I HAVE A KICKSTARTER!!1
CLICK THE TOP IMAGE ON THE RIGHT TO GO THERE!!!
Ok now on to the post. Click the 'trailing corposant' tag to see the previous posts in this series about me reading the entirity of the Horus heresy Series.
......
The next four books are frankly, all over the place as
the Heresy Series goes into what will be one of several wild tacks back and
forth, a lumbering freighter which has lost its course.
Fulgrims as Fiasco
We will start with a look at the character as he is published chronologically. Because this one is pretty interesting.
2002 - Index Astartes 1. The Proto-Versions of Fulgrims discovery and his uplifting of Chemos.
2007 Fulgrim - (HH Novel). The Big Main book that all the
others end up responding to. Fulgrim starts dating a hot sword and falls to
chaos. Ends with; ITS NOT FULGRIM ANY MORE A DEMON IS POSESSING HIM??? GASP.
Yes OG Fulgrim is now trapped in a painting.
October 2011 - Auralean
(HH Novella). Only a brief peek in this one as Lorgar works out Fulgrim is
a demon; OK SO FULGRIMS STILL A DEMON HERE RIGHT?
May 2012 - The Reflection Crak’d (HH Novella). This
is the one with the Torture Apple and the anal violation. Fulgrims kids work
out that its not really him in that body as he has been acting weird, even for
him, so they decide to BDSM the truth out of him.
October 2012 - Angel Exterminatus (HH Novel). Fulgrim teams up with Peter Turbo to find some incredible super-weapon (‘Turbo being insanely into superweapons is a theme with him), but it is all a cunning trick and Fulgrim was actually just planning to ascend to being a Demon Primarch, which he does.
Ok so now we have demonic, snake-bodied, shapechanging but NOT possessed Fulgrim from this point on and he remains relatively stable (from our point of view).
May 2014 - Vengeful Spirit (HH Novel). Horus uses
his noted supercharisma and military genius to persuade his junkie brother to
actually be useful in the Heresy for once.
March 2017 - Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch;
(Campaign Guide). I haven’t read this, apparently F’Grim turns up in the ‘current
year’ to dick Robute about and then just wanders off.
October 2017 - Fulgrim: The Palantine Phoenix (Primarchs Series Novel). Josh Reynolds gets a crack at F’Grim in a prequel story telling us something about the Fabulous One in the time before his fall seemed inevitable.
December 2017: Fabiuls Bile: Clonelord. Josh Reynolds
again. This is a complex one, details at the end.
August 2018 - Slaves to Darkness (HH Novel). Horus
is having a meltdown so Lorgar takes a shot at taking over the Heresy. As part
of his plan he goes to hell and uses cunning to drag Fulgrim back-to-Reality-ope-there-goes-Gravity.
March 2018 - The Ancient Awaits (Short Story). Another
post-Heresy story where Fulgrim meets a dreadnought of one of the Loyalists he
sent to die on Istvaan III and gets a bomb in the face. A moment so epic fans
made their own song about it
May 2019 - The Solar War (Siege Novel)
October 2019 - The Lost and the Damned (Siege Novel)
March 2020 - Saturnine (Siege Novel)
Fulgrim at the siege of Terra is basically vibing.
To Summarise;
McNeil makes what may be one of the most epic misfires in the entire Heresy followed by one of the most agonising and strangely arranged attempts at a recovery.
He ends his first story, and our first extended story about Fulgim by ‘black-boxing’ the main character. As whacked-out and wasted as Fulgrim is, he still can’t bring himself to kill his best friend Ferrus so at the climax of the book he gives up and surrenders his body to his addiction demon. Fulgrim is trapped in a painting and the Demon is now in charge. It was the demon who actually strook the blow that killed Ferrus. An important point.
(Of course we, reading later know that black-boxing is reserved for the Emperor and Horus, the other characters have to remain, well, characters.)
After three or four years in real time, possibly because he’s writing Angel Exterminatus and has realised that, since Fulgrim is in it, he needs Fulgrim to be an actual character, and also that, since its based around Fulgrim trying to become a Demon Prince, he needs to not already be a demon at the start of the book as that would be mental, McNeill decides to solve the Fulgrim issue.
So in May 2012 we get ‘The Reflection Crack’d’, where an anal torture scene reveals the truth… But think about what an incredibly strange way this is to write these events. What we learn is that Fulgrim has escaped from demonic imprisonment, forced his possessing demon into the prison instead, but is now super pervy and wants to be a demon himself.
We see absolutely none of this from Fulgrims point of view, instead we get this very strange story where the person you though was someone but suspected wasn’t turned out to in fact be the same person you originally assumed they were.
Things stabilise for the rest of the Heresy with him being a talented flake who generally doesn’t want to be there and has to be coerced or persuaded for each performance. He has no further character development or decay. (Apart from Josh Reynolds ballsy attempt at adding depth in ‘The Palantine Phoenix’).
Yet for most or many of the key moments of Fulgrims
development and change, we either don’t see the events directly or Fulgrim is
in some sense ‘absent’ within his own story.
Fulgrim as Character
Fulgrim; School-Star
Fulgrim lands on a resource-poor planet ruled by aristocratic corporations, grinding work and despair where everything is slowly falling apart.
Three people find him. One is so freaked out that he wants to do away with the child, so another kills him (bad sign), but Fulgrims arrival breaks open the rock and releases a spring of pure water on a planet where this is treasured and rare (good sign).
(His name means ‘water-bringer’, something he shares with Lorgar, who also fell onto a desert world and was named ‘Rain Bringer’.)
In childhood and adolescence, Fulgrim works feverishly to rescue his world from its doom, and does so (so far as we know) with nothing but technical knowhow, charisma, politics and hope. Almost the ideal of the Emperors vision for a reunited mankind, he achieves what a few other Primarchs have, and does it without genociding or nuking anyone. (Even Corax had to nuke a few people.)
We don’t see this story. Its only revealed through memories and articles in old HH lore.
Assuming this lore remains true, this is Fugrim unquestionably at his best, with all his virtues working to the max and most of his flaws accounted for by poverty and lack of resources. In these circumstances he truly is a Phoenix; hope from hopelessness.
But our story begins, both chronologically and in-world, past this point.
What happens to the Phoenix after that initial re-birth,
when it is just sort of hanging around? What happens to the High-School
football star after school ends, and they need to enter the real world?
The Football Star Has Cracks
Fulgrim has a lot of flaws disguised as virtues, and a LOT of insidious problems in his legion which he either doesn’t know about, doesn’t really process or just chooses to ignore.
In his post High-School arc things seem to start well.
Luv me Emprah
Fulgrim thinks E-Money, his ideas, his big plan, Fulgrims place in it, and pretty much everything he does – is and are FUCKING AMAZING.
Admittedly its hard not to think that when the Emperor is staring you down as his presence distorts reality itself, but Fulgrim really really thinks that. And the Emperor thinks it right back.
“You are great, you are the best, I am going to base my life on you” says Fulgrim to the Emperor.
“No son,” says the Emprah, “You are great, you are so great in fact here, name your legion after me and wear my special symbol to show just how fucking special you are. NO-ONE ELSE GETS THIS SPECIAL BADGE FULGRIM YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE.”
Gene Seed Problems
Someone is clearly not a fan of the Third Legion. A weird and mysterious “accident”, (unusual in the Heresy series in that there has not been a short story about it involving time loops, demons, “you made your own future” themes, mysterious aliens, the Selinar Gene cults or anything at all really), takes place which wipes out most of their gene-seed.
Worse, they have a mysterious blight or flaw which is corrupting or destroying what remains. This legion seems doomed.
Fabius
Apothecary Fabius decides to save his Legion (and himself) using whatever it takes. A repeated theme with the Astartes since all of them have some kind of flaw or problem and if you want to keep a legion going then often someone needs to do whatever it takes.
This ultimately involves Fabius grinding up his dead bothers and snorting them in order to stay alive, Fabius has the Blight too, and though he can retard its progress, he can never entirely cure it.
The few remaining Astartes from this generation suspect that something is up with Fabius, but he is an unquestioned genius and a vital resource. The ‘Spider’ squatting there at the centre of the Legion, acts as an accelerant for the corruption to come.
Small Legion
The Third Legion is therefore very small, nearly wiped out in fact, so the remaining legionaries are treated a little more like air-force pilots than standard expendable grunts. They are very much not expendable. In fact they are massively over-trained and upskilled compared to other legions, and very well looked after.
They are also massively traumatised by their near-extinction, and have a collective small-man syndrome at an epic level due to having a legion of like 200 guys. Even the Thousand Sons have a thousand sons.
Noble Seed
They are also recruited from the Noble Families of Old Terra. This is a common tactic of the Emperor to simultaneously co-opt, neuter and possibly destroy potential sources of resistance. Having your children selected to become Astartes is an “Honour” and clearly indicates your loyalty and integration with the new Imperium , but effectively it cripples your gene-line by removing most of the vital young men. Men are pretty replaceable in general, but the Astartes process is very flesh-hungry and many cultures in the Heresy are nearly destroyed by over-recruitment, accidentally in some cases, and in some, very deliberately.
A lot of the 3rd legion are from wealthy noble houses. Raised to rule and have good taste even in the short years before they were made supermen.
Very, very different to Fulgrims initial social milieux. The school hotshot from the small town won’t be working his way up from nothing, he arrives in Harvard, spending time with the genetic and social elite.
No Longer Number #1
The hyper-talented boy from the small town is no longer easily the superior of anyone he meets. He has 19 brothers, many of whom are better than him at stuff. Not the best technologist, (Ferrus), the best politician, (Robute) the best military strategist, (Horus) or even the most Handsome! (Sanguinius).
The guy who was best-at-everything, and for whom this was a huge part of his identity, is now very-good-at-a-range-of-things.
He does have one friend though, which is nice, a hyper-masculine equally-weird obsessive.
(Fulgrim and Ferrus is Guts and Griffith and no-one will convince me otherwise.)
All of this is fascinating character development and a deeply interesting look at the nature of character and how flaws can become virtues and virtues flaws as circumstances change except that ALMOST NONE OF IT IS THE DIRECT SUBJECT OF ANY OF HIS BOOKS.
Good news for weirdoes like me who get off on assembling the ephemera of imaginary paracosms into coherent wholes. Bad news for normies who just want to see things happen.
Sex n’ Gender
Did you know Fulgrim actually got married back on Chemos? At least a couple of times. These were largely political marriages made to cement alliances.
But, Fulgrim was very young when the first of these happened, and Primarchs can take some time to work out just how different they are to everyone else. They learn facts and skills quickly but they don’t develop emotionally very quickly. He is rather coy when questioned about them.
So did Fulgrim actually have feelings and relations for these early marriages?
Did Fulgrim have sex with a girl? I think this is the only Primarch who is suggested to have any kind of Heterosexual relationship with anyone. Later on in ‘Palatine Phoenix’ he has something of a flirtatious relationship with an intelligent and crafty old woman who might in some ways be an intellectual equal at this point in his development.
Its not really deeply described or looked into but the nascent concept of Fulgrim being someone capable of, and desirous of, actually emotional and physical intimacy with the opposite gender, is a fascinating one. It adds to and in some ways, makes more horrific, the loneliness of the Primarchs and of their Astartes ‘sons’. Most GW lore has Space Marines just generally uncomprehending of sexual intimacy but there is an unspoken possibility that one reason for the alienation of the Fulgrim and the Third Legion might be a sense of loss for an experience and capability most of them would barely be able to conceptualise emotionally. And then its translation into its own nightmare version as they turn into perv-monsters.
Of course we can’t have books about that because the middle-range of the I.Q. graph and the GW marketing department are VERY insistent that “Slaanesh isn’t just abuuuut seeeexx ducch kindofabadloooooook”.
The Palatine Phoenix
A book good enough that its worth mentioning on its own.
We get a look at Fulgrim at the exact mid-point between his obsessions and flaws being functionally useful, and him having edging towards some kind of breakdown.
Fulgrim is so obsessed with building a name and independence for his Legion that he decides he is going to take a planet with a small group of men and some political bullshit.
In later records this is portrayed as a supreme and brilliant victory. In Reynolds story it is shown as a near-catastrophe in which Fulgrim consistently underestimates or fails to understand the nature and quality of his opposition. He nearly gets blown up by a nuke, ends up brutally grinding his way through a scrum of opposition, ending up covered in their blood and gristle, his legionaries leave themselves open to possible defeat through grandstanding.
His ‘victory’ is much much more of a mess than it seems or is later presented as.
Worst of all is the failure to learn.
The planet in question is home to a complex philosophy which is all about dealing with the drive to perfection and understanding and channelling those urges into pro-social conduct and self-knowledge so that those who strive for greater things do not ultimately become the very monsters they sought to displace and defeat.
The book ends on a vaguely hopeful note in which Fulgrim acknowledges his need to keep learning and developing…
Which he definitely does not do.
This book, in 2017, is the end of Fulgrims personal pre-Heresy history (which we didn’t see most of), and the start of his cracked-up Heresy persona, which I found to be much less interesting as a whole, though he is still a lot of fun.
The Football Star Tries Crack
Graham McNeill is here! Bodies will be oiled, hair will be perfumed, sculptures will be smeared in poop, concerts will be had and love will definitely not blossom.
The Third legion is noodling along being almost-tolerable with their entourage of hipsters when they encounter a planet of pervy snakemen and decide to take them out. (The planet has cool floating islands so the Cogboys want it).
Unfortunately, the snakemen are wanking themselves off to a demon trapped in a sword. Fulgrim clearly has almost no idea about demons or warp infection and so kills the snakes and takes the sword. This is shooting up Heroin but with no idea what Heroin is or even that it exists. Also this Heroin is intelligent and wants to addict you.
What follows is broadly similar to ‘False Gods’, with one paragon marine (here Tarvitz rather than Loken) and a handful of relatively-sane Remembrancers experience the Third Legion turning into Epsteins Island.
There are many good scenes in the book, and many good concepts, and some good characters, but I did not find it to be a good book.
The demon in the Laer blade posing as part of Fulgims own character, then intrusive thoughts, then outright madness, is neat, the addiction-for-Primarchs stuff is good. The end is mental.
Fulgrim: What the Fuck is Going On
A brief period, already described in ‘Fulgrim as Catastrophe’ in which our boy is bounced around a bit and then the whole mess is papered over – HES A DEMON NOW OK????
“Because I Got High” - Fulgrims Heresy Adventures
Fulgrim in the Heresy has one overriding goal – to become winged snake-man and bang Demonettes in hell. He achieves this pretty quickly and in every other instance basically gives few to no fucks about anything that doesn’t look like immediate fun.
In ‘Angel Exterminatus’, Fulgrim tricks Pertuabo into helping him become a Demon Primarch. This done he fucks off to the Warp to bang Demonettes.
(Despite genuinely trying to kill Peter Turbo and then ending up under his (very nominal) command in the Siege, this isn’t really brought up much ever again. Perhaps Perty is just too generally bitter against everyone to focus on it.)
In ‘Vengeful Spirit’, Horus butters up Fulgrim with “You’re so pretty, please come to the Heresy” so Fulgrim can use TIME LOOPS (just time travel in this case) and an EXTREMELY OBVIOUS SNAKE CULT, to infiltrate the ruling caste of a planet he wants to invade. Fulgrim then fucks off to bang demonettes in hell.
In ‘Slaves to Darkness’. Lorgar goes to hell and stops Fulgrim banging demonettes, using sneaky demon-binding to drag him back to reality as part of a disastrous scheme to take over the Heresy. Horus immediately subverts that scheme, beats up Lorgar like a Nelson beating a Millhouse, and kicks him out of the Heresy. Fulgrim sticks around as Horus is just about charismatic and powerful enough to compel him.
In the Siege of Terra Fulgrim largely primps around in holo-casts being a slightly gay panto villain as he is written by average writers until ‘Saturnine’ (Siege Novel published March 2020), when he is still a panto villain, but written by a better writer. He orchestrates a super-attack on the Palace walls, is nearly victorious and fights Rogal Dorn in a duel which Dorn wins despite Fulgrim being an insanely good duellist even when just a Primarch and now being an extra-fucking-good duellist because he is a fucking four-armed demon-snake largely because Dorn is being written by Dan Abnett.
Its implied that if Fulgrim had really pushed the attack he might have won anyway, but as he got dinged up in the duel he no longer gives a shit, leaves his ‘inner circle’ to get roflstomped by Dorn and Sigismund and literally thrown off the palace wall, and once again fucks off, either to bang demonettes in hell or to grind up the population of Terra and snort them. Terra being a Cormac McCarthy novel by this point he can do both at once.
And that, so far as has been thus written, is the end of Fulgrims military usefulness in the Heresy.
Except during the Scouring where he fights Robute Guilliman and easily cuts his throat with a super-poisoned blade, sending him into a 10,000 year long coma, but then leaves, presumably, again, to bang Demonettes in Hell.
Fulgrim in the Dark Millennium
Fulgrim pops up here and there with small mentions in books. In ‘The Ancient Awaits’ (Short Story published March 2018) he meets up with a buried dreadnought he left on Istvaan and gets bio-nuked. In ‘Gathering Storm: Rise of the Primarch’ he turns up to deliver a panto villain speech to Robute again.
The only really interesting look at him is, again, from Josh Reynolds.
In his Fabius Bile series Fabius gets his hands on a perfect uncorrupted clone of Fulgrim and is given the chance to raise him and maybe correct a past which once went wrong.
He doesn’t, probably couldn’t have anyway because he’s a psychopath and for Fabius at least, overcoming the ‘addiction’ of his Primarchs charisma is what passes for character development.
Yet we do get to see a young, vital, idealistic and earnest baby Fulgrim roaming around trying to fix everything and help people, (in this case, horrible mutants). And while being raised by a high-I.Q. madman, he is so-far non-chaotic and in fact regards chaos the way a five year old boy regards kissing girls.
He just wants to fix a broken galaxy, and begins to do so, starting from the very bottom…
This strange distant shadow in time is the only direct look we get at the School Star when he was still in school.
It is likely the last we will see as Reynolds no longer works with Games Workshop.
Sadness
Perhaps it’s appropriate that for a story about the school-star gone wrong, the truly heroic and bold acts of the character are hidden away, rarely directly observed.
The great series of books and short stories;
“Fulgrim Saves Chemos – without Genocide! Fuck Yeah!”
“Fulgrim Meets the Emprah and Impresses the SHIT Out of Him!”
“Fulgrim Meets Ferrus – Now Best Buds!”
“Fulgrim Escapes the Painting! Give-Me-My-Body-Back-You BITCH!”
“Fulgrim bangs Demonettes in Hell“
None of these exist. They are faded memories and imaginings, the
stories of the school star quarterback soaking himself in a near-empty bar
decades later.
