 The human mind is a curious thing. A biological thinking machine, as my colleagues in the Adeptus Mechanicus would frame it, the technology of flesh instead of metal, a logic engine that has seen us shuck the boundaries of our birth world to claim the stars that are our birthright. But it cannot simply be a binauric thing, this meat mind. No, for it is ever plagued with the emotional tides that lead us to our greatest triumphs and cast us into our deepest pits. Love, happiness, rage, jealousy and fear, all roiling cacophonies that make us who we are. They make us powerful, yes, but they also make us fallible. None in our species has ever been spared these most human of aspects, no matter how hard they may have strived, for to feel truly human, one must risk all that that entails. The Horus heresy was a conflict driven by many things, but central to it was the fallibility of the sons of the God-Emperor of mankind, and how not even the scions of divinity itself were immune from the shortcomings of our species. In a way it humanizes them, for, though unlike those of us in base humanity in so many ways, they are nevertheless still our kin. Would that such perfectly human imperfections not have cost us so much and damned us so utterly. It was in Horus Lupacau, Primarch of the 16th Legion Lunar Wolves, that the seeds of egotism had been planted and the sprouts of resentment ultimately nourished. His base desire to be his father's truest son would ultimately be usurped, twisted into dangerous obsession due to the oh so human tendency to never be fully satisfied, to ultimately question and to doubt, or to seek his own power, his own destiny, at the expense of others. Not yet had these ideas come to dread fruition, no, for there would, at the turn of 003 M31, be the first in the series of events that would send Horus plummeting to his ultimate fall. No then, but this is a record of the Inter-X incident, the first contact event that would shape the future of the galaxy and precipitate the fall of the war master, Horus Lupacau. The Inter-X debacle was, as Horus' biograph account in situ, Petronella Vivar would declare shortly after its occurrence, an event that wounded the Primarch of the 16th Legion to a degree few ever truly imagined. Indeed, this pronouncement, made in the notes of her unpublished and subsequently expunged account of Horus' life, was prescient in the extreme given the terrible events that were to come. But few would consider it noteworthy. However, Mamsel Vivar and laterally your humble servant consider it of pivotal importance, as arriving when it did and in the form that it did, becoming a catastrophe that would turn the war master to a path he would seem to inexorably follow to his damnation. The Inter-X were a highly advanced human offshoot civilization that had seemingly not only survived the predations of old night, but flourished. This is not to say their existence during that dark epoch had been one without challenge, quite the opposite. All the bedievelments that had cast low so many human societies, as an indeed more powerful than the Inter-X, had too assailed that society's battlements, only to be thrown back by a combination of their advanced technology and highly unified society. In contrast to a large number of human polities that survived the trials of the Age of Strife, the Inter-X did not devolve or regress from their advanced stage of development. Indeed, it rather seemed that it was precisely that that allowed them to maintain their advantage over potential threats in their local cluster. In many other cultures, galaxy-wide, bigotry, genocide, and authoritarianism came to define the regimes of necessity that emerged during old night, spurred on by the collapse of planetary economic infrastructure, general social disorder, or widespread conflict. The Inter-X's unity around its pre-stripe utopian goals allowed it to persevere, and while of course deprived of contact with other human cultures throughout the void, they had established a stable enough interplanetary regime that it was able to prosper and develop, whereas so many others merely survived or ultimately died off. Crucial, it must be said, in this prosperity was the stance it adopted regarding Xenos races, namely one of cooperation as opposed to hostility and cohabitation as opposed to extermination. One example, the Simeon-presenting Kinnebrack, were wholly adopted within the macro-structure of Inter-X society, as the artificers and technicians. Responsible, it is believed, for the Inter-X's non-sentient AI constructs. At one point in its history, the Inter-X encountered a highly aggressive and seemingly non-sapient Xenos species the Imperium would later dub the Mega Arachnid, resulting in an infestation that would come to occupy eight whole Inter-X systems until it could be driven back to just a single planet. Even when presented with an utterly hostile species with whom no accord and even any communication could be established, the Inter-X stayed their hands. Content to let the Mega Arachnid, now deprived of all abilities to travel the void, continue to exist on their new world, and to seed the system with warnings to alert any who would care to look of the dangers they're in. Ultimately, the Great Crusade's conflict with the Mega Arachnid would claim the lives of many Astartes, and would represent a serious and torturous first misunderstanding that would come to define the early stages of Imperial and Inter-X contact. Both sides, once encountered, had expected the human civilizations that they would ultimately encounter to conform to certain standards, be they social, political, or technological, and both sides were quite astonished with what they found. The Inter-X's beacons that had been transmitting warning markers were pitched at frequencies the society used to communicate, called collectively the Aria. A cohesion of mathematical elements expressed in music, the Aria was the product of human and kinnebrac integration within the culture, as the kinnebrac vocal system had difficulty aligning with human basic speech patterns of protogothic, resulting in a system that combined elements of linguistics and universal mathematics to suppress ideas with a minimal loss of understanding. The Imperium of the Great Crusade era was unaccustomed to such esoteric concepts, and the Inter-X had presumed that any species capable of post-strike spaceflight would be equipped to read their warnings. Diplomatic channels, nonetheless, were established, as the Aria proved ultimately quite adaptable to translation with Gothic. The Warmaster, Horace Lupacow, was eager to explore more of the Inter-X's society, but was facing strident opposition from senior Astartes within his legion, notably 1st Captain Abaddon. To many of the 16th Legion, the divergence of the Inter-X evinced from the Lex Imperialis, and indeed all imperial norms in any capacity, rendered them incapable of integration within the Imperium. Abaddon, in particular, declined that not only were the human members of the society in possession of abhuman traits, namely their chiropractor and ears, adapted to necessitate the hearings of subtleties within the Aria, but that their tolerance and active protection of Xenos' client species was an immediate death sentence for the culture. The conflict between the 1st Captain and his Primarch was, as recorded by other members of the Morneval, unusually bitter and acrimonious, coming on at least one occasion almost to blows. Few amongst the Upper Lunar Wolves' echelons could fathom the Warmaster's motivations in this particular case, coming, as they did, after the extermination of the Mega-Arachnid. We must delve deeper, if we are to find clarification for ourselves. From the Remembrances of 10th Company Captain Garvello Ken, a picture emerges of a deeply conflicted Horus Lupacal attempting to navigate a quite unprecedented situation. While the Imperium had over the course of the Great Crusade encountered sundry human realms, who themselves had navigated the trials of the Age of Strife, few diverged from expectations to the extent that the Interrex did. Cultures as advanced as they were typically were immediately hostile and corrupted beyond reproach, in the thrall to some wicked Xenos or machine intelligence. Indeed, said cultures were also habitually restricted to a soul planet with the necessities of their technology making it impossible to extend their reach over much larger volumes. While the area of space the Interrex inhabited was small in comparison to the Imperium's borders, even at this point in history. It was far more densely populated than any previously encountered and advanced past the point of any encountered polity. The Imperium brooked no question to the Imperial system. The Emperor's authority, the Emperor's vision, they were universal absolutes and questionable bulwarks in the survival of mankind. The Imperium would unite humanity and deliver us to our manifest destiny as a pan-galactic species but only if total adherence to the tenets of the regime was assured. The alien was abhorrent to be swept aside and rendered unto dust for they were inimical to the survival of the human race. Tolerance was treachery for it would only ever lead to death and destruction. By all Imperial definitions, the Interrex were beyond any possibility of integration accepting sweeping changes to the fabric of their society or ours. Yet, out here and the frontiers of the expanding Imperium, Horace Lupacal did not immediately bring his expeditionary fleet to war footing instead seeking to engage on diplomatic channels and to learn all that he could of this ostensibly enemy polity. In the Interrex, it seemed that Horace beheld a lost tribe of old earth remnants of a time lost to the ashes of history inheritors in their own way of the legacy of humanity. They presented, in a way doubtlessly unseen by the Primarch in his lifetime if not an alternative to the Imperium of his father then a possible partner, an ally. A society not to be swept aside and made compliant unto the boot of the Astartes but to perhaps engage in dialogue, partnership and accord with. Had not the Imperium of Terra in those early early crusade days struck such accord with the Mechanicum of Mars were they not already two empires existing under one system in partnership? Such actions likely strike one's acolytes as stunning even with the Mechanicum as an example if not simply heretical for who was Horace to defy the writ of his own father? Contextually, the Primarch's behavior is somewhat more understandable. Previous compliance action rendered by the 63rd expeditionary fleet was committed upon a world known to its inhabitants as Terra and ruled by a despot known as the Emperor. Its inhabitants believed themselves to be the birthplace of humanity and their Emperor the one true ruler of the species. It itself was an advanced, venerable and stable society first contact with which had cost the Lunawills the life of Horace's close advisor Hastor Sajanis and the subsequent war yet more astarty still. The world this once Terra had been humbled in its totality reduced to the compliance numerical designation of 6319 being the 19th world brought into compliance by the 63rd fleet. To engage in combat with another lost human world was a perennially painful activity for all in the Great Crusade and all too common for it. In the Inter-X it appears Horace saw the means by which a pact may be struck that would avoid the bloodshed and mitigate the harm. He seemed to question the Imperial right by which his astarties could even commit war upon the culture. Why were they granted the ability to be the arbitrators of human survival? If the Inter-X had survived the Age of Strife prospered in the depths of old night as they so clearly had what justice, what human unity could be wrought from their destruction? The issue struck at the heart of the Imperial ideal and whether the senior astarties of the Lunawills were cognizant of just how much the enmity it inspired amongst them was redolent of men who were having to question the system that they structured their whole selves upon in a fundamental fashion. Several other factors were weighing upon the Primarch at this point. While relatively newly invested in his role as Imperial Warmaster the quantity of demands for his attention from across the Great Crusade were beginning to accelerate. Growing accustomed to such a seismic shift in authority had taken time to reverberate across the thousands of separate fronts the Crusade was engaged in. But as the military regime pivoted to account for their new leadership paradigm more and more petitioners for Horace's guidance, Horace's support and Horace's decisions arrived at the foot of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet in astropathic messes, diplomatic parties, or petitioner delegations. Horace was a general without peer and a leader without equal and he had more than risen to the demands of Warmastery. But it is likely that the sheer volume of calls for his consideration still took him by surprise. A Primarch is a singular being, it is true but the Emperor who had for 200 years led the Imperial War effort personally was more singular still. For that responsibility to now be delegated Horace Lupercal was to face challenges to his responsibilities that appeared to test even his superhuman capabilities. It was clear too that several of his brothers sought to test the Primarch whether for spite, sport, or with genuine respect for the new chain of command. It is impossible in this latter case for Horace not to feel some measure of bitterness for the petitions of his more bellicose brethren. Even if they were simply toying with their brother commander, the requests of the Primarchs and Horace's desire to not only appease his brothers but show his worth as their Emperor proclaimed first among equals. No doubt weighed heavily. The so very human emotions felt by the Warmaster were obvious to any who beheld him, as Captain Locan recorded. Noting too that the presence of 9th Legion Primarch Sanguinius at this juncture had a highly calming effect on Horace's humours. Ever a calm anchor in storm-tossed seas, the great Angel was a pacifying element to Horace's collar having joined the 63rd expedition in the aftermath of the extermination of the Mega Arachnid which had initially cost the lives of so many of his own blood Angels. It were noted, the Angel and the Warmaster, as having been uniquely close, different in many ways, yet also alike. Horace, in quiet private moments, was known to have wished his Emperor given title had instead been placed upon Sanguinius' brow. For so alike was the Angel in aspect and temperament to their father that surely none was better suited. But as history had it, the Emperor, beloved by all, acquired a General, not a Seraph, and a General Horace, Was. And now, one that was feeling the keen responsibilities of his new role. Worse amongst the petitioners, at least to the Warmaster's eyes, were the bureaucratic representatives of the newly formed Council of Terror, an ostensibly civilian branch of the Imperium's military regime set to preside over the day-to-day obligations of governing so vast an empire. While a fledgling body at its time, its representatives nevertheless immediately sought to petition the Warmaster, as now the Emperor's own voice, for military aid in extending the tenets of the Lex Imperialis over newly compliant worlds. In particular, the just-established strictures of the Imperial Tithe. Structured means by which the Imperium would seek to recoup the staggering costs in both manpower and material resources the Great Crusade had consumed and continued to consume, the Tithe was an empire-spanning taxation effort that, as with literally all taxation efforts throughout human history, met with staunch opposition and immediate logistical barriers. Commanders across the Imperium, in numerous primarchs beside, objected to the severity of many of the Tithe's implementations, detaining them for being far too rigorous for newly compliant worlds, still in the process of rebuilding their infrastructures and integrating their economies into the wider Imperial sphere. Many was a voice that warned of widespread unrest, economic collapses, or even famines that this would cause, leading inevitably to uprising and rebellions against the tenuous planetary regimes and governorships. While no regime has ever welcomed the arrival of tax men, the actual extent with which ranker was caused by the application of the Tithe is difficult to impossible to discern. The Administratum operated on the best data it had at its disposal, and to say to worlds capacities to pay its Imperial dues based on such analysis. If the data was out of date, misreported or simply skewed in some manner, it would be impossible for the executors of the Imperium to realize it until far too late, and at this time, data could only be relied upon from the expeditionary fleets in the aftermath of compliance actions. Should an expeditionary fleet be run by the behest of the 13th Legion ultramarines, for example, the Administratum could count on incredibly accurate and widespread data. Should it, however, be governed by the 12th Legion world eaters, data would be far more tenuous. The Great Crusade was a staggeringly costly endeavor. Monterra and the Sol system had primarily borne the brunt of for nearly two centuries. One system, even one sector, could not support a galaxy. The Tithe was a necessity, an ultimate necessity, and while its implementation was not perfect, it simply could never have been so. This however is academic to this particular record, but its effects, rippling outwards from Sol, were beginning to be felt by the Warmaster. Even in these days, was Horace assailed by both executors demanding his aid in collecting their taxes and furious military and gubernatorial personnel demanding exemptions from sed, so tenuous they felt were their positions. One would expect perhaps for the latter to be able to bring their disputes to the Council of Terra itself, or at least its courts, but one must remember that the Imperium is still fundamentally a military regime, a state from where the ultimate power flowed from the Emperor's absolute rule, and thus, by extension, Horace's. To the Warmaster, squabbles over taxation were the furthest concern from his mind, organizing, as he nominally was, a thousand different strategic campaigns at once. Yet here they were, becoming more strident and much more present. To make matters worse, timing of this upswell in bureaucratic and military petitions came at a delicate time during indirect negotiations. Sanguinius had done his best to defer and redirect calls to the Warmaster, knowing his brother desired the time and space to successfully conduct diplomacy with the inscrutable new culture, but the picture that emerges is of a primarch assailed from all directions by ever more rancorous voices, all the while attempting to avoid bloodshed in a situation that, while cordial on the surface, was clearly balanced on a knife edge. The Interax, while open and polite in all of its dealings with the Lunar Wolves, were far from what could be considered friendly. Captain Loken noted a deep weariness in their conduct, a suspicion of the Imperial expedition that was not to be dispelled by Horace's quite obvious desires to avoid any conflict between the two societies. One would suspect the appearance on their borders of a clearly war-focused and by Interax standards primitive war fleet purporting to belong to a galaxy-spanning empire would render any regime cautious, and this was certainly how the Interax persisted. Nonetheless, despite the oppositions of some of his senior staff, Horace accepted their invitation to one of their border worlds, Xenobia, where he may conduct diplomacy further. While merely an outpost world, Xenobia and its urban conurbations displayed a level of technological and cultural sophistication that vastly eclipsed a similarly located Imperial world. The Lunar Wolves were granted all diplomatic respects, including a parade and a tour of the local Hall of Devices, a sort of museum of weapons born of both the Interax's craft and that of their subject Xenos races. This was a display with which First Captain Abaddon claimed to be an insult, with the Interax displaying that they as a society were somehow beyond war and thus superior to their Imperial counterparts. As is obvious, tensions still persisted, with Horace doing his best to both learn from his hosts and soothe the ires of his staff. To the Warmaster, there was clearly something aspirational about the Interax, an alternative human end state to the Great Crusade, perhaps. It was a compromise, yes, but one born of development and advancement. If a society had no need of conflict, then it had managed to overcome the challenges that the Imperium had faced, having spent two centuries at war with all of the most monstrous threats the galaxy presented to the human species. Horace even went so far as to state his belief that the Emperor himself would see wisdom in such a path, utopian as it may have been for the first time. A Warmaster was being presented with a future yet unforeseen. He was, it must be noted, soon to become alone, for his brother Sanguinius departed the fleet for matters pressing, wishing Horace the best in his ongoing negotiations. Captain Loken's diaries of the subsequent incident on Zenobia are fundamental in our understanding of this pivotal moment and grant deep insight into the Interax themselves. Running security detail during a formal dinner held by the senior Interax commander, Jeff the Noud, Loken came across an art collection housing a text from old Terra, an archaic title named A Marvelous History of Evil, being a warning to mankind on the abuses of sorcery and the seduction of the demon. Aspired in his curiosity, he was drawn into conversation with another Interax security officer by the name of Mithras Tal regarding its content, which Tal described as an apocalyptic tale of the dangers of sorcery and a force that he named Chaos. It is difficult to describe one's woe upon scrutinizing Captain Loken's remembrances. One cannot help but be drawn into the ultimate tragedy of what was and what could have been. The conversation was pivotal beyond comprehension or would have been had it occurred elsewhere and slightly earlier. The Interax officer, Wery, was stunned to find that Captain Loken had no knowledge of the concept that he had just named. A force of universal annihilation the Interax had been educated upon by the Aeldari in ages past. One, they expected any space faring race in the galaxy to have full comprehension of. He named it a ruthless force of tireless destruction, often incarnating from out of the warp itself informs evocative of brutality. We of the present age, of course, know what Mithras Tal is referring to. But one must remember that Captain Loken, the startys to his core, was the product of the Imperial Truth, the denial by which any and all supernatural forces exist or have ever existed within the galaxy. The Imperial Truth stated that the realm in which mankind inhabited was purely scientific. Religion, the esoteric, these were the trappings of barbarity and had no place in a scientific mind. The Interax upon meeting the Imperium had greatly feared the hand of this universal annihilator at work for so blunt, brutish and battle-ready were the Astartes obeying a so-called Terran Emperor that the infiltration and corruption of chaos was immediately suspected. Tal was entirely taken aback at the level of ignorance poor Captain Loken appeared to display but there was clearly relief in his reaction. Delight that this lost human expedition of terror need not be an enemy, be illuminated and educated on the dangers they knee, all reality faced from this existential threat from beyond. History, at this one crucial moment, bucked its tracks and took a sharply different chord. Elsewhere in the city, the Hall of Devices had by parties unknown at this point been attacked with a specific weapon, a sentient sword of Kinnebrack design and an anathemae been stolen in the process. Negotiations and all formalities broke down immediately and quickly turned to violence as the suspicions of the Interax only just voiced to Loken by Mithrasthal appeared to manifest in their totality. The anathemae was a product of Kinnebrack sorcery. Chaos, kind, utterly outlawed, completely heinous by all social standards of the Interax. The theft of the weapon was proof to them. The Imperium had been corrupted by the Universal Annihilator. It sought only weapons, war, and destruction. Horus bellowing, weeping for calm, for understanding for a ceasefire was rapidly and bloodily exfiltrated from Zenobia and soon thereafter full-scale war between the Imperium and the Interax erupted, leading, ultimately, as the annals of history would have it, to the destruction of the latter in its totality. The effect of this incident on Horus was profound, seismic. The remembrances of all those who were close to him during this affair all point towards a man who was deeply and wholly invested in the idea of what the contact with the Interax represented. In forging a genuine path forward, not just for his father, his empire, or his brothers, or his sons, but for his very species. For 200 years, Horus Lupacal had known a life of battle, death, and destruction, meted out both upon those supposedly deserving and those painfully wayward, and now, as warmaster, with the authority of the entirety of the great crusade at his back, he was thundering towards inevitable victory. It may have been on his mind before the fateful contact, but in the Interax, the ideas of what were to come after that victory, what would be built in the aftermath of humanity's destiny, were laid bare, presented to him front and center for immediate and vital consideration. Is it any wonder then that the petitions of tax men, petty generals, sundry functionaries, paled in comparison? Horus, noted and beloved idealist of the human condition, was seemingly being granted an opportunity unlike any which he had previously encountered, and into this he poured his every effort. The disaster on Zenobia struck him from all quarters. Personally, professionally, ideologically, it hit him as failures, failures all a devastating blow to both his confidence in his vocation as warmaster, and as forger of the destiny of humanity. A doer resignation appears to have set in following the debacle. The warmaster surrendered himself to the bluntest interpretation of his title. A conqueror, nothing more. Symbolically, this was delivered by his pronouncement that he would finally accept the Emperor's request and rename the 16th Legion in his own honor. The Lunawolves would be no more. Now, in sea green, walked forth the sons of Horus. Who can would note that from that day, the commander was a fundamentally different person. Still, in a lot of ways, the same Horus, peerless, the brightest star, deftly charismatic, yes, but one that had lost a spark of an ineffable something, without wishing to muse too deeply upon the matter and with full awareness of the individual in question and what he was about to perpetrate. It strikes your most humble of servants that upon that day, in the fires of Zenobia, Horus Lupacal lost his ability to hope, or at least to dream of a future undiscovered. In its place, a harder, no longer optimistic Horus was cast, one that upcoming events and the machinations of those who had stolen the anathemae from the Hall of Devices would seek to thoroughly exploit until such a time as I may continue this tragedy. Of a Imperator. Gloria, in Excelsis, Terra. Thank you very much for watching.