A lost Legion company from the Great Crusade era? A loyalist company that had refused to take part in the great rebellion and fled their traitorous Legion? These had been Lin's working theories the moment he noticed that every piece of equipment this group carried was standard-issue from the Great Crusade period — but reality had a way of blindsiding you far more thoroughly than any theory.
Nobody could have anticipated that the Second Legion — purged so completely that no one even spoke its name anymore — still had surviving remnants on this planet. And their company commander even knew that the Second Legion's Primarch had been in league with Tzeentch before the great rebellion had ever begun.
He had been prepared for secrets. He had not been prepared for a secret this enormous. Lin found himself rising to his feet without thinking, and the motion drew every eye in the room.
"Is it time to tell us about the present state of things?" the Hunter Dreadnought asked.
Lin shook his head. "Hey — is it too late for me to back out now?"
The others fell silent, but Lin noticed that Lieutenant Vigan had already let his hand drift to the chainsword at his hip. The answer, it seemed, was obvious enough.
Lin — who had never actually intended to back out — sat back down. "Relax. It's been over a thousand years. Your secrets are still secrets, yes, but at this point they don't carry much weight anymore."
After all, the great rebellion had already happened — the one where all four Chaos Gods poured their gifts into Horus and he murdered his own father to prove his ascension. Against that backdrop, learning that the Second Legion's Primarch had been secretly colluding with Tzeentch beforehand was, frankly, underwhelming.
Still, having that secret as a foundation, Lin felt he finally understood something that had puzzled him even before his transmigration: why the Emperor had ordered the Second Legion purged. He had always assumed the Four Gods' campaign against the Emperor had begun with Horus — but it was now clear that Chaos's shadow had been spreading through the Imperium long before Horus ever raised his hand in rebellion.
As for Zerus and the Primal Zerg…
"Before I get into what came after the Great Crusade, I want to confirm something with you. What was your Primarch's name?"
"Abathur. That is what the Emperor called him. Why do you ask?"
Well. That tracks.
"No reason," said Lin, waving a hand with the air of a man who had long since stopped being surprised by anything. "It's just… that name sounds a lot like an old acquaintance of mine. An old… zerg-quaintance."
First playing Monster Hunter alongside dog-headed xenos, and now apparently StarCraft 1v1 with a bird-headed sorcerer — it seemed that thirty thousand years ago, the old man from Terra had led quite a rich and varied social life.
But now he had to brief these veterans on the present state of things.
His earlier display of wanting to back out had already given everyone a less-than-optimistic impression of the current galaxy — but Lin still chose his words carefully, steering around the deeper secrets that were not his to reveal:
"The Great Crusade has ended, though not without great cost. Humanity's domains expanded enormously, and mankind stands as the dominant power of the galaxy."
"But the threats humanity faces have not diminished. Humanity's enemies have, if anything, grown more cunning and more tenacious than they were during the Great Crusade. They cannot shake the Imperium's supremacy — but they can strike from every dark corner of the galaxy at any moment, tearing out a chunk of flesh before slipping away. And the Imperium's forces lack strong, centralised leadership; the sheer scale of its territories makes rapid redeployment impossible. More often than not, entire worlds are left to be ravaged by xenos with no relief in sight."
"Lack strong leadership? What about the Warmaster? What about the other Primarchs?" the Hunter Dreadnought asked. "I had assumed the Emperor would station them to guard the frontiers. Has the threat facing humanity grown so great that even the Primarchs and their Legions cannot keep pace?"
"The Age of Primarchs is over," Lin said, shaking his head. "They are all gone. Every last one of them."
The Hunter Dreadnought said nothing. But Lin distinctly felt the sharp intake of breath, and after a long pause the Dreadnought asked hesitantly: "Does that mean the Emperor… disposed of them all?"
"It was what they did to the Emperor, not what the Emperor did to them."
Lin cut off that line of thinking before it could go further. "Near the end of the Great Crusade, a number of Primarchs, corrupted by the daemons — those Warp-born entities — launched a rebellion against the Emperor. They are known collectively as the Chaos Traitors. The Chaos Traitor forces drove straight for Terra, and after fifty-five days of brutal fighting on Terra itself, the traitorous Primarchs and their daemons were finally defeated by the loyal Primarchs and the forces that remained true to the Emperor.
"The traitors abandoned their goal of destroying the Imperium and fled with their daemons into the Warp, and they have barely shown themselves in realspace since. But the Emperor himself was gravely wounded. On the edge of death, he was placed upon the Golden Throne on Terra, and a stasis field has frozen him forever in that moment between life and death. The Emperor still exists — but he can no longer lead this Imperium."
"He can never lead the Imperium again?" The Hunter's voice rose sharply — his shock clearly surpassing even the moment when he had suspected the Emperor had purged all the Primarchs himself. "Who launched the rebellion? Who started it? Was it our gene-father?"
"It was Warmaster Horus."
"Oh, so it was Horus after all… wait, did you just say Horus?"
Unlike the sharp intake of breath before, this time the room fell into a silence like death itself. When nobody spoke for what felt like an age, Lin could only confirm again: "Yes. Horus."
"The one who launched the rebellion was the gene-father of the Sixteenth Legion… Warmaster Horus? The Emperor's beloved first-found son?"
The Hunter murmured it almost to himself. As a veteran of Terran origin, he had clearly served under Horus's command and banner before any of the Primarchs had even been rediscovered — and may well have met Horus in person. "Why wasn't it our gene-father? Why did it have to be Horus?"
Do you hate your own father that much, or do you love Horus that much?
Lin very much wanted to say it aloud — but when the Hunter Dreadnought's voice broke into something that was almost a groan, he held his tongue.
He could barely imagine what it must have cost this battle-hardened old warrior — a man who had faced a Tzeentchian Greater Daemon, endured its revelations designed to shatter his will, and still struck it down — to make a sound like that.
The Hunter had just declared moments ago that they could never hope for a bright future. But even he had clearly not imagined the future would be quite this dark.
The old warrior had genuinely steeled himself. But this was Warhammer 30K — when it came to psychological resilience, Lin could only say: the man still had room to grow.
Still, there was always time to let someone catch their breath. Lin politely fell silent and waited for the Hunter to steady himself.
But Lieutenant Admir and the others nearby were clearly not satisfied with Lin's pause. They were shocked, certainly — but they had never been personally led by the Emperor or Horus themselves, so the news had not hit them with quite the same crushing force. They were already pressing forward: "And then? What happened after the Horus Heresy?"
"Let's hold on a moment — your company commander looks like he's about to flatline…"
Admir took one look and agreed: "Fair enough. Then let's start with something we're already somewhat mentally prepared for. If the rebellion was triggered by daemons corrupting the Primarchs — what about our own gene-father, who had already been colluding with daemons long before that? Did he take part in the rebellion as well?"
PS: I've seen some readers in the comments worried that mixing so many different elements will make things feel chaotic and incoherent. On that front — I do have a long-term vision for pulling all of these threads together into something unified. Whether I can pull it off well is another question, but I'm going to give it a shot regardless.
If it ends up a mess, just come straight out and tell me.
PS2: I realised I had written Horus as the gene-father of the Thirteenth Legion. I prostrate myself in penance before the Regent. It has been corrected.