Who Did Not Come to the Walls

An inventory of presence is needed before an inventory of absence. By the order of battle of the Siege, the walls are held by the VII, IX, V and a contingent of the VI; the XVIII is present in the person of Vulkan, and a landing of the I Legion under Corswain (10,000 warriors) retakes the Astronomican during the Siege so that Guilliman’s fleet could find its way at all. Of the nine loyal primarchs (the Gorgon was killed at Isstvan V back in 006) four are on Sol. Remember the rest: from here each is examined separately, and not one has been “forgotten by the author”.

The Thramas Crusade is not “the Lion out for a stroll”. Horus sends Curze to the Eastern Fringe precisely in order to bleed the Dark Angels and keep the Lion from reaching Terra. The plan worked: almost three years of terror and retreats. After that the Lion is held back by the Ruinstorm: he is Lord Protector of the Imperium Secundus, and once the storm is breached at Davin he leads the Legion towards Sol by a roundabout path of vengeance. In 014 the primarch is not at the walls because he reaches Terra only after the final duel — although a separate contingent of the I under Corswain fights on Terra. Caliban’s treachery will catch up with the Lion later, after the Siege (step 6).

The Ultramarines are the most numerous Legion of the Heresy, on the order of 250,000 warriors. They are not at the Lion’s Gate. Cut off by the Ruinstorm and without word of the Emperor, Guilliman founds Imperium Secundus with Sanguinius as regent and the Lion as protector. The conclusion for the Siege is dry: Dorn builds the defence without a quarter of a million Ultramarines. And when Guilliman’s fleet does at last incinerate the traitor armada in orbit, the Emperor is already on the Throne: the interment on the Golden Throne precedes Guilliman’s arrival.

After Prospero Russ does not become a free reserve: first the Alpha Legion’s ambush in the Alaxxes Nebula, then the Wolf Campaign. At Trisolian the Wolves strike the Warmaster’s escort fleet, Russ wounds Horus with the Spear of Russ aboard the Vengeful Spirit — and the Wolves are thrown back, while Horus, drained by the wound, sends Abaddon in pursuit. In the same 012.M31, at Yarant, the scattered Wolves are pressed almost to annihilation, and it is Corax with the Raven Guard who saves them. This is the choice of a hunter, not of a coward — but after it the VI is no longer an army for the walls.

Corax tries to restore the Legion with the primarch’s gene-technology, but embedded Alpha Legion operatives poison the material — instead of a Legion, deformed mutant “raptors” are born. Corax then makes a choice that matters more in the atlas than the sabotage itself: he stays in the Warmaster’s rear. The Raven Guard take no part in the Siege of Terra at all; instead they pull the Space Wolves out of the trap at Yarant. By the time Guilliman arrives, most of the Imperium does not even know whether Corax is alive.

The destruction of Caliban comes after the Siege, but it is the price of the same absence. Luther, Astelan, Zahariel, the Lion’s orbital strike and the splitting of the Legion in two. The Lion vanishes for ten thousand years. To read the Siege without this frame is to think that the I “simply did not make it in time”: it did make it — but to a different war.