Though it took decades or centuries or longer, I knew he
would not be denied. I wanted no part of that. I wanted to be as far away as
possible.'

'Why?' asked Horus.

'His dream is unthinkable, yet he has the power to make it real. I see he has begun
to now. You� you have reached the stars.'
'Yes, bearing his message. His hope to�'

'Hope?' Fo shook his head sadly. 'Yes. Naturally, he would tell his children that.
He always made things sound so optimistic. A glorious and endless future. But, of
course, you wouldn't understand.'

'I don't,' said Horus, rising. 'You are a maker of abominations. A creator of the
most obscene things I have ever beheld. I presume a mind as transgressive as yours
would see only horror in the splendour of his ambition. And fear the justice he
would mete upon you for your crimes against the human form.'

'Oh god, no!' cried Fo in surprise. He hesitated. 'Do they still speak of god on
Terra? Do they still believe? I suppose not. They wouldn't have to now. Anyway,
you're wrong. I don't fear his justice. You say I have made abominations? Look what
he has made.'

'What do you mean?' asked Horus.

'I mean you. You and beings like you. You think I've made monsters? In my wildest
deliriums I could not have designed monsters like you. I practise simple and
ingenious arts of genetics and anatomy. I tinker and edit, to make puzzles and
delights and curious wonders, things to make us think, and ponder the nature of our
being and our place in the scheme of life.'

He looked up at Horus.

'I do not make things that will burn the galaxy down. I do not make things that
will doom our species and lead it into an endless frenzy of war. You are the most
abominable thing I have ever seen. Grotesque. Sickening. Misbegotten. I could not
hope to kill you all, but to abort just one before it reached potential� well, that
would have been some solace.'

Fo got up, and brushed down his clothes.

'I'd like to die now,' he said. 'I don't want to live in a cosmos where things like
you are loose.'

And although that seems like a fitting end to Fo's story, Horus instead of killing
Fo decides to spare him and sends him to Terra to see the Emperor so that he can
see the truth of the Imperium himself.

Years later, long after the Triumph of Ullanor, and the great bloodshed of the
Heresy, and the darkness of the Fall that ended it, men forgot the hope they had
once shared. On ancient Terra, in those final days of the Fall, Basilio Fo heard
the thunder approaching through the stout walls of his oubliette cell in the depths
of the Imperial Palace. And, despite the madness that had by then consumed him, he
knew he had been right, all along, not to submit to hope.

misbegotten sons of the emperor

'You have met them, yes, this Emperor's deadly new toys? His mutilated half-men and
his soulless women, his gilded homunculi and blinded warp-speakers? Do you think
them human then? Are they any less monstrous for a shape familiar to the eye?

I think not. All this devilry of gene-craft and forbidden alchemy, do you think it
is somehow clean simply because it is worked by your self-effacing godhead-in-
denial? Because your glamour-cloaked tyrant says it is so? And what ancient broken
vault or bloody laboratory-prison did he - most monstrous of all - spring from? Or
do you yet believe his whispered lies of immortality and pre-genesis?

You would condemn me for my sins of reason and invention, but it is my eyes which
see clearly you wish to blind. I damn you; I damn you all to the future hell which
you already run to embrace like a lover.'

From the testimony of the technoarchaeologist Synecius Thorn Upon his trial and
condemnation to death Court of the Emperor's Assizes

From Horus Heresy Book 7: Inferno.

biomechanoid weapons
biomechs
biomech obscenities
Steel teeth, like human incisors, arranged in a grinding circle like the head of a
mining rock-drill. A snout of cream bone armour. Massive jaw-muscles exteriorised,
reinforced with hydraulic baffles, sheathed in the folds of a throat that bellied
like a serpent.
'Bio-mech,' replied Sejanus. 'Bio-mechanical constructs. Engineered to kill. Some
as small as a man's hand, others larger than a drop-ship.'

'Engineered?'
'Gene-edited. Spliced, reworked from human stock.'
Horus pulled more images to the front and stared at them. Each one showed a new
horror, as if he were flicking through a pict-book of a madman's nightmares.
'Everything you see is human,' said Sejanus.
'There's barely anything I recognise as remotely human,'
'Quite. But bio-scans are precise. Everything coming at us is genetically human.
Woven from this colony's original human stock. Some combine the genes of more than
one source individual. Multiple others are worked from a single origin gene-donor.
All are reinforced and weaponised with cybernetics.'
'Hence the misleading life scans?'
Sejanus nodded. 'We're facing thousands of individual bio-mech hostiles.
Potentially, over a hundred thousand. Every single one of them is capable of
killing a fully armed legionary. But they are all derived from the same four
hundred human originals.'

Astelan
assault of the tempest galleries
The Horus Heresy - Book Two: Massacre
Dreams of Unity
Outcast Dead
master of mankind

Unifications Wars Video