Valdor: Birth of the Imperium

"Timeline-wise, this book comes even earlier than the Horus Heresy. This predates the coming of the Space Marines on any large scale, and Constantin Valdor is the lord of the Adeptus Custodes, who are the Emperors’ Praetorians – his bodyguards. Each one of them is individually even more powerful and stronger than a Space Marine; there is so much effort and science required to create just one of them. They’re often thought of as emotionless robots, and that’s not true, but they do have absolute control over themselves in ways that the Space Marines don’t. The Space Marines can be angry, they can be grief stricken, they can be indulgent – and some might argue that’s what ultimately leads them to Chaos. But the Custodians are essentially immune to all of that. These are stoic killers and protectors of the Emperor, and Valdor is first and foremost among them. The book picks up not long after the final death of the Thunder Warriors, who were these crude, barbarous warriors that the Emperor used to conquer Earth and bring it under his rule. The Wars of Unity were fought with these techno-barbarians at his side. And in the winning of this war, they all died. There’s a character called Uwoma Kandawire who is one of Earth’s politicians. At this point all the old dynasties are still thinking that they are still the rulers of Earth too now, and that’s not so much the case, but they don’t know that yet. The book follows her investigation when she figures something’s not right here. This army of Thunder Warriors, they surely didn’t just all die, just at the last moment; there’s something wrong. Valdor attempts to try and reason with her, to say, “You should let this go. It probably is one of these things best left in the past…” Because they were all murdered. They were barbarians who probably would not have fitted into the new Imperium. And when you have won this global war with these terrible people at your side, you maybe don’t want to be associated with them as you’re ushering in a new golden age of civilization and culture and reason and intellect. This story is running in parallel with the birth of the Space Marines as a galactic-scale fighting force, because at this time they’re quite few in number, and there’s certainly not enough of them to conquer a galaxy – which is the Emperor’s next stage after securing Earth: to reconquer the galaxy. Back before then, the galaxy was humanity’s, as they’d expanded into space and claimed worlds all across it; and then in the Age of Strife that essentially collapsed overnight. So this was the plan to reclaim the galaxy for humanity, and this is where we first see the Space Marines as a mass-produced fighting force take the field – because some of the Thunder Warriors at the start are still alive, and they are not going quietly into the night. They, along with some other people, decide that the Emperor is becoming a tyrant. This is not what they fought for, and they’re going to tear this down before it gets out of hand. And at that point, the Space Marines are unleashed, and it’s terrifying, even to the Thunder Warriors. To them, the Space Marines are almost abhorrent. They themselves are Warrior Kings – each of them is a legend who’s fought in 1000 battles, that kind of thing. And these Marine guys are just stamped out of a factory with brutality. There’s no honour, no grace in what they do, no stories are told about their victories. They’re just faceless warriors who kill. Of course, they will become heroes with names and battles, but to the barbarian Warrior Kings, they are this grey, faceless, numberless host, crushing them underfoot. This book did a really great job of establishing the vibe of what Earth was like before it became the Terra that we know from 40k. We pass from one period to the other – a line in the sand moment, where the Imperium changes in a heartbeat from one thing to another. And it teases the arrival of the Primarchs, because at this point they have been scattered to the four winds, and nobody knows where they are. Valdor and Malcador, who is sort-of the Emperor’s counsellor, are chatting about how these guys are just Marines, just tools, just weapons – but they start to see something in the Emperor. He’s looking for the Primarchs, and thinking of them as his sons. Valdor sees trouble in that. He knows that’s not what these people should be to the Emperor, because the minute there’s a personal connection that opens the door to potential jealousies, rivalries, bitternesses and so on. He’s above all that, and so his people will always be loyal. The minute you bring anything else into the mix, the more variables there are, the more chances there are of something spinning out of control. That’s what Valdor’s afraid of, and the book does a great job of taking us from one paradigm of the Imperium into something completely different. It’s presented as a great dawning of a new age, but you see it for what it is: a dark step on our path to destruction. Chris is just a wonderful writer. It’s a great way of threading the needle, knowing what is coming as we do – because a bunch of the Heresy novels were long out by this point. So to take a step back, to go behind that moment and tell that story… Again, it’s about bringing something new to the table, bringing a new lens to that moment, and suddenly it puts a whole different spin on everything that comes after it. That’s something we always try to do with the Heresy books. Yes. The lines are very often very black and white: if the Tyranids are coming to eat you, there’s not really much in the way of moral debate you’re going to have with your enemy. Or the orks are coming ten-thousand strong – yes, well, we have to fight them, that’s the end of it. Whereas in this book, the Imperium is still one planet, and the characters there have not yet been strait-jacketed by the chains and the dogma of the 41st millennium. So there’s still the idea that there can be dissent, there can be opposing political views, there can be opposing moral choices; and those are things that the Imperium of the 41st millennium either does not tolerate or views with great suspicion, because if you’re not pulling for the team, then clearly you are the enemy. This novel allowed for that political complexity, and it’s just a really great book. I think Chris is at his best when he’s dealing with the complexities of people and those relationships, and how they shift and change, in parallel to the great tides of history moving around them. Yes – this conversation has taken us into some really nice, deeper moments. That’s always what I like about these stories – that we get to tell stories about people amongst the guns and the bombs and the swords. We’re telling stories about people in a mad universe, and how they navigate this in ways that hopefully will resonate with the readers. Because while this universe is hopefully a million miles from the daily life that any of us will experience, the relationships, and the shifting dynamics of people, and the trying – hopefully, if you’re a hero – to do the right thing no matter what the odds are, is something that people can latch on to. That’s a universal constant, that we all want to be better and do the right thing. And that’s why it’s so interesting – because these characters are under pressures that are far greater than anything we will ever know."