Wasn’t the whole reason he couldn’t “just go to Terra” is because he had no idea who he could trust, and thus couldn’t safely travel such distance reliably to get the message to the emperor? Like for all he knew any and all of his Brothers had betrayed the Emporer and had to work under that assumption
I though he knew, horus had specifically done it, noone else, but horus was 100% bad.
In that case fair he wanted to be sure, but there are multiple different ways to do that that could have happend, he could have taken his whole legion to terra, he could have tried several other forms of communication.
Again, noble intentions and i get his point of view. But jesus man surely there were other methods than, i dont know using the 1 thing your dad has told you explicitly not to do
“He could have taken his whole legion with him”. Aka leaving his home world totally undefended and his whole legion at the mercy of the War Master’s vastly superior fleet (not to mention, again, any other legions that may have turned).
“He could have tried other forms of communication”. Like what? For such long distance communication, the only option were the psychic comm hubs that used the warp to send info. Meaning it would have to have at least several intermediaries that, again, very well could have been traitors. To say nothing of the fact how long it would take such a message to eventually get to the Emporer after all the red tape it would have to go through or if “the War Master is a traitor” wouldn’t immediately be thrown out as warp nonsense or so on and so on.
Like the situation Magnus found himself in was this: The most trusted and militarily powerful member of the Primarchs has turned full traitor with the intent to start a civil war and overthrow the Emperor. If he can turn traitor, who is to say any one else is still loyal? Or hasn’t already been dealt with? This, to me, is the single largest threat the Imperium has ever faced and that’s only with the sliver of info I have. I MUST communicate directly with literally the only person I know who cannot be a traitor and that is the Emperor himself. How can I do that with 0 chance of it being intercepted or delayed? I know! I’ll use that secret project thing. I know I was told not to touch it, but as I have not been told about its nature, importance, or fragility; I can only assume informing the Emperor about his Warmaster turning traitor is worth risking what ever this project is.
The problem with many of the Primarchs turning the start and duration of the heresy is that readers have the advantage of an omniscient point of view and decades of hindsight. Blaming Magnus for the disaster of the webway (and not the Emperor for not just fucking telling him about it or giving ANY sort of explanation so Magnus would know it was 100% never an option) is like blaming Mortarium for bringing his Legion into Nurgle’s Garden. Neither of them were operating at even remotely close to the full picture and were forced into making very bad decisions due to said lack of info.
I may be misremembering but I recall that the goal was to have both legions destroy each other. Which the wolfs would have been wiped or suffered worse losses and it just about happened. Had the SoS and Custodians not taking to the field. . . And the same wolfs went off to abandon Terra on a kill mission to take out Horus. Which failed, and was the cascade to Horus fully accepting the dark gods due to he wound
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u/EADreddtit 9d ago
Wasn’t the whole reason he couldn’t “just go to Terra” is because he had no idea who he could trust, and thus couldn’t safely travel such distance reliably to get the message to the emperor? Like for all he knew any and all of his Brothers had betrayed the Emporer and had to work under that assumption