Chaos Space Marine Quotes

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Victory slipped through our fingers the moment Horus chose to reach into the dark and something reached back. We sacrificed our ambitions on the altar of his hubris, and when he fell, he dragged us all down inexorably with him. And not just Horus- Fulgrim as well. And Angron. Magnus. Lorgar. The gods you worship are nothing save lies, hidden behind masks of folklore and superstition. Interdimensional cancers, their mindless hunger confused for sentience amongst the lost and the damned".
Josh Reynolds
He did not answer, nor did he watch as I left. He was seeing Sigismund again, dwelling on replies he could never speak to a brother he had once admired and who had died despising him.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
Sometimes, I consider whether the Emperor hated the Primarchs the way Fulgrim hates us." "Speak for yourself. Our father does not hate us." "Of course he does. From afar, you feel the lie of his warmth, the false affection you all so urgently crave. And he gives it to you but always from pity. You are his champion, yet still you cannot see it. You will never be as close to him as I was. You never see the way he really looks at us. Never seeing the wonders we wrought, only the limitations. Not our triumphs, just our flaws. He hates us, Lucius, because to Fulgrim, we are not his sons. We are a mirror, holding up an image before him that he can never do anything other than hate. We are his own failure made manifest, the miscarriage that comes about when a father tries to mould his children into something better than himself.
Ian St. Martin (Lucius: The Faultless Blade (Warhammer 40,000))
The promise of mutually assured destruction had a way of calming even the fiercest hearts.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
He remembered being blinded by his father's light. He remembered refusing to abandon his brothers and sisters, beneath a blue sky at high-sun, far from the city of Desh'ea. He remembered the mechanical thunder of absolute betrayal, when he was stolen from the death he'd so richly earned. He remembered the cold moment of truth as he stood in the dark, his hurting eyes healing, that every day he breathed was an unwanted gift. He was walking another man's destiny now. His destiny was to be with the men and women who needed him, who called for him, who followed him into the mountains, and died without him. A destiny denied. He was Angron of Desh'ea. After that, nothing mattered. He'd listened to the others that begged him, that needed it all to matter. He'd played their games, living another man's life. He'd led his fleets, he'd embraced his sons, he'd told himself that blood was thicker than water, and that the Eaters of Worlds were the army he wanted and the horde he deserved. He'd sustained himself on lies, letting none see how he starved. And he served in his cold-hearted father's empire, enduring the silent sneers of brothers he despised.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Betrayer (The Horus Heresy, #24))
The only way to kill me was to welcome his own death, and he did it the moment the chance arose.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
This Imperium is ours. We fought for it. We built it with blood and sweat and wrath. We forged it with the worlds we took. The empire is built upon foundations of our brothers' bones...We didn't rebel out of petty spite, Sigismund. We rebelled because our Lord and master played us false. We were useful tools to bring the galaxy to heel, but He would have cleansed us from the Imperium the way He purged the Thunder Legion before us, wiping us all from history like excrement from His golden boots.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
You will not interfere with me? No. Well, I'm glad that's settled. Now I don't have to crack open your skull and claim the eldar did it.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
Something vast suddenly crossed my field of vision. By the time I had reacted and adjusted the magnification, it had passed out of sight into the works shed. I had a brief memory of bright, almost gaudy metal and a shimmering, flowing robe. ‘What the hell was that?’ I hissed. Midas looked at me, lowering his scope, actual fear on his face. Fischig also looked disturbed. ‘A giant, a horned giant in jewelled metal,’ Midas said. ‘He came striding out of the modular hab to the left and went straight into the shed. God-Emperor, but it was huge!’ Fischig agreed with a nod. ‘A monster,’ he said. The cones above roared again, and a rain of withering ash fluttered down across the settlement. We shrank back into the thorn-trees. Guard activity seemed to increase. ‘Rosethorn,’ my vox piped. ‘Now is not a good time,’ I hissed. It was Maxilla. He sent one final word and cut off. ‘Sanctum.’ ‘Sanctum’ was a Glossia codeword that I had given Maxilla before we had left the Essene. I wanted him in close orbit, providing us with extraction cover and overhead sensor advantages, but knew that he would have to melt away the moment any other traffic entered the system. ‘Sanctum’ meant that he had detected a ship or ships emerging from the immaterium into realspace, and was withdrawing to a concealment orbit behind the local star. Which meant that all of us on the planet were on our own. Midas caught my sleeve and pointed down at the settlement. The giant had reappeared and stood in plain view at the mouth of the shed. He was well over two metres tall, wrapped in a cloak that seemed to be made of smoke and silk, and his ornately decorated armour and horned helmet were a shocking mixture of chased gold, acidic yellow, glossy purple, and the red of fresh, oxygenated blood. In his ancient armour, the monster looked like he had stood immobile in that spot for a thousand years. Just a glance at him inspired terror and revulsion, involuntary feelings of dread that I could barely repress. A Space Marine, from the corrupted and damned Adeptus Astartes. A Chaos Marine.
Dan Abnett (Eisenhorn: The Omnibus (Eisenhorn: Warhammer 40,000))
Our main problem over the past few days and weeks,’ he said, ‘has lain in trying to connect the various phenomena. In fact, there wasn’t any obvious connection until a jelly-like substance started to crop up. Sometimes it appeared in small quantities, sometimes in larger amounts, but always with the distinguishing characteristic that it disintegrated rapidly on contact with air. Unfortunately the discovery of the jelly only added to the mystery, given its presence in crustaceans, mussels and whales - three types of organism that could hardly be more different. Of course, it might have been some kind of fungus, a jellified version of rabies, an infectious disease like BSE or swine fever. But, if so, why would ships be disappearing or crabs transporting killer algae? There was no sign of the jelly on the worms that infested the slope. They were carrying a different kind of cargo - bacteria that break down hydrates and cause methane gas to rise. Hence the landslide and the tsunami. And what about the mutated species that have been emerging all over the world? Even fish have been behaving oddly. None of it adds up. In that respect, Jack Vanderbilt was right to discern an intelligent mind behind the chaos. But he overestimated our ability - no scientist knows anything like enough about marine ecology to be capable of manipulating it to that extent. People are fond of saying that we know more about space than we do about the oceans. It’s perfectly true, but there’s a simple reason why: we can’t see or move as well in the water as we can in outer space. The Hubble telescope peers effortlessly into different galaxies, but the world’s strongest floodlight only illuminates a dozen square metres of seabed. An astronaut in a spacesuit can move with almost total freedom, but even the most sophisticated divesuit won’t stop you being crushed to death beyond a certain depth. AUVs and ROVs are only operational if the conditions are right. We don’t have the physical constitution or the technology to deposit billions of worms on underwater hydrates, let alone the requisite knowledge to engineer them for a habitat that we barely understand. Besides, there are all the other phenomena: deep-sea cables being destroyed at the bottom of the ocean by forces other than the underwater slide; plagues of jellyfish and mussels rising from the abyssal plains. The simplest explanation would be to see these developments as part of a plan, but such a plan could only be the work of a species that knows the ocean as intimately as we do the land - a species that lives in the depths and plays the dominant role in that particular universe.
Frank Schätzing (The Swarm: A Novel)
Jaghatai started to cough, sending more bloody spurts out over the ripped-apart ground. His shattered gauntlet still clutched the hilt of his blade, but the arm must have been broken in many places. Only slowly, as he trudged back, did Mortarion realise that the sound was bitter laughter. 'I… absorbed,' Jaghatai rasped, 'the… pain.' Mortarion halted. 'What do you mean?' 'I… know,' Jaghatai said, his voice a liquid slur. 'The Terminus Est. You… gave up. I… did not.' And then he grinned – his split lips, his flayed cheeks, his lone seeing eye, twisting into genuine, spiteful pleasure. 'My endurance is… superior.' So that was what they all believed. Not that he had done what needed to be done. Not that he had sacrificed everything to make his Legion invincible, even suffering the ignominy of using Calas as his foil, even condemning himself to the permanent soul-anguish of daemonhood so that the change could never be undone by anyone, not even his father. That he had been weak.
Chris Wraight (Warhawk (The Siege of Terra #6))
You fall, you rise, you continue on, refusing to believe your failures until once more they strike you down. You return, slowly diminishing, but unwilling to stop, unwilling to succumb. You are your race, Lucius. You are humanity and as with the rest of your kind, I delight in your dance, all the way to its end.
Ian St. Martin (Lucius: The Faultless Blade (Warhammer 40,000))
There was no unity to their attack. These were not wolves, pack animals that coordinated to dominate a larger prey. They were mercenaries, single fighters who relied on their skills with a blade and nothing - and no one - else. Had they struck him in concert, the Incubi might have pushed Lucius to the brink of defeat, or at least driven him away from their charge. They were exemplary, their craft honed to a brilliant edge, and fast as quicksilver. United, they would have been a terrible foe. As individuals, they were an amusing challenge, but nothing more. It last seven clashes before the first Eldar fell. The alien crashed to the deck, trying in vain to stymie the slopping discharge of his guts with arms that no longer had hands. Decreased by a third, the potency of the other two visibly diminished. Lucius could focus a greater share of his murderous attention on each of them, reducing their chances of survival from slim to non-existent. The second would die screaming, eventually, as Lucius crushed him in the grip of his lash and pitched him into the abyss. The third paused, shoulders heaving with exertion, before leaping at Lucius, its silver glaive flashing high. The Eldar came crashing down before the Eternal, blood spurting from the stump where its head had been moments before.
Ian St. Martin (Lucius: The Faultless Blade (Warhammer 40,000))
Tell me, because I really am quite curious. What precisely did you expect to happen when my dear perfidious brother brought me here? Did you truly believe I would be content to serve out the rest of my days as your sport? Did you truly believe I would not kill every single one of you, and hurl this satellite into your little cesspool of a city? You have no idea what you have unleashed upon yourself. I relish death. It holds no power over me, Eldar, because it holds no mystery. I have drunk from the well of oblivion time and again. I have bathed in chemical fire within the shattering bones of a warship as its reactor split and gave birth to a momentary star. I have felt the edge of fourteen blades as they sundered my hearts. I have drowned at the bottom of a world of endless ocean. I have tasted the most potent poisons this reality and the ones beyond can produce. I have been executed, assassinated, pulverised and ground to mulch. Yet here I stand. Against the very forces that set and order reality, here I stand. Unbowed. Undefeated. Eternal. What can you possibly offer, to threaten me?
Ian St. Martin (Lucius: The Faultless Blade (Warhammer 40,000))
Soldiers,' he made an insult of the word. 'Once we were crusaders Khayon, and now we're warriors, but we were never soldiers. Keep that foolishness to yourself.' I swallowed my argument, following his train of thought. It was not the first time legionaries have disagreed over those semantics, and it would be far from the last. Some believed soldiering came down to discipline, or fighting for a state or a leader rather than for yourself. Some believed warriorhood was a matter of heart that elevated them above a soldier's station, while others considered it a state of barbarity that dragged them beneath it. Some questions have no answers. No matter how seriously we took warfare, no matter how adamantly we clung to our disciplined roots as a Space Marine Legion, many of our number were ultimately the raiders and marauders that time had made them. For better or worse, we would never have the ironclad discipline of a Throne-loyal Adeptus Astartes force. Even back then, we had lost much of the discipline we had once possessed as Legions of the Great Crusade.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
In my experience, you mon-keigh make a great many claims when it comes to your own prowess, awarding yourselves title after title, your psyches awash with the hope that such posturing will intimidate your foes." "Undeniably true, though that seems harsh criticism from a species that attaches poetic nonsense like" The Storm of Silence" and "The Cry of the Wind" to its demigods, no?
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
You know as well as I that this doesn’t end with kill teams or assassins or a pre-emptive strike thousands of light years from Terra. It ends with me looking into my father’s eyes, my hands around His neck, and showing Him everything he loves burned to ash by His lies.
Graham McNeill (Vengeful Spirit (The Horus Heresy, #29))
The day will come, my dear, when your children's children stride the galactic rim as the kings and queens of all they survey. But first, you — we — must teach them how to survive, until that moment. In your generation, there were five hundred. Of them all, I kept only you and your closest siblings. The rest are scattered across the galaxy, burrowed into the flesh of a dying empire, so that they might best guide it to its well-deserved and long overdue grave. They, and their children, carry on my teachings into the dark. Generation upon generation, their strength breeding true. As mankind dies, so it nurtures its own replacement, all unknowing. But you are different. You and your kin are to be my hand on the throat of the future. For my brothers will not surrender to fate with dignity. Those who remain, after that final hour, will fight one another for the right to rule the ashes. And in that moment, you and yours shall assert yourselves, for the first time and the last. You will hunt angels, in the days to come, and make a new kingdom from their bones". ‘And where will you be?’ she asked softly. Fabius stepped back. ‘I imagine I will be first among the foundations, my dear.’ He smiled thinly. ‘There will be no place for me in the paradise to come.’ He laughed. Behind them, the entrance to the laboratorium whined open, and someone entered. Fabius ignored the newcomer, even as Igori stiffened. ‘But until then, I persist. Until my work is done.
Josh Reynolds
Would you be immortal, Master?' I would live long enough to see my work completed. True immortality is a burden, and I scarcely have need of another of those. Upon my back rests the weight of the future. But all things must end, to have any purpose at all. True beauty is found in beauty's end. A saying our gene-father was fond of, once upon a time. Before he lost sight of things.
Josh Reynolds
The only good is knowledge, Sekhandur. The only evil is ignorance'. 'That is a saying uttered by as many fools as visionaries and an attitude that has led to damnation more than once. The last man to speak those words in my presence doomed our Legion.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
For many years, I believed Him to be a god. I was instrumental in spreading the belief myself.' 'You still believe it'. 'I know what I know. A god or not, His power renders Him indistinguishable from divinity'.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
I will meet the dying Emperor's empty eye sockets and tell him the war is almost over. At last, after ten thousand years of banishment in the Underworld, his fallen angels are coming home...These are the end times. None of you are destined to survive the coming of the Crimson Path. The Imperium has been losing the Long War since it was first declared, and now we enter the endgame. I will tell you everything, Inquisitor, because for you, it will change nothing.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
I will give you NOTHING! Shall I tell you what I believe, Thagus?...I believe you are likewise trapped in the storm. I believe the Warp aided your pursuit of us, then cut you adrift in our wake, leaving you becalmed and with no idea why. I believe that the malignant essences we call Gods have brought us together in the heart of this storm to play out a game of kings and pawns, just to see where their favour should fall...I believe, most of all, that you are frightened of us. You fear us because despite your raving speeches that we are betraying the Legions, and despite your petty crusades to destroy us, we not only survive, but THRIVE. We grow with every conflict. The icons of the failed Legions are sheared from ever more suits of armour, and the colours of shame are eclipsed in numbers no other warband can match. You fear that we are right and you are wrong. You fear us, more than any other reason, because you had to chase us. Because we were here first. Because we are the ones on the verge of breaking free, despite all your attempts in these last decades to hinder us. We have been working towards this fate, while you have done nothing but seek to stop us. We've fought for true unity, all brothers beneath the black banner, while you've fought against it in the guise of preserving the old, failed ways. We, Thagus, have acted. You have reacted. And here we stand at our prison's edge. Even now you have no answers to give your men. Instead, you force this meeting with us, praying you can glean insight into our plans and scavenge victory through threats. You'll lose this war, Thagus. You'll lose because you desire the Gods' favour and you fear it falling upon anyone else.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden (Black Legion (Black Legion #2))
You mean to topple whoever finally claims Terra's throne and take it for yourself." "Who among my brothers is as remotely suited as I for such a position? Horus is already so rank with stolen powers that he burns from the inside out and sees it not. Perturabo might once have had the imagination to make such a leap, but it has been ground out of him. Angron or Mortarion are lords only of corpses and maggots, and as for Konrad and Fulgrim, they are not fit to rule themselves, let alone a galaxy.
Graham McNeill (Fury of Magnus (The Siege of Terra))
You are not the disease. You are but the symptom. Mankind was on the cusp of greatness, Kasperos, and we yanked it away on the advice of a shared delusion.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
Do not play me false, Fabius. I know deceit when I smell it, and the odour grows thick here. If you attempt to cheat me of my destiny, I will rip your ossified spine from your reeking carcass and beat you to death with it.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
I am come, finally. The final curtain and the last song. And I will burn this half-world and clothe myself in its ashes before I am done. Children of the Emperor! Death to His foes!
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
Those things you dote on are no more human than the Neverborn in my flasks. They are golems of meat and muscle, no better than the Interex or the Laer. For all your talk, you have only made monsters. That is why the gods exalt you so... You are a fecund womb for outrages and that pleases them greatly.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
The discipline of the Third had once been without equal. Now, it had collapsed entirely, leaving only ambitious barbarism in its wake. Overeager savages scrabbling for influence among the ashes. Grudgingly, he included himself among their number.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
We were created to guide mankind into the future. To oversee the birth of a new race. One which will outstrip even our accomplishments. We do not set the fire so that we might rule the ashes, my brothers...no, we set it so that the old might give way before the new. Take comfort, my brothers. It is a battle we cannot lose, for we have already won.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
Perhaps I overestimate the intelligence of our species. Perhaps we are little more than psychopathic apes, driven to fashion clubs and smash out the brains of our closest neighbours.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
I am Arsaces, Saha of the - I know who you are. You are a shadow of great warriors past. A mongrel, made out of battlefield leavings. Do not sully this moment by pretending to have a name that is worth remembering. Because I surely will not, come tomorrow.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
The gods love you, Fabius. You delivered a Legion to them. You opened the door with your twisted ingenuity, in ways Erebus could not conceive. And you are still opening that door, every time your scalpel draws a red line across flesh. The universe is made of two parts--a knife and a stone. If you do not wield the one, you must lay upon the other. And you wield the knife very well indeed.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
Why do you follow him? What can he offer you? Knowledge, child. There is no keener mind in the galaxy than that sour chunk of meat that occupies his skull. He has forgotten more about the inner workings of man and xenos alike than any Apothecary has ever known. I came to him to learn how to craft new and better contagions, so that Grandfather's blessings might be shared more freely. There are secret plagues from Old Night in these containers and virulent infections culled from crumbling bones of long dead aeldari. And with these raw materials and his aid, I have made wonders and horrors undreamt of by even the most glopsome of my brothers. Plagues that would devour even the rubbery flesh of Grandfather's children... Daemons are not susceptible to mortal plagues. No, they are not. And yet I have seen the results myself. That is what he offers me, child. In his shadow, I grow pleasingly feculent. And what does he get out of it? Were you not listening? Plagues, child. Swift plagues that can ravage entire systems at impossible rates. Oh, his mind is a thing of broken beauty. Even Abaddon cannot conceive of genocide on such a scale - it is not war to our Chief Apothecary, but simply...pest control. Imagine it. A great silence, falling all at once across a system. A sector. Every imperfect thing, snuffed out like a candle flame. And then... Ah, and then, a new beginning.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
Do you remember Prospero? The world? Yes. When Russ and his curs burned it, a wealth of knowledge unequalled in the galaxy burned with it. I have always held that Magnus's greatest sin was not what he did to his sons or to his world, but that he allowed the Space Wolves to erase all that wisdom from the universe.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Fabius Bile: Warhammer 40,000))
The galaxy was in flames and crowded with pyromaniacs eager to claim possession of the ashes. Bile had no interest in the conflagration, its cause or celebrants. Let the galaxy burn. From its ashes would rise a new future. One created by him.
Josh Reynolds (Fabius Bile: The Omnibus (Warhammer 40,000))
What empire has ever been anything more than the ruins that are discovered by the one that rises after it? They never last, Khârn. Ever. And neither will this one.
Ian St. Martin (Angron: Slave of Nuceria (The Horus Heresy: Primarchs, #11))
A plug for the quantitative sciences: The reality is, most humans manage to feed, clothe, and amuse themselves, and yet are not able to formulate a rational argument that stands up to informed scrutiny, derive the conclusion of a syllogistic argument, or understand a mathematical proof. Doing advanced studies in any quantitative field is like surviving Marine boot camp while the rest of the world is channel surfing and inhaling Oreos; you don’t exactly need to fear the push-up test. Even when the intellectual test is being doled out as filter to the elite ranks of a globe-spanning tech company, you won’t be out of your league if you understand the problem space. So if nothing else, aspiring physicist or mathematician, rest comfortable knowing you’ll come out of that long academic tunnel thinking circles around most people.
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
plug for the quantitative sciences: The reality is, most humans manage to feed, clothe, and amuse themselves, and yet are not able to formulate a rational argument that stands up to informed scrutiny, derive the conclusion of a syllogistic argument, or understand a mathematical proof. Doing advanced studies in any quantitative field is like surviving Marine boot camp while the rest of the world is channel surfing and inhaling Oreos; you don’t exactly need to fear the push-up test. Even when the intellectual test is being doled out as filter to the elite ranks of a globe-spanning tech company, you won’t be out of your league if you understand the problem space. So if nothing else, aspiring physicist or mathematician, rest comfortable knowing you’ll come out of that long academic tunnel thinking circles around most people. For
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)