 As with all things, understanding is fostered only through the knowledge of what came before. The greatest tragedy of our species' history did not spring from nowhere, but rather was the product of thousands of decisions, actions, and moments in time that ran together, spiraling downward to inevitable catastrophe. These, however, do not seem to be the days for such introspection. Men entrench themselves into their camps, refusing to budge from their ingrained dogma. One's virtue is now proportional to the witlessness one has about the world and the past, with the great and good numbering amongst the truly ignorant. So eager we are to throw away knowledge, so willing to forget what came before. Let my humble work here stand as an effort, however paltry, to hold back the encroaching dark with whatever guttering flame of learning I am able to conjure. It would begin at Yulinor. There are roots stretching back before this, some say to the very beginning of the Great Crusade and the finding of Horus Lupercal by his father, the Emperor. This is true, but it remains that Yulinor, for the purposes of imperial study, is a fulcrum around which so many great and terrible events orbit that it must be treated with due attention and introspection. Know then that this is a record of the prelude to the heresy of the Great Crusade's actions at Yulinor and the ascension of the Primarch Horus Lupercal to the seat of Warmaster. At the close of the 30th millennium, the Great Crusade was approaching its second century. Mankind bestowed the stars in numbers and power not seen since the height of the dark age of technology millennia before. Human worlds, long thought lost, forever, were being recovered in their thousands, some delighting at the arrival of those bearing the Aquila, some altogether more obstinate. All were, one way or another, united with the wider human fold. Alien species by the Hundred were being annihilated or driven back before the shot and shell of the armies of the Great Crusade, and ever at the van were the Legionnaires. Tens of thousands of the Emperor's own creations, genetically enhanced transhumans that represented the greatest collection of military might ever seen in galactic history. Among the greatest Xenos threats encountered by the Imperium were the Greenskins, known as the Orcs in their own debased tongue. Lesser species and more of a viral infestation, the Greenskins should nevertheless be grudgingly admired, as it is to be reviled for its incredibly tenacious ability to thrive in literally every corner of inhabited space. While the exact nature of their biology will be recounted in a separate record, it must be noted that the species displays an ability to generate emergent intelligence from a sort of racial gestalt subconscious, with certain Orcs able to access what appears to be either a racial memory or consciousness to draw knowledge and skills into their own minds. This is combined to great success with how the race asexually reproduces, gestating from spores sewn from the molted skin of other Greenskins. In this way, an Orc infestation is generally phenomenally tenacious, as if it is not utterly exterminated it will recover to full strength within a short period of time. They are bellicose in the extreme, needing little to sustain themselves, save the joy and pleasure that combat brings them. An Orc does not age in the manner of slow biological degradation, merely growing stronger and larger with each passing year and each passing war. All of this combined with an incredibly resilient physiology that allows them to shrug off wounds mortal to other species with ease, makes them often the most dangerous foe encountered by the Imperium in its fledgling days. There had been many Orc empires demolished by the Imperial Juggernaut throughout the centuries of expansion, the Goro Hollowing, the Battle of Rust, the Conquest of Renomar, the Kamenka Troika Azenoside, the Crypt Persecution, the Battle of Gyros Thravien. In each of these conflicts, humanity fought tooth and nail against the green-skinned menace after achieving victory only at great cost. Yulinor eclipsed all, signifying a collection of green-skinned power that was staggering to Imperial analysts and tacticians, and representing a simply unacceptable threat to both advancing crusade frontlines and mankind's manifest destiny as rulers of the galaxy. The Orcs had amassed in the system in their millions, with their crude craft choking the orbits of each of the planets and their even cruder cities and fortresses gliding their surfaces. The Emperor himself assumed overall operational command, drawing together the most formidable battle force he could muster in the space of time allowed before the Orcs were made aware of the approaching crusade frontlines. This represented the almost full strength of the 16th and 5th Legion as Astartes, the Lunar Wolves and White Scars respectively, with a substantial number of the 13th Legion Ultramarines, bringing the total to circa 100,000 Astartes, as well as two Primarchs. The Astartes' elements would be supported in turn by 8 million Imperial Auxilia soldiers and engines drawn from a dozen separate Titan legions. It was an army for one purpose, to break the back of the greatest collection of enemies the Imperium had yet encountered, and it would strike like thunder from the blue. Initial moves in the system were made by the elements of the 5th Legion White Scars and 13th Legion Ultramarines. The former fell upon the Orc flotillas in a blitz of fire and steel, scattering the haphazard spacecraft into the void, while the latter executed perfectly coordinated landings, targeting the most important Orc settlements with their customary professionalism. The initial wave was a diversionary tactic, and the one that worked with the Plom. Orcs from the inner planets rushed outwards to the fighting on the system's outskirts, leaving Eulonor Prime exposed to Horace's customary tactic, the Speartip Assault. The Lunar Wolves had been renowned over the course of their long service history for their aptitude in the sudden assault. The knife to the jugular approach intended to hit the enemy with such fury and speed that they would be sent reeling, and the Imperium well knew that when an especially popular or powerful Orc war boss was removed from the equation, his hordes would begin to rapidly disintegrate, losing cohesion to in-fighting as another sought to claim the top seat in the ensuing power vacuum. Chosen specifically for this task, Horace would not let his father nor humanity see him fail, bringing the full might of his Legion to bear in a coordinated and devastating attack on the world claimed by the Orc leader Orlak Uluk. The 16th Legion made planetfall ahead of over 100 God machines of the Titan legions and 2 million Auxilia troops, their drop pods smashing into the warlord's fortress palace. Horace himself personally led a formation of the 16th Jesteran Terminator Elite, along with 1st Captain Abaddon, via a dangerous teleportation attack right into the warlord's personal chambers. The battle that ensued cost the lives of almost all of the Jesteran involved in the attack, but Horace emerged triumphant, casting the broken corpse of the war boss from the battlements. As predicted, his empire disintegrated and the war quickly became a massacre as what passed for cohesion amongst the greenskins was entirely discarded. The Xenos were purged from the systems over the coming weeks, annihilated in their millions, while splinter elements fleeing out systems as far as chondacks were pursued by the laughing white scars. Yulinor may sound to some like yet another victory over yet another Orc empire, but only those with the most blinkered of vision can truly regard it as such. To be true, it was in itself a staggeringly impressive victory, with a numerically imperial force prevailing against an incredibly dangerous foe. But beyond this, the campaign was in every way a perfect example of the most noble and admirable aspects of the great crusade and those who fought in it. It was a peerless feat of logistics, for one, to amass so many humans under arms so quickly and to ensure their deployment with such accuracy. For the warriors and soldiers of the many battles throughout the system, they comported themselves with an honor and professionalism, becoming a force under the command of the master of mankind himself. On a greater level, Yulinor was a symbol that the great crusade would succeed no matter the odds it faced and that the genius of the emperor's leadership and design would see humanity triumphant upon any world and against any foe. For 200 years, the Imperium had pushed back the darkness, reuniting the lost worlds of man, and in the end, it seemed that a conclusion was fast approaching. There were, of course, many more worlds to conquer, but surely a change was coming and the change would revolve around Yulinor. For those who fought there, it was a victory unlike any they had ever won. For those who heard Telavit, it was stirring confirmation of humanity's manifest destiny. The emperor, in his wisdom, declared that a triumph was to be held upon the world, in the manner of the Romani of old earth, who held celebrations lauding the great victories of its own legions. However, this would not be a simple military parade to mark the return of an army. Not of such simple aspirations was the lord of lightning. No, Yulinor would be a spectacle unlike anything the Imperium, nay, the galaxy, had ever seen, or would ever see the like of again. History is replete, thankfully, with accounts of this day, thanks in large part to the Remembrancers appended to the Legion as a starty. It is recorded that Legionaries, interviewed upon the subject, spoke of it in reverent tones. For many, it was a true zenith of the crusade, a day unlike any that had come before. The planet itself was wrought into the emperor's vision. The Mechanicum of Mars deployed their world engines to render smooth an entire continent. The millions of green-skins that lay dead were interred upon the flattened mountains of their former world, steam-rolled flat by the stone-burners of the Mechanicum. Every last trace of their rotten cities and slums were eradicated, and in its place now lay a parade ground the size of a city, with one single structure, a pavilion raised from black marble, shipped from Terra itself. The mile markers of the ground were marked with posts covered in the skulls of green-skin commanders, alongside pits of ever-burning Prometheum. The first to arrive were the Titan legions, whose honored war engines stood in perfect formation, raising like skyscrapers above the ground. The sheer disturbance of their colossal landercraft would disrupt the world's atmosphere for weeks to come, a condition compounded by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Imperial auxiliary lifters, ferrying the millions of army troopers to stand as tribute to the Imperium. Every single man and woman there had been selected for their valour and honour, and all would spend the remainder of their lives with the golden Onyx medal of the triumph affixed upon their breast, forged from the spent bolter shells of the Imperial guns that had brought such ruin to the green-skins. Thousands of aircraft cut contrails across the sky, while above them yet thrummed the void shields of the spacecrafts of the Imperium, inching as far into the upper atmosphere as they dared, and then there were the Astartes. Fourteen legions were represented at the triumph, some in their near totality. Never before had brothers from so many legions shared the same soil. Even this, however, was eclipsed by yet a more unique gathering, for fully nine of the Emperor's own eighteen sons joined their gene-father upon the Pavilion, Mortarion of the Death Guard, Cowled and Brooding, Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons, his single eye inscrutable, Jagatai Khan of the Whitescars observing the proceedings with detached nobility, Lorgar Aurelion of the Word-bearers, Burning with barely-contained zealotry, and Gron of the World Eaters, twitching as his implants fired kill signals into his brain, full grim of the Emperor's children, delighting in the pageantry, sanguinius of the Blood Angels, smiling at those awed by his angelic aspect, and Horace Lupercow, taking a humble pride in the work that had been done to lead the Imperium to this point. But the Emperor had one more goal above all this splendour. Gathering his sons before him, and before the eyes of the gathered millions, he made a proclamation that changed the course of history. You are like a son, and together we have all but conquered the galaxy. Now the time has come for me to retire to Terra. My work as a soldier is done, and now passes to you, for I have great tasks to perform in my earthly sanctum. I name you Warmaster, and from this day forth all of my armies and generals shall take orders from you as if the words came from mine own mouth. But words of caution I have for you, for your brother Primarchs are strong of will, of thought, and of action. Do not seek to change them, but use their particular strength well. You have much work to do, for there are still many worlds to liberate, many peoples to rescue. My trust is with you. Hail Horace, hail the Warmaster of a Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash oculus imperia. And if you're looking to keep in touch with the channel, get regular updates, you can follow me on twitter at buttstuffkaiju, or check us out on discord, a link will be in the description and on the channel page. Oh, and before you guys go, I'd really like if you could check out a very cool painting competition that some friends of mine are running with the aid of Robbie MacNivin, author of the Kakaradans Astra Black Library series to coincide with the release of Outer Dark. It's essentially a painting competition where you come up with your own character, themed after Outer Dark, themed after the Kakaradans, paint it, it'll be judged by Robbie himself, throw in a fiver, all proceeds will go towards the shark trust to help actual real life sharks. The link is in the description below, so check it out.