Ending was pretty selfaware:
“He [General Bendikt of Cadian 101th] paused on the lip of the portal for one last look at Potence. The rebellion had been crushed, the Scourged had been thrown back and most importantly, Cadian honour had been restored. Some might call Potence a wasteland. But to the military minds of the Astra Militarum, this was peace.”
Note: Potence is basically an agri world with one city (and it wasn’t even a hive city) being quiet residence of sector-ruling noble house so disgustingly rich they are even named “Richstar”. And the “wasteland” is unusual for 40k exaggeration, capital got devastated and millions died but rest of planet was implied to be not touched by fights.
It kind of reminds me of the opening to the Horus Heresy novel, Tallarn, where they see the ruined battlefield with thousands of tank wrecks, and the general goes “What am I looking at?”, to which a White Scar says “That is victory.”
Yeah, both are paraphrases of Caledonian chieftain Calgacus speech fragment, attributed to him by Tacitus:
These plunderers of the world [the Romans], after exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Easy to understand why Warhammer 40k writers like that piece.
Ooo, that’s a good speech fragment. I should read more Tacitus. I should read more in general, lol.
