 At the turn of the 31st millennium, the Emperor of Mankind had, upon the machine-flat surface of the world of Yulinor, issued a proclamation that would forever change the course of imperial nay galactic history, and dam our species to discord, destruction and bloodshed unheard of. Horus Luprachal, Primarch of the 16th Legion Lunawolves, was elevated above his 17 brothers. No then, this is a record of Horus the Warmaster, of his attempts to wrestle with his newfound responsibilities in the role, and ultimately his path to the fall that would damn him. What of the role of Warmaster itself? It was a position unheard of within the Imperium. For 200 years, since the departure of the great Crusade from the Wastes of Terra, the Emperor of Mankind had commanded his armies of his Imperium, leading ever from the van of the advancing Crusade Juggernaut, while he naturally delegated significant authority to his Primarchs. The Lord of Lightning was still the head of what was, fundamentally, a totalitarian military regime solely under his jurisdiction, for none were truly as he, and only through his wisdom, guidance and leadership, could the species ever have been led to such great triumphs. This was now, however, all to change. The Emperor announced his departure from the front line, telling his stunned sons of his early planned return to the Imperial Palace upon Terra. In his stead it was Horus who would command the entirety of the Imperium's armed forces, with the full authority of the Master of Mankind himself. Quite why the Emperor would depart from the Crusade, still very much in progress despite the mighty victory Ulyanor represented, was unknown to his Primarchs. For the reason has since been revealed only to the privileged few, and will be committed to record upon a later date pending the approval of the Imperial Household, he would impart the knowledge of his reasoning upon none, not even his own sons, not even his new warmaster. He asked his progeny merely to trust his wisdom and the import of the work he was to pursue. Their reactions were, like their characters, many and varied, ranging from happiness to discontent to outright condemnation. Some lauded their brother Horus' ascension. Rogaldorn, Pragmatic Master of the 7th Legion Imperial Fists, praised the choice, feeling his brother to be the most suited to the demands of the role. Fulgrim of the 3rd Legion Emperor's Children, and Sanguinius of the 9th Legion Blood Angels, echoed this, with the latter confiding to his brother privately that he was relieved not to have been selected for the burden. Others were less effusive in their praise. The lion of the 1st Legion Dark Angels protested Horus' selection over his own, pointing to his legions role as the first founded and to his own tally of victories, as proof that he should have been named warmaster. Kertarabo, of the 4th Legion Iron Warriors, felt similarly, bitterly arguing that Horus lacked the logistical acumen to truly meet the strains of Imperial leadership, and that this was yet another example of the Emperor's lack of acknowledgement of the work of him and his legion. Rubut Gulliman shared some of his Iron Brothers' concerns, although his worries were more immediate, and rooted in the fear of the disruption a massive sea-change in leadership could wreck upon the incalculably vast Crusade war machine. Finally, Angron of the 12th Legion World Eaters, and Liman Russ of the 6th Legion Spacewolves raged at the decision, seeing the Emperor's direct favoring of one of his sons over the remainder as a direct betrayal of their kinship, and to the mind of the Primarch Mortarion of the 14th Legion Deathguard, yet more proof that his gene father played fast and loose with his son's loyalties. Horus, for his part, accepted the honor imparted upon him, but it is recorded through the accounts of the Mourneval, his coterie of advisor-captains, that he often wondered where he suited to the position, as well as bleakly musing, and whether or not he even had a choice to begin with. Gulliman was more the statesman, more adept at handling war in all its myriad forms. Ferris Manus, of the 10th Legion Iron Hands, was more the man to conquer the galaxy, heedless of the cost, never bowing, never breaking, forever forging onwards. Sanguinius, the Atophic Sanguinius, was far the most like their father in aspect and temperament, an angelic figure needed to rally those of the Imperium around his banner. The latter, however, was determined to assuage Horus' concerns. The Lord of the Blood Angels reminded Horus that the Emperor had chosen him not for his Legion's size, for the 13th Legion Ultramarines eclipsed that, nor their tally of victories alone, for the Lion and his Dark Angels ever snapped at those heels. No, Horus was Warmaster, for, out of all of the Emperor's sons, it was he who could digest every stratagem, defeat every foe, embody every aspect of war, approach every problem from all possible viewpoints, and do so with such an intoxicating charisma and belief in the Imperial Truth that men could not help but follow him into the teeth of whatever enemy he bade them to. Many of his brothers could fight different forms of war better than he, but only in Horus were all the virtues of the Commander writ so large and so plain for all to see. Beyond that, on a level yet higher, writings from the time penned by the great and good of the Imperium, Lord Horus as being singular among his brothers in his appreciation of the Emperor's grand vision for the future of mankind. He truly believed his father's plans for humanity's destiny as rulers of the galaxy and was able to comprehend the incredible scope of the Master of mankind's purposes in a way his siblings may have claimed to, but never could truly appreciate. Under this understanding, it would be clear to see why the Emperor would love him in the way that he did, for to be a being such as the Emperor is to be utterly alone in the universe. To have one's son see your ambition as you do. One can only imagine how that must have felt. One must wonder if this is a facet of the infant Horus maturing at his father's side. While records at hand are incomplete upon the matter, it is known that Horus was the first found Primarch and found as a child. He grew up at the Emperor's side under the Emperor's own tutelage. Not for him, the foster parents or worlds his brothers flourished or suffered under, know by the Lord of Lightning's own hand was the Warmaster's mind sculpted and filled. He perhaps more than any other was the truest example of the Emperor's ambitions for his progeny. Horus' elevation to Warmaster came, however, in tandem with another ruling by his Imperial Majesty, one that unsettled the Primarchs even more. In the wake of his departure, and to better prepare the Imperium for its now seemingly inevitable victory in the Great Crusade, the Emperor formed the Council of Terra, a civilian bureaucracy to administer the laws, tithes, taxes, and day-to-day running of the Imperium in his stead, formed around Malkador, the Imperial Sigillite, and the Emperor's most trusted advisor, Kelbor Hale, the fabricator general of the Martian Mechanicum, Constantine Valdor, captain general of the Ligio Custodes, as well as the masters of the Astronomicon, the Astra Telepathica, the newly founded Administratum, and divers other lords and ladies drawn from high-ranking offices within the Imperial and human volume. This was a massive shift in the distribution of power in the Imperium, as before these luminaries had been entirely subservient to the Emperor's military regime. For the first time, the Primarchs held authority only in military concerns. In all other aspects, they were now subservient to civilians on far-off terra. Many, even those generally taciturn, were sharply critical in what they saw as the usurpation of the power of the Imperial household in its most prominent forms, namely, themselves. Those more caloric of the Emperor's sons railed against the now inclined deferment to bureaucrats and terra nobility as a betrayal of all they had fought for, as none of those counsellors had ever shed so much as a drop of blood in the name of the Great Empire they had spent the better part of two centuries forging from their own sweat and toil. Horus' tenure as Warmaster was marked by a string of notable victories, but also some fraternal strife. The Battle of Gate 42, for example, earned him the eternal enmity of his Primarch brother of the 19th Legion Ravenguard, Corvus Korax, who accused Horus of throwing away the lives of his warriors in a heedless pursuit of glory. However, Luprachal, ever the canny political operator, was sure to strengthen the bonds he shared with his brothers wherever possible. He was sure to flatter Bitter Pertorabo with the praise the Iron Lord craved so deeply. Similarly, he recognized the incredible skill at arms the enigmatic Alpharius and his 20th Legion Alpha Legion possessed, despite their less-than-stellar reputation amongst the other legions and inherently insular in secretive nature. Not all of Horus' relationships were simply political tools, however. There was a genuine bond of kinship between he and Sanguinius, for instance, as there was with the 3rd Legion Primarch Fulgrim. 5th Legion White Scar's Primarch Jaghatai Khan, disaffected as he was with what he saw as the gulf between himself and the Emperor, regarded Horus with a fraternal fondness, as he felt Horus to be the only one of his brothers to understand his passions for freedom and exploration, and how the Imperium stifled his true nature. Where Horus could not court affection, he could at least count on respect. Ferus Manus and Rogel Dorne, masters of the 10th Legion Iron Hands and 7th Legion Imperial Fists, both regarded their brother with the esteem they reserved only for the most competent of commanders. Despite the exigencies of the great crusade pulling him every which way, Lupercal steered the uncountable forces of the Imperium steady and true during this period of Imperial history, with system after system, sector after sector, falling to the might of the armies of humanity. His advisors were many, and though he counted the council of his brothers as a most precious thing, Horus, being Horus, was not one to discount the input of any under his banners. His mornaval were an omnipresent representation of this, four captains of his luna walls, drawn from the ranks not by a virtue of their position of command, but for the content of their character. After the death of Hastor Sojanus, during the opening stage of the War of the False Emperor in early 002 M31, the mornaval was joined by 10th Company Captain Garville Loquen, taking a 4th seat alongside 1st Captain Ezekiel Abaddon, 2nd Captain Tariq Torgaden, and 5th Captain Horus Axemand, known colloquially as Little Horus. They were joined, in the aftermath of this campaign, by a figure around who so much history turns. Erebus, 1st Chaplain of the 17th Legion Word Bearers. The 1st Chaplain is recorded as having been anastartes of simultaneously intimidating and utterly approachable aspect. Aping his gene-father Lorgor Aurelian, passages of his Primarch writing were tattooed upon his head in the runic language of his homeworld, Colchis. There were few in the Imperium, save Lorgor himself, who were more ardent believers in the manifest destiny of mankind than Erebus. Dispatched by Lorgor as an emissary to the Warmaster's side, Erebus became something of a spiritual advisor to Horus. In a fashion that clearly offered Luprachal a facet of counsel, his mornaval could not. Erebus did not, however, concern himself simply with the Primarch, ministering to both the Lunawolves and the human members of Horus's sixty-third expeditionary fleet, in a fashion more akin to a mendicant preacher than an iterator of the imperial truth, although always being sure to cleave to the truest interpretation of the Emperor's ideology. He became a regular attendee of the Lunawolves' warrior lodges, ostensibly rankless fraternal gatherings in the tradition of those started by his own word-bearer's legion. While the lodges were covered in further detail in one's record upon the Lunawolves, it is necessary to understand them in context at this stage, for their impacts upon the dread events to come cannot be underestimated. They were, by design, an attack vector created to insidiously poison the minds of Horus's legion from within. Only the most blessedly ignorant may wonder as to what that poison was. Chaos, dear viewer. The malign, corrupting toxic tendrils of the universal force of purest evil, worming its way into real space as ever it has done through the minds and emotions and sins and dreams, of those too blinkered to see their downfall before it is too late or so utterly damned that they willingly tread this path in exchange for power, granted by the entities of the warp, as will be fully elaborated upon in a future record The 17th legion word-bearers, with Lorgar at their head, had by 002, M31, been for many years utterly in the thrall of the ruinous powers, believing them to be the true gods of the universe, set about seeing to enact their pantheon's will. The desire of these entities? Horus Lupacal. And the destruction of all that which his father the emperor was working to build. These further tales must wait for another day, but know then that it is upon this precipice that Horus now stood. A battle king in his own right, a warlord unparalleled, beloved by all, second only to his father, unknowingly welcoming a viper into his home, unaware of the machinations of powers beyond sinister that were already well in play. Ave 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.