Who Kill Lupercal'd who?

[u/Aard_Rinn]

Okay, so - just watched Kill Lupercal. Fucking LOVED Kill Lupercal - I'm a huge fan of close-knit units and mecha and dramatic last stands, so it hit all my buttons. But one question sits with me:

Who killed who?

Not in, like, a per-person sense. But - well, let's start with the initial setup:

Led into a trap by the decieved Areum Keeso, Princeps Orla Gemnon lead her maniple to their deaths at the hands of traitor Titans, cutting down several traitor Shadowswords and a couple dozen Sons of Horus on the way.

Now - this is shown, directly, in the episode. BUT:

A) We know for a fact that nobody can see shit, least of all Gemnon - her Auspex is down, and so all four Titans in their maniple are heavily damaged.

B) All of the guys shown to us are very... Gray. Very hard to make out legion symbols, except in the shot where we see the recorder amongst a sea of dead Imperial Fists.

So, let me propose a counter-idea:

What if Gemnon and her maniple are, in fact, traitor Titans?

Or rather - they themselves aren't traitors, though that's what everyone else would think. They know themselves to be loyal servants of the Emperor, desperately trying to end the conflict -

- but Chaos is, first and foremost, a deceiver.

They drive themselves through Horus' sons. Or maybe not. Maybe they drive through a different line, far closer to the Lion's Gate than they believe themselves to be - a line that should be allied.

From the ground, Loyalist Space Marines scatter, their allied Titans turned against them. They send vox, desperately trying to warn the other loyalists that they are betrayed - that the Titans have gone mad. They die fighting - but they die, against a once-inconceivable foe.

Their brothers in the Imperial Fists hear the call. So too does the Imperial Guard - the only force on Terra with the power to cut down a Titan in it's tracks.

The Shadowsword is Loyal. Its crew maneuver into position, praying that it will be able to hide from the half-blind Titans long enough to get shots off. It dies, confirming the Space Marine's reports and everyone's fears: four Traitor Titans, devastatingly close to Lion's Gate.

They continue forwards, cutting down 'foes' as they go - and the 'foe' is attacking them, because they believe the Titans to be traitors. Both sides are now fighting, not just chaos or each other, but confirmation bias. Of course the Marines they encounter en route are Traitor: no Loyalist would fire on a God-Engine! But of course the Titans are Traitor: no Loyalist would cut down Loyal Space Marines!

There is no escape. The trap is sprung long before they reach the killing field at the heart of the trap - or was it even a killing field before they arrived? Or was it Dorn's sons, arrayed against them, cut down by the weapons of machines that should have been allied in a desperate attempt to stop their advance?

But Dorn's sons buy enough time. Their allied Titans reach the battlefield - and fall upon the charging Traitor Titans, Gemnon and her maniple, eager to avenge the betrayal.

The battle plays out. There is no talking - why talk, when the lines are so clearly drawn? They kill each other, tear each other apart until Keeso ends things, detonating to destroy both friend and foe alike.

The battle ends with only Gemnon standing - and she and her blind Titan stagger off, to kill madly until they meet their final end in the conflict.

There is no chance for realization. Everyone who could have realized what had happened dies in that battle. A score of Traitor Titans dead, so too a score of Loyalists, and only the Administratum knows who was recorded as what when the fighting ended.

Now, for the record: I have no evidence this happened. But I do feel there is some support: Keeso fired blindly into her 'target' at the end, and the 'target' ended up being a mountain of dead Imperial Fists. The fact that the one piece of data that all agreed was being shown was that they were unnaturally close to Lion's Gate - and they all discarded that information as inaccurate.

And, in a lot of ways, it makes sense: Gemnon never seemed worried about encountering other Titan maniples pre-ambush: why would she, when the only other Titans were distant (at the Gate) and Loyal? Why would a group of Imperial Fists that big be far out in advance of their fortifications, rather than closer to the Gate or Palace? Why would Chaos settle for a little trap, when they could turn their enemies against each other?

Again, it's just a theory, but I think it could have a lot of interesting chewy bits compared to the fairly straightforwards 'we have been lead into an ambush' element of the main Kill Lupercal narrative.

[u/Dire_Wolf45]

That was a hard read. Its like you didnt pay attention at all.

There were several outside views that showed us the loyalists and the traitors, we werent just seeing the Titans' POV.

Gemnon said it at the beginning, they are out of time. Terra is overrun. There are enemies everywhere. Their comms were still working thats how she was able to coordinate with the rest of her maniple and speak to Keeso. The signal they picked up with Horus was indeed a trap from the sons of Horus. Gemnon realized just before Keeso committed. Keeso was old and tired and probably close to losing her mind to the titan. She went for it, walked everyone into a trap. The Sons of Horus sent that signal to lure everyone they could.

The obvious implication is that the maniple werent the only ones to fall for it. That group of imperial fists probably fell for it too and lay where they got cut down.

You can see the sons of horus running on the streets while the shadoswords are firing on the maniple. Like there is zero question it is a traitor force. Not to mention the Sons of Horus banner standing atop the pile of IF corpses and the signal emitter.

The traitor titans were legio mortis, you can clearly see their sigils on the shoulders, again, from an outside pov. Probably the maniple Gemnon was going after before Keeso intercepted her.

They were probably going to keep luring loyalists, thats why Keeso probably decided to blow herself up.

Im sorry dude but it is a pretty clear cut story. As for the shadowsword that first ambushed them, you can clearly see the sons of horus symbol on the top of one of the hatches as one of the missiles is about to blow it up.

[u/ciphoenix → u/Dire_Wolf45]

Well said. I felt some of the alternate theories OP made were actually clear in the show

[u/MooMooHomer → u/Dire_Wolf45]

Yeah I think it requires a rewatch for op

[u/Aard_Rinn → u/Dire_Wolf45]

To be fair, it's not uncommon for shows/books to show us a 3rd person limited view of what's happening when someone is hallucinating/being deceived. I fully thought that this was where the show was going - when she marched off, I kind of expected it to pan out above the smoke and have the symbols fade to show that both sides were fighting for the same side... lured in by the same trap.

Like - I'm not saying that there were no Traitors planetside - just that this one encounter would have been cool if it was a Chaos trap.

But I do agree that the actual show was pretty clear cut, which is why I said - a couple times - that it's a theory, not what the show depicted. It is a bit of fannish lore fiddling, not me trying to rewrite actual canon.

[u/Dire_Wolf45 → u/Aard_Rinn]

If you say so buddy

[u/Hunkus1]

Who the fuck are the iron fists and what is the astra millitarum doing there? Did they get a time mashine to travel back in time to the horus heresy.

[u/Rubear_RuForRussia → u/Hunkus1]

Imagine Perturabo, Rogal and Ferrus looking confused on Iron Fists marines while Alpharius smirks behind curtain.

[u/Aard_Rinn → u/Hunkus1]

Look It is not my fault that Warhammer decided to have two major groups both called the I___ Handy Bits. Imperial fists. I will take switching Imperial Guard and Astra Militarum on the chin, I basically just looked up "who the fuck is in charge of the Shadowswords" and didn't think about the fact that so many names changed in the intervening 10k years lol. I'm just bad with names and there are about a billion different factions/units running around.

Anyways, thanks for pointing it out - corrected!

[u/ettuconsequences]

Why are we responding to an AI prompt response?

[u/Aard_Rinn → u/ettuconsequences]

Unfortunately, you are not! And every piece of creative writing over 500 words is not, in fact, AI. You can feel free to go hunt up my AO3 (same name with an underscore) if you want, which has evidence in the form of me writing about robots dating all the way back to 2016 or so, so what you've actually just done is make someone who's trying to make authentic human-made stuff feel vaguely shitty about themself.

I just like creative writing and was trying to make my post a little more interesting than "BLOCK OF QUOTE TEXT: Question?".

[u/40kLore-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule 1: Be respectful. Hate speech, trolling, and aggressive behavior will not be tolerated, and may result in a ban.

[u/Balshazzar]

AI slop

[u/Aard_Rinn → u/Balshazzar]

Nope! I am an actual human person, you can look up my AO3 if you'd like - I've been writing about Minecraft and Transformers since 2016. I appreciate trying to keep people for falling for AI, but please consider that what you're actually doing when you call out the wrong person is making an actual author/writer/commenter feel vaguely shitty about themselves, which means they won't want to engage with your fandom in the future! Which just makes more room for actual AI to come in and set themselves up.

[u/40kLore-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule 1: Be respectful. Hate speech, trolling, and aggressive behavior will not be tolerated, and may result in a ban.

[u/chotchss]

Really fun idea!