Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6078851-20140323165610

i just finished reading nemesis (for those who havn't there will be spoilers) and would like to know peoples' thoughts on that particular plan.

first off i'd like to say i never thought an eversor could be portrayed as an intelligent and rational individual, so kudos to the author 'cause the garantine was probably my favourite character. i actually sympathised with him when you realise that for every moment he's awake and not killing anything is torture, and i felt happy for him when he gets to take on an astartes :)

as for the plan to assasinate horus: was it a just plan? would it have changed the heresy in any way if it succeeded?

personally i've always thought that assasination is perfectly valid in warfare. the notion of 'rules of warfare' i've always thought of as being quite retarded considering that the aim of warfare is to kill/destroy/eliminate/obliterate/exterminate the opposition, but those aims are considered to be justified because they abide by the 'rules of warfare'. there's no such thing as 'rules of warfare', simply people attempting to legitimize their atrocities by saying they "abide by the rules of warfare". in my opinion there is no legitimacy to war except in self-defence (actual self-defence, not pre-emptive self-defence), and i apply this to every theatre - real-world and fiction.

i do think the outcome of the heresy would have been different if horus had been killed. while lorgar may have been the initial primarch to be the chaos gods' puppet it was horus (through the machinations of erebus/lorgar) that was the lynchpin of the entire heresy. if he died then another primarch would have filled his spot but the only other primarchs that could match his tactical acumen were loyalists - gulliman and the lion. so without horus' guidence the traitor forces might never have reached terra, however, if they did reach terra it could have been that they would have won. without horus at the head of the invasion the emperors ploy of having himself teleported to the traitors' flagship for a on-on-one-winner-take-all may not have worked. if it was another primarch in that situation (except angron) it may have transpired that the emperors ploy would have been ignored and boom......all hail the god-emperor lorgar.

so in my opinion if the assasination of horus succeeded it could have resulted in the demise of the heresy or the demise of the imperium. probably best it didn't succeed then :) 